2. requires online connection and account to unlock bootloader
3. lenovo (the parent company) had shady behavior in the past
dmm 13 days ago [-]
Unlocking the pixels also requires an internet connection, to determine whether the device has any restrictions on it.
From the grapheneos installation instructions:
"""
On device model variants (SKUs) which support being sold as locked devices by carriers, enabling OEM unlocking requires internet access so that the stock OS can check if the device was sold as locked by a carrier.
"""
You can do the Pixel unlocking whilst driving by the random McD.
I'm quite surprised it flies with the team.
gruez 13 days ago [-]
>connection != account
That's not much of a distinction considering that it's trivial to create an email/account (without a phone number, even!) with fake information.
subscribed 13 days ago [-]
That's a massive difference to me (you rightly called me out on that one).
One is 5 seconds on wifi, second is grumbly attempts to create throwaway email to create the throwaway account.
I agree in principle but disagree because I hate unnecessary friction.
seanw444 13 days ago [-]
> 2. requires online connection and account to unlock bootloader
That's horrible. I'm surprised the GOS team is okay with this.
627467 13 days ago [-]
Is it a fact that when these devices come the process to unlock will remain the same?
microtonal 12 days ago [-]
There is little information available about the future devices. I think they are just extrapolating from prior unlockable Motorola devices. IMO it's not worth speculating until there is some official information or someone has actually tested on one of the devices.
seanw444 12 days ago [-]
At least there's still hope. It would be weird that this would be allowed to stand, with first-class GOS in the picture now.
12 days ago [-]
bushwart 13 days ago [-]
Needing an account to unlock the bootloader is a real bummer. I can live with issues 1 and 3. Thanks for the notes.
This reads shockingly bad, but most of that won't apply to the new devices.
Like, it will be Qualcomm, it will support unlockng, relocking, custom keys and will not have a secret debug key - otherwise there simply would be absolutely no deal with GoS.
IMO these new flagships will not be fully impacted by these issues (if at all), considering how much of the partnership initiative started* at Motorola.
It was likely them providing the GOS team with source code of some of the most critical patches, when Google withheld it for months waiting for Samsung to release patches.
Why? I guess to get the bragging rights to have the most secure android handsets in the world, to improve their own codebase (GOS pushed a lot of patches upstream and perhaps the hardware).
I'm cautiously optimistic - given how allergic the team are to the notion of the enforced compliance imposed by Google, I think it's likely these new flagships will be automatically unlocked in the same way pixels are.
microtonal 12 days ago [-]
It was likely them providing the GOS team with source code of some of the most critical patches, when Google withheld it for months waiting for Samsung to release patches.
I'm pretty sure reading on Mastodon that it was another OEM that provided them with embargoed patches, but I can't find the Toot now.
subscribed 12 days ago [-]
That'd be even better TBF, thanks for the update
LikelySupernova 13 days ago [-]
Then buy Pixel A series, it has none of those cons. And I'd say at that price point, Tensor isn't even a bad processor.
gfrecvh 13 days ago [-]
Alright number 2 just convinced me I'll never use grapheneos.
microtonal 12 days ago [-]
There is no proof that that an account will actually be required. The fact that some existing Motorola phone require this does not say much.
aftbit 13 days ago [-]
1. So what?
2. This sucks but is basically required to protect against phone theft (though phones could be shipped in an unlock-once state, until you set them up)
3. So what? What company has never been shady?
Hobadee 13 days ago [-]
Last time a custom Android distro (CyanogenMod) made a deal with a manufacturer, everything went belly-up. I have little faith that the same won't happen again. :-(
bitpush 13 days ago [-]
I wasnt around when this happened. Who did CyanogenMod partner with and what happened?
joshuaissac 13 days ago [-]
> Who did CyanogenMod partner with and what happened?
They partnered with OnePlus globally, then signed an exclusive deal with Micromax in India, catching OnePlus by surprise as they had to now stop selling their CyanogenMod-loaded phones in India.
mnls 13 days ago [-]
I never liked the idea of giving money to buy a Google phone so to get away from…Google. I think the irony is strong in this case so GrapheneOS was never that much appealing to me.
As for Motorola, I also wasn’t crazy excited about the deal but I was hoping for a cheap phone with GrapheneOS. It seems that it will be only available on flagship phones. Which means paying more for having a flagship with better security and privacy but some basic broken services (It’s not 2002 any more, I need to do contactless payments with my phone. And don’t tell me it’s not Graphene's fault, when I pay more than $1000 for a phone, I don’t care whose fault that is).
And at this very point, I pretty much lost interest on anything GrapheneOS has to offer. Put GrapheneOS on a $200-$300 phone and then we'll talk
microtonal 12 days ago [-]
The problem is that there is now midrange or lower midrange phone outside the Pixel a series that provides the minimum necessary for device security, namely a separate secure processor to store secrets and MTE.
In fact, Snapdragon CPUs had no support for MTE until Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 (a flagship chip) and almost no Android phones outside Pixel and Samsung flagships have a separate secure processor (pretty much everyone else uses TrustZone, which is very vulnerable to attacks, see e.g. the recent vulnerability where most Mediatek phones could be extracted under a minute in BFU).
And don’t tell me it’s not Graphene's fault
Seriously, it is not GrapheneOS' fault and it does matter whose fault it is. With your mindset, nothing is going to change ever... If you cannot live without contactless payments, at least send a message to your regulator that Google is using Play Integrity to enforce its monopoly.
gfrecvh 13 days ago [-]
Speaking of contactless payments on the phone, can someone explain to me why people use this? Literally, why do you need it? Is it because you have accounts for which you don't have a card? If an account has a card, a card is a superior technology to make payments - doesn't run out of battery, the phone does. Or is it because you think that carrying a card with you is a logistical challenge? Or something else?
mnls 13 days ago [-]
I don't carry a wallet, so I keep my cards on phone.
t0bia_s 11 days ago [-]
What of your battery drains, signal range off or seller does not accept cashless payments?
DANmode 13 days ago [-]
> when I pay more than $1000 for a phone, I don’t care whose fault that is
They said I never liked the idea of giving money to buy a Google phone so to get away from…Google..
For most people it's a non-argument though - they are feeding data into the Google ad machine every day (even more so if you are using a phone with Google-certified Android). But suddenly buying the Android phone with the best device security is a problem.
But from the rest of the message, they are setting up a set of constraints that is impossible to solve.
DANmode 12 days ago [-]
Yep, it certainly seems like GrapheneOS community resources spent on teaching people to understand their own security and privacy models was really good time spent.
Very important work. Very important questions to mirror back to every user.
I think I saw another post some other time that it was because only particular snapdragon chips support the features they need?
Grimeton 13 days ago [-]
There are multiple things in play here:
GrapheneOS gives you a very secure device with some neat features that make it basically impossible to get to the data w/o the right pin (so we believe). To make that happen it uses some hardware features that make this possible (so the developers and we believe). You get a highly secure phone with an option to destroy the data on it by handing out the wrong pin. So if you don’t want the customs officer to see that shady stuff on your phone, this one is for you.
And the average Joe? Is that what he wants? Needs? Or is he rather looking for a phone that gives him back control over his data? No Google, no manufacturer spying on him. No option to remotely disable it, no microphone that you cannot trust to not be turned on anyway and so on? If that is what the average Joe is looking for then he doesn’t need GrapheneOS. All it takes is a custom ROM that removes these services.
However, I don’t really see the win here. Joe would move from stock ROM/Google/manufacturer to custom ROM/random developer on the intertubez and so would his trust. And even Joe knows trusting a random guy on the Interwebtubez is the last thing one should do.
The way I look at this Joe is just moving problems around, not solving a single one, creating ten new ones.
Besides that: If anyone really wants to change anything ROMs need to be made for $100 phones, but that’s not an option because the manufacturer won’t make the $$ back via the data so the phone needs to be more expensive in the first place.
slaps Nokia 6150
em-bee 13 days ago [-]
Joe would move from stock ROM/Google/manufacturer to custom ROM/random developer on the intertubez and so would his trust. And even Joe knows trusting a random guy on the Interwebtubez is the last thing one should do.
but that either applies to GrapheneOS as well, or there actually are trustworthy alternative ROMs out there. GrapheneOS being one, /e/OS being another, for example.
there are more that i am less familiar with, so i can't talk about them, but /e/OS is run by Gael Duval, who has been running a Linux distribution before that for many years. and even tough there are criticisms against /e/OS including the claim that it overstates its security and supposedly hasn't removed all google connections, i will trust Gael based on his reputation far above anything coming from google. even more so compared to other OEMs who stuff their android versions with bad apps that you can't remove.
so no, i am not trusting a random guy on the internet. i am trusting someone with a known reputation, someone who i have actually exchanged private messages with, someone who i could even meet in person if i were to come to the right conference.
microtonal 12 days ago [-]
i will trust Gael based on his reputation
Don't? He has mentioned in multiple interviews that security hardening is only for pedophiles and spies (sort of implicating GrapheneOS). They are inaccurate about /e/OS being degoogled. They install F-Droid packages through a proxy (CleanAPK.org) that they do not want to reveal the purpose or owner of, which combined with the Android Trust On First Use (TOFU) model is a big red flag. And then we haven't talked about all the kernel trees, firmware trees, and Android releases that are way behind and have hundreds of known vulnerabilities.
Either they are very incompetent or just fishy.
em-bee 12 days ago [-]
please provide references or evidence for those claims
Cider9986 12 days ago [-]
Actually other Roms do not do a good job at privacy from corporations compared to GrapheneOS.
I'll start caring once this arrives on sub $200 phones and only once my current sub $200 phone completely breaks down. Not that I have to pay - my company buys my phone either way. But for some reason you need to go sub $200 to get dual sim slots, an sd card slot and a headphone jack. And then your phone isn't even remarkably different from the expensive ones. Maybe the camera is a bit worse and that's it. They're all the same large bricks these days.
infogulch 13 days ago [-]
If you want to stick with a pixel maybe skip the Pixel 11 if you want to run GrapheneOS. There is some question whether P11 will actually support the MTE cpu extension which GOS requires for all devices it supports.
> ... There's a decent chance usable MTE will ship in Android 17 QPR2 and we'll be able to support it. We can't promise that since it's not up to us and no information has been provided about why MTE was unavailable at launch and still disabled in 17 QPR2 Beta 4.
- The Motorola flagship costs too much and he's worried it will no longer run on the Pixel 7a that he got for $200 or that there will be any cheap options.
But they said already there would be cheap options, and Motorola has a Moto G series that it would likely use.
- Worried about other stuff that existing Motorola Android phones do, like privacy violations.
...that definitely won't be in GrapheneOS, they wouldn't allow it.
- More things Motorola does as a company that are bad.
The current option being Google means, despite that, Motorola is probably better.
wink 11 days ago [-]
Call me petty, but I bought a new motorola x4 about 2.5y after it came out (via gsmarena) and it never got a security or OS update, the date is still before my time of purchase. The hardware still works perfectly fine, I use it as a small tablet around the house but I've long stopped using any kind of account on it that I care about.
I will never buy a motorola phone again and I'll gladly tell everyone to avoid them.
Grimeton 13 days ago [-]
All I have todo is to enter my pin and the bootloader is unlocked. Dunno what the guy is doing.
BorisMelnik 13 days ago [-]
version / phone model differences ?
Grimeton 13 days ago [-]
Motorola Moto G54 5G.
VCFundedGenYer 13 days ago [-]
GrapheneOS is also saying some suspicious stuff on Mastodon in which they are failing the vibe check. They are suddenly very AI obsessed, which is the antithesis of their platform.
I would recommend being very careful with them.
gruez 13 days ago [-]
>GrapheneOS is also saying some suspicious stuff on Mastodon in which they are failing the vibe check.
Using "failing the vibe check" as your first argument fails my vibe check.
>They are suddenly very AI obsessed, which is the antithesis of their platform.
1. If you're talking about their post defending the use of AI in development, and that the reviews are still done by humans, that hardly seems "very AI obsessed" to me, unless you subscribe to r/antiai or something.
2. How is the use AI "the antithesis of their platform"?
Cider9986 13 days ago [-]
They are not AI obsessed lol. They recognize the benefits and the drawbacks and use it responsibly.
BearOso 13 days ago [-]
It is kind of funny, because they're partly up in arms because the Mastodon thread linked to your slightly ambiguous comment.
Cider9986 13 days ago [-]
People need to chill lol.
nicce 13 days ago [-]
> They are suddenly very AI obsessed, which is the antithesis of their platform.
Benefits are massive if you have the discipline to stay as master and don't let AI overtake everything and make you lazy.
13 days ago [-]
subscribed 13 days ago [-]
Which things you'd say are very suspicious?
And "they are suddenly very AI obsessed" sounds so alarming - can you point to something I could read?
jmaksv 13 days ago [-]
[dead]
aniviacat 13 days ago [-]
tl;dr:
- GrapheneOS is only supported on Motorola's flagship devices, which the author deems too expensive
- Motorola historically has made unlocking the bootloader difficult, and GrapheneOS has not yet confirmed that this will become easier.
- The author does not trust Motorola.
13 days ago [-]
pessimizer 13 days ago [-]
I'm nervous because of how articulate, reasonable and numerous grapheneos's posts have been on HN recently. From experience it has a smell of getting a very good corporate comms person on staff, and that's a sign that a rugpull might be in the works. They shouldn't be able to afford somebody that good.
But of course, that's a can't win catch-22 situation; the comments really are very good and reassuring. I'd feel a lot better if they were partnering with 10 different Chinese manufacturers than Motorola, though.
edit: I want to see Graphene on $100 phones. That this is not a target is concerning, because if the average person had a choice between a $100 phone that had the guarantees of GrapheneOS and a $100 phone that had anything else on it, they would choose GrapheneOS. They'd be a household name in seconds; it would take government action to stop them from being the default and changing the expectations of the entire environment.
13 days ago [-]
Cider9986 13 days ago [-]
> I'm nervous because of how articulate, reasonable and numerous grapheneos's posts have been on HN recently
tl;dr mostly not allowed, but useful for PR reviewing/auditing, because adversaries use them as well.
So I am not sure what point you are making in this comment or your linked comment?
Cider9986 12 days ago [-]
Yes their policies are great. They misinterpreted my comment and accused me which annoyed me. The comment I replied to in this current thread was talking about their communication on HN so I provided an example where I was caught in the crossfire of their current communication. To add on to this they flagged to death my non-rule breaking comment which is not cool—it's now restored.
Not a big deal. I agree and it was probably a mistake but it appears a little trigger happy.
The comment I replied to was bad for the record.
bushwart 12 days ago [-]
Ironic, considering you're one of their most prolific supporters here. Every time I see a positive GOS headline on HN it's usually with your username next to it.
Cider9986 12 days ago [-]
Now that I'm reading the stuff on Mastodon about AI I can empathize with them a bit more. People are batshit crazy.
microtonal 11 days ago [-]
Yeah. It seems like part of Mastodon is completely derailing. Recently I found out that you are a fascist if you say that left authoritarianism exists (the context was a harmless statement like "we oppose authoritarianism regardless if it comes from left, center, or right").
Their whole spiel is if you don't 100% agree with with their opinions, you are a fascist or nazi.
I'm considering just leaving Mastodon, the primary thing that is stopping me is memories of when it was mostly a nice medium where you could follow some tech people with really insightful posts.
Huge respect to the GrapheneOS developers for finding the energy to reply to most of this bullshit. I'd have left long ago.
12 days ago [-]
subscribed 13 days ago [-]
You won't see GOS on the $100 ever, because they don't contain the hardware GOS relies on.
It simply won't work.
Of course you can fork it, adapt and run the less safe clone, but the official GOS won't.
...unless you accept refurbished ones, then the recommended minimum is Pixel 7a for approx 200€
(pixels 6, currently supported, approach EOL)
jmaksv 13 days ago [-]
[dead]
Rendered at 16:34:36 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
tl;dw:
1. it's expensive
2. requires online connection and account to unlock bootloader
3. lenovo (the parent company) had shady behavior in the past
From the grapheneos installation instructions: """ On device model variants (SKUs) which support being sold as locked devices by carriers, enabling OEM unlocking requires internet access so that the stock OS can check if the device was sold as locked by a carrier. """
https://grapheneos.org/install/web#enabling-oem-unlocking
You can do the Pixel unlocking whilst driving by the random McD.
I'm quite surprised it flies with the team.
That's not much of a distinction considering that it's trivial to create an email/account (without a phone number, even!) with fake information.
One is 5 seconds on wifi, second is grumbly attempts to create throwaway email to create the throwaway account.
I agree in principle but disagree because I hate unnecessary friction.
That's horrible. I'm surprised the GOS team is okay with this.
Like, it will be Qualcomm, it will support unlockng, relocking, custom keys and will not have a secret debug key - otherwise there simply would be absolutely no deal with GoS.
IMO these new flagships will not be fully impacted by these issues (if at all), considering how much of the partnership initiative started* at Motorola.
It was likely them providing the GOS team with source code of some of the most critical patches, when Google withheld it for months waiting for Samsung to release patches.
Why? I guess to get the bragging rights to have the most secure android handsets in the world, to improve their own codebase (GOS pushed a lot of patches upstream and perhaps the hardware).
I'm cautiously optimistic - given how allergic the team are to the notion of the enforced compliance imposed by Google, I think it's likely these new flagships will be automatically unlocked in the same way pixels are.
I'm pretty sure reading on Mastodon that it was another OEM that provided them with embargoed patches, but I can't find the Toot now.
2. This sucks but is basically required to protect against phone theft (though phones could be shipped in an unlock-once state, until you set them up)
3. So what? What company has never been shady?
They partnered with OnePlus globally, then signed an exclusive deal with Micromax in India, catching OnePlus by surprise as they had to now stop selling their CyanogenMod-loaded phones in India.
As for Motorola, I also wasn’t crazy excited about the deal but I was hoping for a cheap phone with GrapheneOS. It seems that it will be only available on flagship phones. Which means paying more for having a flagship with better security and privacy but some basic broken services (It’s not 2002 any more, I need to do contactless payments with my phone. And don’t tell me it’s not Graphene's fault, when I pay more than $1000 for a phone, I don’t care whose fault that is).
And at this very point, I pretty much lost interest on anything GrapheneOS has to offer. Put GrapheneOS on a $200-$300 phone and then we'll talk
In fact, Snapdragon CPUs had no support for MTE until Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 (a flagship chip) and almost no Android phones outside Pixel and Samsung flagships have a separate secure processor (pretty much everyone else uses TrustZone, which is very vulnerable to attacks, see e.g. the recent vulnerability where most Mediatek phones could be extracted under a minute in BFU).
And don’t tell me it’s not Graphene's fault
Seriously, it is not GrapheneOS' fault and it does matter whose fault it is. With your mindset, nothing is going to change ever... If you cannot live without contactless payments, at least send a message to your regulator that Google is using Play Integrity to enforce its monopoly.
It’s just yours.
https://swappa.com/catalog/family/google-pixel
For most people it's a non-argument though - they are feeding data into the Google ad machine every day (even more so if you are using a phone with Google-certified Android). But suddenly buying the Android phone with the best device security is a problem.
But from the rest of the message, they are setting up a set of constraints that is impossible to solve.
Very important work. Very important questions to mirror back to every user.
I think I saw another post some other time that it was because only particular snapdragon chips support the features they need?
GrapheneOS gives you a very secure device with some neat features that make it basically impossible to get to the data w/o the right pin (so we believe). To make that happen it uses some hardware features that make this possible (so the developers and we believe). You get a highly secure phone with an option to destroy the data on it by handing out the wrong pin. So if you don’t want the customs officer to see that shady stuff on your phone, this one is for you.
And the average Joe? Is that what he wants? Needs? Or is he rather looking for a phone that gives him back control over his data? No Google, no manufacturer spying on him. No option to remotely disable it, no microphone that you cannot trust to not be turned on anyway and so on? If that is what the average Joe is looking for then he doesn’t need GrapheneOS. All it takes is a custom ROM that removes these services.
However, I don’t really see the win here. Joe would move from stock ROM/Google/manufacturer to custom ROM/random developer on the intertubez and so would his trust. And even Joe knows trusting a random guy on the Interwebtubez is the last thing one should do.
The way I look at this Joe is just moving problems around, not solving a single one, creating ten new ones.
Besides that: If anyone really wants to change anything ROMs need to be made for $100 phones, but that’s not an option because the manufacturer won’t make the $$ back via the data so the phone needs to be more expensive in the first place.
slaps Nokia 6150
but that either applies to GrapheneOS as well, or there actually are trustworthy alternative ROMs out there. GrapheneOS being one, /e/OS being another, for example.
there are more that i am less familiar with, so i can't talk about them, but /e/OS is run by Gael Duval, who has been running a Linux distribution before that for many years. and even tough there are criticisms against /e/OS including the claim that it overstates its security and supposedly hasn't removed all google connections, i will trust Gael based on his reputation far above anything coming from google. even more so compared to other OEMs who stuff their android versions with bad apps that you can't remove.
so no, i am not trusting a random guy on the internet. i am trusting someone with a known reputation, someone who i have actually exchanged private messages with, someone who i could even meet in person if i were to come to the right conference.
Don't? He has mentioned in multiple interviews that security hardening is only for pedophiles and spies (sort of implicating GrapheneOS). They are inaccurate about /e/OS being degoogled. They install F-Droid packages through a proxy (CleanAPK.org) that they do not want to reveal the purpose or owner of, which combined with the Android Trust On First Use (TOFU) model is a big red flag. And then we haven't talked about all the kernel trees, firmware trees, and Android releases that are way behind and have hundreds of known vulnerabilities.
Either they are very incompetent or just fishy.
See "Degoogling" section: https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm
Last thread about it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49536384
Latest tweet by @GrapheneOS on the topic (today): https://x.com/GrapheneOS/status/2097219485937660272?s=20
> ... There's a decent chance usable MTE will ship in Android 17 QPR2 and we'll be able to support it. We can't promise that since it's not up to us and no information has been provided about why MTE was unavailable at launch and still disabled in 17 QPR2 Beta 4.
- The Motorola flagship costs too much and he's worried it will no longer run on the Pixel 7a that he got for $200 or that there will be any cheap options.
But they said already there would be cheap options, and Motorola has a Moto G series that it would likely use.
- Worried about other stuff that existing Motorola Android phones do, like privacy violations.
...that definitely won't be in GrapheneOS, they wouldn't allow it.
- More things Motorola does as a company that are bad.
The current option being Google means, despite that, Motorola is probably better.
I will never buy a motorola phone again and I'll gladly tell everyone to avoid them.
I would recommend being very careful with them.
Using "failing the vibe check" as your first argument fails my vibe check.
>They are suddenly very AI obsessed, which is the antithesis of their platform.
1. If you're talking about their post defending the use of AI in development, and that the reviews are still done by humans, that hardly seems "very AI obsessed" to me, unless you subscribe to r/antiai or something.
2. How is the use AI "the antithesis of their platform"?
Benefits are massive if you have the discipline to stay as master and don't let AI overtake everything and make you lazy.
And "they are suddenly very AI obsessed" sounds so alarming - can you point to something I could read?
- GrapheneOS is only supported on Motorola's flagship devices, which the author deems too expensive
- Motorola historically has made unlocking the bootloader difficult, and GrapheneOS has not yet confirmed that this will become easier.
- The author does not trust Motorola.
But of course, that's a can't win catch-22 situation; the comments really are very good and reassuring. I'd feel a lot better if they were partnering with 10 different Chinese manufacturers than Motorola, though.
edit: I want to see Graphene on $100 phones. That this is not a target is concerning, because if the average person had a choice between a $100 phone that had the guarantees of GrapheneOS and a $100 phone that had anything else on it, they would choose GrapheneOS. They'd be a household name in seconds; it would take government action to stop them from being the default and changing the expectations of the entire environment.
Let me reassure you?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49591796
https://mastodon.social/@GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social/117236...
tl;dr mostly not allowed, but useful for PR reviewing/auditing, because adversaries use them as well.
So I am not sure what point you are making in this comment or your linked comment?
Not a big deal. I agree and it was probably a mistake but it appears a little trigger happy.
The comment I replied to was bad for the record.
Their whole spiel is if you don't 100% agree with with their opinions, you are a fascist or nazi.
I'm considering just leaving Mastodon, the primary thing that is stopping me is memories of when it was mostly a nice medium where you could follow some tech people with really insightful posts.
Huge respect to the GrapheneOS developers for finding the energy to reply to most of this bullshit. I'd have left long ago.
It simply won't work.
Of course you can fork it, adapt and run the less safe clone, but the official GOS won't.
...unless you accept refurbished ones, then the recommended minimum is Pixel 7a for approx 200€
(pixels 6, currently supported, approach EOL)