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Comment by d3Xt3r | Hacker News Reader

This is excellent news. I've always wanted to try GrapheneOS, but I dislike Google and dislike Pixels even more (Tensor sucks + there's the whole VoLTE/5G issue), so I never got a chance to try it out.

Hopefully they select an OEM which supports pKVM - that's the one Pixel feature I'd really like to see being implemented on other Android devices.

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The timing of this is also really important, as the EU is currently planning on rolling out mandatory app-based age verification, and currently it looks like the solution will be locked to Apple and Google phones "for security reasons". I have contacted my own government, and their answer is that they currently do not plan to support alternatives only used by a minority of citizens (absurd statement coming from a government agency). Having a major OEM actually offer a native non-Google Android phone will be really important to be able to put pressure on governments to stop locking their citizens into American big tech platforms because of will be a lot easier to argue that it is anti-competitive (which it always has been, but governments apparently don't consider postmarket operating systems as even part of the competition).

GrapheneOS recently added official support for forcing the availability of VoLTE, VoNR, 5G and/or VoWiFi with any carrier providing proper implementations. It was previously possible via ADB but no longer is since the December 2025 security patches which are included in our current security preview releases with the November 2025, December 2025 and January 2026 patches (https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/27068-grapheneos-security-p...).

The devices with our OEM partner will be Snapdragon flagships with Gunyah rather than pKVM. It should still be able to support the same things. It even has official Windows guest support upstream.

What is the VoLTE/5G issue? On T-Mobile, haven't had any issues with it living in a pretty rural spot. Isn't that like a Verizon problem?

It's more of an issue for carriers who don't sell Pixel devices, particularly in countries where the Pixel isn't sold officially (eg: New Zealand). So generally VoLTE, VoWiFi and sometimes even 5G too might not work. You can use a hack to get around that, but now Google has blocked that hack: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45553764

Edit: Looks like there's an updated workaround now, but this is what I mean - it's really unacceptable that an essential feature like VoLTE - which is required to make phone calls - may not work depending on your carrier/region.

Actually I'm not sure it's reasonable to complain about a feature that you're informed won't work, on a phone that you're using in a region it's not meant to be in, doesn't work.

Yes, Pixels should probably be sold in all markets. But if you're explicitly circumventing that you shouldn't be surprised.

it's not complaining to tell people not to buy a phone that doesn't work.

A phone bought in one region should be supposed to continue working when you travel to other regions - which people (in most parts of the world) do all the time. And, indeed, my phones all do that. However, they don't all work with local sim cards, so something fishy is still going on, sometimes.

VoLTE roaming isn't quite as easy as "log in to the network and connect to the local SIP server". There's a lot of interplay with the home carrier: https://moniem-tech.com/2024/01/01/what-is-volte-roaming/

It's perfectly possible for VoLTE not to work in regions where no carrier provisioning information is available while foreign SIM cards work fine.

In theory a phone can just be provisioned by the network to use VoLTE, but in practice the spec allows for all kinds of incompatible configurations. Carriers and phone manufacturers won't just apply an untested configuration, and for good reason. Software upgrades have broken telecommunications from iPhones to Androids, sometimes edge cases such as calling 111/112/911/999 turn out not to work.

Falling back to 3G or even 2G on unknown networks in unsupported markets will get you voice calls, at least for the coming years.

I disagree, because making phone calls is the most basic and core functionality of a phone, it's not just some random feature that you can simply dismiss, especially with many counties worldwide shutting down 3G networks - VoLTE is a necessity if want to make phone calls.

Google is the only major OEM (that I'm aware of) that has these deliberate draconian roadblocks to prevent VoLTE - an essential feature - from working. On OnePlus and Xiaomi devices for instance, you can always go into the engineering menu via the dialler and enable VoLTE on unsupported networks. Xiaomi even has an official code to disable carrier checks. Samsung takes it a step further and partnered with the GSMA[1] to enable VoLTE globally by default on all their Android 15+ phones. So I think it's fair to criticise Google for going in the opposite direction as other Android OEMs.

[1] https://www.mobileworldlive.com/gsma/gsma-samsung-team-on-vo...

GrapheneOS recently added toggles to work around this https://grapheneos.org/releases#2025100300

Curious, what phone would you recommend/do you use?

I use a Samsung Fold because I read a lot of books/manga, and I also love its multitasking features over stock Android/Pixel. Finally I also prefer it's form-factor (roughly 3:4 unfolded screen, and a narrow front screen) over other similar devices.

But it's obviously not for everyone so I can't really recommend it to everyone. And to be honest I can't in good faith recommend any Android phone these days, I hate what Google and other OEMs have done to the ecosystem.

I'm quite bullish on Linux phones though, like the FuriPhone FLX1, the Volla Phone Quintus, and the Jolla C2 - obviously again they're not for everyone, so for normies I would recommend an iPhone, and for techies I'd suggest giving the Linux phones a try (or maybe get a OnePlus/Nothing phone and load LineageOS+Magisk if you don't mind playing the cat-and-mouse game with Play Integrity).

I have no special insights, but Sony's phones seem like a good fit. They are really easy to unlock [1], but there are virtually no mods but Lineage. Maybe because they are very stock Android and bloat-free?

They range from 300 to 1000 EUR. I personally am fond of the "lower end" and slender Xperia 5 and 10 lines and the customary 21:9 screen ratio.

[1] https://developer.sony.com/open-source/aosp-on-xperia-open-d...

Don’t Sony’s have the issue of crappier photos after unlocking because of some DRM key shenanigans? This is what I remember about my old Xperia X1C and I so left for Pixel and then eventually iOS so things would just work and last longer than a year or 2.

All android devices launched with android 15 or newer need to support Android Virtualization Framework. So there will be support for VMs.

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