The iPhone 18 Pro has been out exactly a month now and they still haven't pushed a fix for the popping/crackling speaker issue:

https://www.macrumors.com/2026/09/29/iphone-18-pro-speaker-c...

I still get crackling or popping many times a day.

Also, the annoying render stutters during scrolling across many apps haven't been fixed since iOS 26 was introduced (they were probably there before, but Liquid Glass made it worse). Even the iPhone 18 Pro suffers from it (also checked on iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone Air).

Meanwhile, my underpowered P10P with GrapheneOS renders scrolling super smoothly.

I am not disputing that the models are getting better for vibe coding. But I think people have very different standards of what a 'big mess' or 'maintainable software' is.

Not completely. Android Security Bulletins only have fixes for vulnerabilities marked high/critical in resent years. To get all other security fixes, you need QPRs and major releases.

Going every six months for a checkup is really nice, because thing rarely get out of hand (+ you have whiter teeth after cleaning, which is especially nice for tea addicts like me :)) and they x-ray every two years or so.

That doesn't mean that they are actually allowed to release them. Big difference.

Google has an embargo period of up to 6 months on AOSP patches. This is why GrapheneOS already has April 2027 AOSP security patches now. Even though some patches are already known for 6 months, they still manage to ship it 1-3 months late. 7-9 months after they got the patches already from Google.

due to things like QA testing, carrier testing and release processes.

Carrier testing is mostly a US thing. If you cannot roll out security patches within a few days, your QA and release processes are just totally broken. GrapheneOS can do it and they generally have far fewer regressions than Android OEMs.

Major releases and QPR2 take some time for testing, but they already have the access to sources months before they are released. Heck, Samsung releases major release betas and QPR2 betas quite a while before Google releases it as stable.

The problem is that the OEMs made a mess. First they just dropped phones on the market without doing any updates at all. Mid 2010s it was very normal for an OEM to do maybe one or two updates. Then Google had to push them to do better, among other reasons because Apple does much better and there were really big fails like Stagefright. Plus users wanted new Android releases. Then they did only 2-3 updates with very irregular software updates. Now they are under pressure from EU regulations and they actually have to support devices for a long time and do regular updates, but they just don't have good release processes. Plus they made their own 'skins' on top of it that they have to rebase, etc.

Companies that have their ducks in a row better, abuse the release process to push sales of new devices. E.g. Samsung withholds major/QPR releases for a while so that only their latest device have it, e.g. recently Fold 8/Flip 8.

People should stop beingapologists for multi-billion dollar companies.

Are reading the same post?

“ The new APIs are currently exclusive to the Pixel OS and aren't available to other Android OEMs. […] Non-Google Android OEMs and AOSP-based projects can ship yearly and QPR2 releases.”

the person running it has a penchant for overexaggeration and selective truth telling when they feel aggrieved.

Here we go again…

https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/117282080803799576

Since they are working with two OEMs (one for GrapheneOS support and one for getting embargoed security patches), I think they know what they are taking about.

But many Android OEMs are probably terrible at software engineering and have their attention spread across multiple SoCs, etc. It’s their own fault.

They are mostly relying on LineageOS now and putting their own cloud, microG, and App Store app and branding on top of Lineage. Even now they are not able to roll out Android releases and WebView updates timely. Them maintaining an AOSP fork would probably end up in an outdated, broken mess.

My money is on GrapheneOS and maybe LineageOS to do it when needed.

Google should not be allowed to abuse its duopoly position in this way. I recommend EU citizens to report every case they are (potentially) affected by to the EU DMA team.

Also, major Android releases and QPR2s have many security fixes (anything not marked high/critical), yet OEMs are not rolling them out (QPR2) or very late (major releases).

Just to say that OEMs were probably violating the act already before Google started withholding source code.

I also think it’s an attempt of Google closing up AOSP more, otherwise they wouldn’t make it so darn hard to get updated Pixel kernel trees.

The alternative are other AOSP-based OSes like GrapheneOS and Lineage. Once they are used widely enough and funded enough, they could fork AOSP when needed. In some sense they have already soft-forked in that they use major and QPR2 releases, but put a lot of patches on top to fix issues, improve security, etc.

GrapheneOS has an estimated 500,000 active installs now, apparently LineageOS has 1.4M active installs. Probably around two orders of magnitude more than traditional Linux desktop-based phones, which have been trying since, checking notes, Maemo in 2005?