Forget Google, forget iPhones.
Okay! Don’t care. No thanks.
Yay another reason to get grapheneOS on pixel.
I’m confused.
First, from the article, my understanding is that Google is talking about providing support for their LLM model on Apple’s iOS phones (I assume via querying an off-phone server, rather than locally). This would mean that iOS users have the ability to use Google’s LLM model, Gemini, instead of just ChatGPT being available.
The Pixel is an Android phone sold by Google. This isn’t the hardware or OS being discussed, and I assume that if you have a Pixel phone, you already have the ability to use Gemini.
Second, I don’t see why someone would take issue. I mean, I can see not wanting to use the thing. I don’t use Google’s off-device speech recognition, because I don’t want to send snippits of my voice to Google. I don’t use their LLM functionality. I think that there are all sorts of apps, like location-sharing things, that it is a bad idea to install. But it’s not like Google providing support on the platform would force you to use the thing.
Third, it sounds like you can use Gemini on grapheneOS. If you object to use of a platform that can make use of Gemini, grapheneOS isn’t going to get you there.
They don’t want Gemini, so they stated probably the best way to avoid having Gemini. It’s a privacy-minded comment. Despite being Google’s own phone, Pixels may be the only phones you can unlock to flash with a different ROM (GrapheneOS) and then be able to lock again after for security.
Definitely not the only ones - while almost every Android can be flashed with a different ROM, very few can be relocked, which is ‘needed’ (workarounds possible) because some banking apps need it in order to run - but definitely some of the best third party ROMs are specifically for Pixel. Ironic, the best phone to deGoogle is a Google phone, thanks to GrapheneOS or CalyxOS devs.
If not using a Google phone, the best ROM may well still be LineageOS.
