It's not even necessarily that good enough against cops, because in a lot of shitty countries, even some pretending to be democratics, not disclosing or at least inputting your password might be a crime severely punished. If I'm not wrong, there was a guy that had to stay years in jail until he would comply with the judge order to unlock his device.
It's often configurable, but e.g. carrier policy or local vendors can enforce it.
To have updates automatically install overnight is the maximally desirable scenario - waiting for user approval usually result in open vulnerabilities, and if you interact with a prompt you are by definition using your device and it is therefore a much worse time than while you're asleep.
And yes, this has actually happened to me at least twice.
They all even share a unified battery charging mechanism and integrated packaging for easy portability.
I'm not sure if the idea of these pocket supercomputers will ever catch on, but it sure seems like it'd be nice.
(And it has been problematic for me at times when this happened.)
And that's ignoring the fact that disconnecting power, waiting a few days and then reconnecting it will inevitably let you cold boot it, too (which this would be an equivalent to - as far as I understood it)
There could be secret pathways but I don’t know them.
This sounds a lot like the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 in the United Kingdom, where several people have been prosecuted and imprisoned for failing to provide encryption keys.
I think the main advantage to using phones for random stuff is availability: We here on HN probably have a decent selection of old phones to pick from, so it doesn't cost any money at all to give a new purpose to one.
Don't think old Androids will get this update.
This is again Apple being Apple making things harder without option to disable it even when development mode is on.
Has anyone found a way to bypass it?
One physical option to bypass it on iPhone SE is to actually physically activate PIN entry and then use Voice Control command to enter the pin since it works even before first unlock. Though this is basically compromises pin and device encryption. But it's cheap since there are plenty of $2 devices that can simulate touchscreen clicks.
I just want some easier option that works and not require agent 007 setup to just run a buld of my AI-generated crap via Xcode.
7 days timeout on was introduced in iOS 18, but then decreased to 3 days. I dont use this device physically - it's just a phone that always connected to power and sit on top of mac mini for debugging and running some ios exclusive apps.
And I honestly dont do anything remotely interested to the police to worry about it. Yet it all just worked and now it doesnt.
If you're able to have fully unlocked devices at your test setup I'd suggest giving that a shot to see if it fixes your issue around device restart.
Don’t set it up with a passcode in the first place?
It's not like I'm trying to defend against some state actors or whatver.
For obvious reasons those ads are long gone...
It’s a good and reasonable feature, especially if for some reason you are afraid of state or security agencies in a place where you live, or maybe during travel. It’s still questionable, because in some states you can indeed go to jail if you don’t unlock. Yet, I really want to be able to turn it off for use-cases like mine.
Even if the end result is the same, anything that forces authorities to use official power over informal power is a net win.
I have to have 3 devices: mine, work and a shared one for travel that crosses customs boundaries. It’s a massive pain in the ass.
Yes. But quite honestly the right solution for that would be Apple providing an alarm clock API. The alarm clock application could call it with the next scheduled alarm’s time and the os would just wake up at that time and let the application do the sound / alarm thing.
An (Italian) friend of mine was stuck in Newark for 8 hours after he refused access to his phone, dragged in some room and questioned for hours along his wife while split from him own kids, even though he later gave them the password (he initially said no because he thought it was out of the line, he had nothing to hide).
He left livid for Italy 16 hours later despite being free to go on with his vacation.
Land of the free my ass.
So maybe something like a paired app with a friend/someone who is beyond the reach of the authorities, and if the phone isn't unlocked in a given definable period (or it can be triggered immediately), it then can't be unlocked without that person's active cooperation.
That's off the top of my head, so I'm sure there are optimizations.
Currently only available for Pixel phones, 6 and later. Offers many other security-related features.
But the problem is that when authority wants you to unlock your device, they kind of already know why, what they are expected to find but they would that as a more complete proof. But from external input they would expect some downloaded files or accounts (like social accounts you were connected with your phone a minute ago), some SMS they saw passing, some call logs, so connection to your known accounts...
And to your point, I believe it's now the case in the U.S. that you can be legally compelled to unlock a fingerprint lock, but not a pin for whatever reason.
You don’t have to do anything for someone to hold a phone to your fingertip, or a camera to your face.
What's your point? That because it isn't useful in every country, it's not worth making available to any countries?
It's not preventing you from providing your password.
You started by saying it's a good option to have, so I don't understand the point of your second paragraph.
As the GrapheneOS docs note, the feature is better implemented in init and not in system server or the app/services layer like Google has done here? Though, I am sure Google engs know a thing or two about working around limitations that GrapheneOS developers may have hit (in keeping the timer going even after a soft reboot, where it is just the system server, and the rest of the userspace that depends on it, that's restarted).
They went with 2^32-1 milliseconds or about 49.7 days.
We don't talk enough about Microsoft's strong legacy of security innovations, IMHO.
https://web.archive.org/web/20041207171440/http://support.mi...
https://web.archive.org/web/20130731171959/https://sites.goo...
The system only reboots once it has been locked for a particular duration. Setting it to 1 minute basically says: put the system into a more secure state (e.g. purge unencrypted memory) and ensure that it is ready to go when I next need it. That said, while it is not unrealistic it would be problematic since accidentally letting the phone lock (e.g. input timeout) would result in a time consuming reboot.
The minimum on GrapheneOS is 10 min and the maximum is 72 hours. It can also be disabled.
I found it strange that things like 'prettier settings screens' and 'improved connection with cars and watches' would be included in Google Play Services. Surely those things are part of the OS not part of a thing which helps you access the Play store?
I've been using a LineageOS (prev. Cyanogenmod) phone for years and have never installed any google stuff so I don't get these updates anyway.
1. It's deployed to all devices and not subject to manufacturer approval for updates
2. It's easier to update without requiring user interaction or approval
3. It's closed source unlike Android so changes can't be incorporated by competitors
---
### Google Play services v25.14 (2025-04-14)
#### Security & Privacy
• [Phone] Enables a future optional security feature, which will automatically restart your device if locked for 3 consecutive days.
Picked up a gl.inet x300b off ebay and never looked back.
- [ ] Reboot
- [ ] Power Off
- [X] WIPE triple opt-in
Maybe there is a custom phone OS for this that makes the phone act more ephemeral and network boot off my self hosted iPXE/immich server? A dumb smart phone so to speak. An ephemeral diskless phone.
Some people lose or get their phone broken and start from a blank one on a regular basis.
In my case the only things that matter to me are synchronised through syncthing and radicale (a carddav/caldav server).
1) There is no developer accessible API to allow app developers to create an app to allow me to script power options (example, as an end user I want to script a restart or shut down my phone nightly).
2) Asking Google Assistant will not restart or shut down the phone.
3) Apple and Android have made it harder to shut down the phone, requiring double key press kung fu to even bring up the power menu.
If this is true, then the new update will save a lot of battery for those phones that are sitting idle.
This will be fun to track down after a long weekend in embedded devices once this android patch number is old enough to be baked into crappy payment terminals and mall kiosks.
Probably overall a good thing though.
Some time later, you need to do something on the phone, you unlock it, the app starts up, and a flood of messages pours in. Wow, some of those would've been really useful to receive in a timely fashion! Whoops!
In contrast, technological change will forever alter the balance of power. What we should be asking is "Instead of patching society with political solutions, how about we solve fundamental problems permanently with technology?".
Besides most people support the police no matter what. Police know not to abuse their powers against Whites.
https://www.blackenterprise.com/white-protesters-form-human-...
Samsung's have had some feature that lets you set days of the week for the phone to restart (IME during early morning hours) automatically. It's not perfect but it's something. iOS seems to have some unclear logic to either restart or re-request password (not biometrics).
This should be standard
Only law enforcement cares about the difference between the AFU state and BFU state.
Not sure I'm too happy about this...
Wouldn't the phones run out of battery after a few days anyway? Or do they keep them plugged in?
Lmao.
> The early sluggishness of Android system updates prompted Google to begin moving parts of the OS to Google Play Services. This collection of background services and libraries can be updated by Google automatically in the background as long as your phone is certified for Google services (which almost all are). That's why the inactivity reboot will just show up on your phone in the coming weeks with no notification. There are definitely reasons to be wary of the control Google has over Android with elements like Play Services, but it does pay off when the company can enhance everyone's security without delay.
All the more reasons to move to AOSP forks.
> Security & Privacy
> [Phone] Enables a future optional security feature, which will automatically restart your device if locked for 3 consecutive days.
So it only "enables" a "future" "optional" feature.
I don't know if it'll take a fancy buzzword or what. Unobtrusive software? Silent Software?
STFU (BSD equivalent) and STFU-O (GPL equivalent)
No LGPL equivalent because I would want even software that uses STFU-* licensed code as a library to follow the STFU-* license.
Just have to explicitly define what counts as a notification lol
Why would I want my phone to auto reboot without my intervention? Never mind that it’ll never make three days on a single charge even if I don’t touch it.
The BFU state is more secure than AFU.
Even if you somehow live in a jurisdiction with a perfect justice system, that doesn't mean everyone else is.
Whos justice system? Lots of countries represented on HN. Many with questionable systems.
Law enforcement keeping hold of my phone for 3 days is simply not a realistic problem for me. Coming back to an annoyingly locked phone after forgetting it for a weekend very much is. The chances of law enforcement wanting anything with it are low enough that dealing with an extra unlock is more likely to be an impactful issue, even considering the potential impact that law enforcement or others stealing it could have.
That's what cops and spooks would like to have you think.
It's not a problem, until it suddenly is.
It is?
I mean, my iPhone asks me for my passcode every 7 days anyways. And that's the only thing that happens on reboot anyways.
Also, you forget your phone for a weekend? How do you do anything during that weekend, like keep in touch with loved ones, get driving directions, pull up a boarding pass, check for delays, look up restaurants?
Easy, do what we did before mobile phones—civilization existed for thousands years and worked quite well without them (Rome built an empire sans mobile phones, so did the English). We even ran and coordinated the largest and most organized event in human history—WWII—without them!
Some of us have not yet succumbed to phone addiction (I often go for quite some days without using a phone and still have a normal life).
When you say civilization worked quite well for thousands of years, as an argument against mobile phones, I'm not sure you've quite thought your argument through... unless it's always been your dream to be a Russian serf, or an Egyptian slave?
Lmao I regularly go several days without calling family and months between any of those others.
Why not flush something properly in the RAM instead to wipe the "cached" secrets?
A full restart feels like an overkill.
A full restart guarantees that everything will be wiped.
Restart - simple with known and predictable effects, data no longer accessible, all secrets flushed no matter where they were or cached.
Turn off disk encryption, suspend all running services, overwrite all secrets in the O/S wherever they are, and then restore all that on entering password. Probably can't do anything about secrets cached by actual apps. Complex, hard to maintain and probably buggy.
https://blogs.dsu.edu/digforce/2023/08/23/bfu-and-afu-lock-s...