Pixel 11 Drops Support for Hardware MTE

The Android security hardening project GrapheneOS has discovered that Google's new generation flagship smartphone, the Pixel 11, has dropped support for hardware MTE (hardware memory tagging), preventing the project from completing its support for the Pixel 11. MTE (Memory Tagging Extension) is a security feature introduced in the ARMv8.5-A architecture, which improves memory security by tagging allocated memory to track illegal memory operations.

Google has supported hardware MTE starting from the Pixel 8 released in 2023. However, Android and Pixel OS have never enabled MTE by default. In comparison, Apple's iPhone 17 enables its MTE implementation, Memory Integrity Enforcement (MIE), by default.

GrapheneOS automatically enables MTE for more apps and provides a toggle for each installed app, allowing users to optionally enable it. For incompatible apps, a toggle is provided to optionally disable it. GrapheneOS is currently collaborating with Motorola to launch a phone that supports GrapheneOS.

The new phone will use Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, a SoC that supports hardware MTE. The GrapheneOS project does not recommend users to purchase the Pixel 11, and suggests buying the cheaper Pixel 8, 9, and 10.