After a year of silence, CalyxOS is back — and it's running on a ₹10,000 phone with a locked bootloader.

Every privacy OS article you've ever read has the same device photo: a Pixel. GrapheneOS? Pixel. CalyxOS? Pixel. Even LineageOS showcases Pixels 90% of the time.

But my daily driver isn't a Pixel. It's the Motorola G45 5G — India variant — a phone that costs around ₹10,000-12,000. No NFC, because let's be honest, most of us aren't using GPay tap-to-pay anyway.

And after almost a year of radio silence, CalyxOS now runs Android 16 on it. With a locked bootloader. And working PhonePe. Here's my first 24 hours as a developer and daily driver.

The Hiatus: We Thought It Was Over

Let me be real: when a privacy-focused OS disappears for nearly a year, you assume it's dead. The CalyxOS subreddit went quiet. Forums slowed down.…