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Comment by jmaker | Hacker News Reader

With Graphene, something financial won’t work anymore. I believe either banking apps or Google Wallet, a known issue. Graphene didn’t support Pixel 10 yet last time I checked. That said, I’ve been just too occupied with reading on how to fix the Pixel bugs that bit me that I couldn’t get to the point of reading on Graphene and I don’t exactly remember anymore what was wrong with it.

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Google wallet doesn't work which is imho a very tiny issue with contactless payment working with cards but most banking apps do. There is a forum thread I believe that you can check if your bank's app work before commiting to migrate.

It might be a very tiny issue for you, but for others it's huge.

As a single datapoint: it has been years since I used a physical card. both payment or public transport. Always use contactless payments using my phone.

I mean I used it in the past but the difference is minor in my experience.

It is a case of grabbing your card vs grabbing your smartphone and fiddling with it. That card could even be carried in one of those phones cases with a card holder.

The only major difference is in case of stolen phone vs stolen card. But every system has its drawback. It could be super annoying if you get your account suspended unexpectedly while you are away from home.

In my particular case I don't want a google account anymore and would hate relying on google to manage my payments so it is a no go for a start.

Why not just get an iPhone then?

Because:

- I prefer running FOSS apps on my smartphone

- I want to be able to install anything I want on it without relying on what is accepted by a "store"

- I don't want an Apple account

- I want to own and be able to have the shit I want running in the background (like syncthing)

- I want to be able to access my file the way I want, including using a shell

- I want to be able to run any linux app

- and more inportantly I want to be the owner of my phone, not merely the user of a license to use it following the term set by a company from an hostile nation

I’ve been down that road, was fun, but growingly felt to me like too much maintenance that wasn’t worth the effort, distracting from more important things. Like desktop Linux.

Now I’m at a point where Android itself, even Pixels feel that way. I really tried to make the Pixel my daily driver. In hindsight, it was just too naive of me.

I don't really see the maintenance issue. My grapheneOS has OTA updates, I can install and update apps using fdroid and aurora and not having contactless payment option via google wallet is the only small limitation I have found and it is not a big loss as I can still pay easily without carrying cash. Carrying a plastic card is not a burden.

What kind of apps do you get from F-Droid that are useful to you that aren’t available on Play? I mean, to me most of the F-Droid apps are WIP with legacy UI and I need to trust the publisher and that their handle isn’t hijacked.

What are all the use cases that let you avoid Play?

same for me; its too bad though we cant have some kind of foss shell, and bank/contactless payment apps can run in some secure vm/box so we can have the best of both

Or just a standard protocol that can be implemented with FOSS apps.

I rooted my phone for years but the lack of contactless and trying to stay one step ahead of Google trying to stop you using it (frequent messing with shamiko, lsposed and all the rest, delicately doing updates, only for it to eventually fail randomly).

Being able to pay with your phone is just too useful.

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