GrapheneOS – Break Free from Google and Apple

Not in Spain. I can access my bank's website but I can't do anything without their bank app. Even sometimes they require to confirm my identity using their app in order to access their website.

I have several linux phones but I can only do banking with their app downloaded from Aurora Store in my Vollaphone.

But, yes, you can't tap to pay and it's unlikely you ever will. Banking apps will be hit and miss depending on their (generally hypocritical) paranoia levels.

I pay with a tap-to-pay card, and I have never needed to do banking related things immediately, I've always done it via the bank's website.

I also still have a not-very-old 'normal' android phone for some edge cases - which are few and far between (actually, I think it's usually to cast youtube to the TV since I only have the revanced youtube app on the GrapheneOS device).

P.S. On the use of profiles, I use them to separate work apps and notifications from personal, from sporting club, from X, Y, and Z. Yes, they're a pain in the arse to switch between, but I'd argue it's more of a pain in the arse to have them all jumbled together causing even more notifications, frustrations, and distractions from whatever one should actually be concentrating on in the present moment.

Yes, I've been doing that since 2009 on Ubuntu and Debian but there are several caveats.

One of those banks has its own TOTP device and they won't replace it when the battery dies. It's almost 20 years old now. Then it's the fingerprint sensor on my phone.

The other banks authenticate accesses and many operations with either their app + fingerprint (all of them) or SMS (some of them). So basically I would still need a phone with a blessed OS. I could buy the cheapest one and store it in a drawer, but it's still a dependency on Google or Apple.

GrapheneOS requirement of Pixel devices is a dependency on Google too.

Unfortunately not.

I'm in the UK. Two of my personal banks, all four business banks that I need to use, and several credit cards, require authentication using their phone app to confirm login on their website.

None of those I've seen are using TOTP or SMS, for which I could use a general security service. All use their own phone or tablet app. One does something interesting where the website shows a unique QR code on each login, the phone app reads it with the phone camera, and then website login proceeds instantly without clicking anything.

Oh, and some of them also require phone app confirmation for card purchase transactions.

When my last phone's screen stopped working, I called one bank's "phone banking" line (using another phone of course) to make an urgent transaction, and they told me they can't do that, as only service they offer by phone is registering a new phone or tablet. They told me explicitly that it's not possible to login to their web-based banking service without using their app for authentication, and on a registered device.

It's the reason I have my current phone. I had to buy a cheap-ish Android in a hurry from a local shop, in order to proceed with my bank transaction.

Back to the main topic: I love the idea of a properly open source phone, I used to own not one but two Nokia N900s, and I once toyed with the idea of building my own Linux phone from scratch, big project though that is.

But the security ecosystem around logins has changed, and so have the services I depend on. These days I use many bank and other financial-service related apps, and I'm not, in practice, free to switch providers. So I couldn't use a Nokia N900 or modern equivalent any more as my only mobile device. I'd have to carry a second phone as well.

(Banking and other service authentications are also the only reason I have my current passport. I resented having to pay to renew my expired passport, given I had no plans to travel (small children) and the expired passport used to be accepted, but I found some banks, credit cards and even government services increasingly requiring to see a non-expired passport from time to time. When I asked one of them what do they do for the large number of people who don't have one, they simply told me they close those people's accounts and that's ok, they don't need to serve everyone. But that's another story.)

Want to use Vipps tæpp so much but I have Nordea for private and they don't allow it on their cards, for whatever godforsaken reason.

Biometric login was also confirmed to work around the same time. I can however confirm that it doesn't work on the latest app version. It complains that the webview isn't Google Chrome.

This is probably just an oversight. I will email them again; good chance they'll push a fix to recognise Vanadium webview.

I agree that the locking down is truly stupid. For what it’s worth, the reasoning for locking down mobile apps is allegedly that mobile users are a less technologically competent demographic than desktop users. I do not think so myself, given the difficulty in trying Graphene vs. Desktop Linux.

I'm worried the day will come when some sites will require, even on a computer, a full-chain verification from the bootloader to the OS, all the way down to the browser. By requiring that each of these elements be digitally signed so that if you're not on a "secure" platform, from the bootloader to the browser, sites such as home banking could restrict access. Imagine not being able to login to your home banking because your linux box is rooted.

Btw, the good old days of modding are gone...

enjoy it while it lasts. hardware attestation requirement for (at least) banking apps is a question of 'when', not 'if'.

The only apps that haven't worked are Google wallet for NFC payments and, strangely "macrofactor" a calorie tracking app.

Google wallet works for things like library cards, tickets etc, just not NFC payment.

Macrofactor since seem to have fixed their app, the features that did not work now do.

Graphene used to lack android auto support but it has since been added and works perfectly.

They maintain a guide for app developers as well as a list of apps that refuse to add comparability here:

https://grapheneos.org/articles/attestation-compatibility-gu...

Can you record phone calls? Do third party voice recorders continue recording even when the screen is locked? Thank you!

Do you use any authenticator apps such as Okta? My org requires biometrics when using Okta on my phone.

Very content with GOS otherwise. I blame app providers for their ridiculous limitations, not custom ROM developers.

Aegis - 2FA (https://github.com/beemdevelopment/Aegis)

Breezy Weather - A very good looking weather app (https://github.com/breezy-weather/breezy-weather)

OnlyOffice Documents - MS Office suite replacement (https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/documents-app-android)

Fossify Calendar (https://github.com/FossifyOrg/Calendar)

Fossify Messages (https://github.com/FossifyOrg/Messages)

Aves - Local gallery with great organization (https://github.com/deckerst/aves)

Termux - Terminal emulator (https://github.com/termux/termux-app/)

Unexpected Keyboard - A unique keyboard that pairs nicely with Termux (https://github.com/Julow/Unexpected-Keyboard)

WG Tunnel - WireGuard client (https://github.com/wgtunnel/wgtunnel)

These are all easily installed through Obtainium: https://obtainium.imranr.dev/

Also, the desktop client on Linux is quite useful.

Alternatives for Windows etc. are Cruiser Maps, a Java application (and also available as an Android app).

It's pretty excellent! The improved integration with OpenStreetMaps to provide edits/additions is great. I made my first contribution to OSM via CoMaps.

[0] https://www.comaps.app/news/2025-04-16/1/

[1] https://www.comaps.app/news/2025-04-25/2/

I'd love to have something like this for Linux desktops as well. Maybe a website that has app-lists, where people can then potentially add info about their use cases and reasoning for their choices. Could be a great subreddit!

I tried Omarchy specifically because installed an opionated selection of apps to covered most bases, and it got me started in Arch fairly quickly. I've now completely swapped out all the components so I no longer use Omarchy at all, but it was a great way to get back into desktop Linux after being away for 20 years.

https://www.androidauthority.com/graphene-os-major-android-o...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ik0AiO0WtuU

If you don't like giving money to Google, plenty of companies offer refurbished Pixel phones.

Pretty much yeah.

Also, the surveillance tech is getting ahead of the people now, this article might make sense back in 2015, it’s not the case anymore, even if you use a full linux distribution, hardened too, but connected to the cellular network through a modem, the operator can pinpoint your location accurately, because all new cell modems are equipped with gnss and send the NMEA message either in demand or periodically to the towers.. not to mention if your software is open source and secure, your hardware isn’t, and until we reach that point, I would prefer to have a gray man model and blend in within the crowd rather than standing out like a sore thumb.

Anyway, I now need to get the battery replaced, because apparently they are dangerous and Google pays for the replacement. Unfortunately, the replacement process requires the stock android to be installed. Meaning, I would need to backup the whole phone, reinstall stock android, then restore everything - and hope the whole ordeal works out.

So I ended installing ActivityLog2[0] to do something with the files I had to have on desktop and GadgetBridge was of little use because relying on GadgetBridge without actually syncing the files might make me forget about doing the backup to a device I control (GrapheneOS or a computer).

As soon as GadgetBridge support syncing the files from the watch to the app (or any local folder on Android), I'll install it again and stop doing the manual backups over USB. Syncthing will do it automatically.

[0] https://github.com/alex-hhh/ActivityLog2

In background I also have Withings scale sync the measurements a couple of times a day to Garmin.

Then switch back to Google/Apple after half a year when you discover that you can’t run

- your banking app - any government app - the app required to access large sports events - the pandemic tracking app without which you can’t enter an airport - various other random apps

because they ALL detect that you’re running on a phone with an unlocked bootloader and will flat out refuse to start. And for many of those, there is no legal alternative.

(The extent of this varies depending on where you live, of course.)

I bought a second hand Pixel 7 to test this and an exFat SanDisk Extreme Portable 2TB works with reads/writes perfectly.

Does this require installing google play and other google services to work?

Edit: https://grapheneos.org/usage#android-auto

Does that require being logged into a Google account? How to ensure Google knows nothing about your shares?

I have Graphene w/ Google Play Services (required for my job) and would love a easy way to share files/info with various devices (incl. iOS/macOS which I remember should work with QuickShare in the future) but will avoid a service that shares data with Google.

There's also GCam https://github.com/lukaspieper/Gcam-Services-Provider

I don't know if it matters, but GPhotosShim doesn't seem to get updated.

Pixel are supposed to be very good in photography, part hardware and part software, and my concern would be degradation of that software part. With small kids, there is nothing more important on phone for me than photos/video quality these days (apart from never going into apple ecosystem, I am just incompatible with that company' philosophy).

Or its just about slapping some commercial photo app (like I heard from other photographers is often done on apple to get most out of it, but forgot the name of the app) and not caring about this?

AdAway (in F-Droid) can block with /etc/hosts (no VPN involved) if you have root. The hosts blocking still works even when connected to a VPN. Aside from loading ad domain lists into /etc/hosts, it also allows you to specify custom domains to block - I personally have Reddit and HN in there :)

You can use IronFox - available in Accrescent store that comes with GrapheneOS, and install firefox extensions

(it's not magic. All big vendors have these details, just choose to take their sweet time to patch them. GOS has partnered with a major OEM vendor who provides them with access)

Other than the specific patches above, there's a list of generic GOS features: https://grapheneos.org/features#exploit-protection

All in all you're probably much safer.

Android's attack surface seems pretty jagged. For example there is only one webrender engine on iOS, where you can run anything you like on Android/GrapheneOS.

Your aim is misplaced: ditch Uber, not GrapheneOS.

Every app on my phone has at least one other app, usually already installed, that can replace it. This wasn't intentional, it just happened naturally. Unless all two or three apps in a category get blocked for me at the same time, this already unlikely situation is barely an inconvenience.

The good news is that they are actively working on developing their own hardware. The bad news is that it’s been delayed. But I’m watching closely.

https://www.galaxus.at/en/page/grapheneos-postpones-pixel-al...

That limitation might be doing you a favor, as these things go...

Even if Pixels hadn't PWM a larger screen (or, dare I say, a book) will be an improvement for longer reading sessions.

In the meantime, I use a Motorola G Power 2024 which has IPS. I'm very much a non-expert but made a minor hobby out of trying to de-google it as much as possible.

Never signed into Google with it. Using NetGuard with a whitelist to prevent most of the phoning home. Uninstalled or disabled most built-in apps. The apps I use are installed via either Obtanium or Fdroid. Have Dropbox from Aurora. Use Motorola's private space for keeping some data and apps in a separate, supposedly secure locker.

I'm sure this doesn't come close to GrapheneOS's security level but it's the best I can do within the limitations of this device. It was a fun mini-project. NetGuard is invaluable for this purpose. Almost feels like the phone is truly mine.

I also with they could support non-Google phones, but that's a problem coming from the manufacturers, not from GrapheneOS.

My understanding is that there are close to half a million GrapheneOS users. And many potential users don't want to buy a Google phone. So it feels like it is starting to become worth considering for manufacturers...

I don't get why Fairphone doesn't look into that. Is it because they are not aware, or is it too hard for them to make hardware that is compliant with what GrapheneOS requires? Hundreds of thousands of devices may not count so much for Samsung, but they must definitely count for Fairphone.

Why are GrapheneOS releases dependant on Google releases?

Still missing Android Pay but that's due to Android Pay being closed. I wish banks would do something and support NFC payment systems that don't require the device to be controlled by Google (how can we be okay with this?!)

If you are using a rather popular banking app, chances are high that it has been discussed in the GrapheneOS forum.

Anyway, with google play services installed, mine have worked out of the box.

In any case, for me this also sort of defeats the purpose: I'd rather break free from Google and Apple, not just (stock) Android and iOS.

Edit: ignore this - there's a list elsewhere in this thread!

How about Pinephone with its partially freed baseband OS [0] or Librem 5 with its removable modem [1]?

[0] https://github.com/the-modem-distro/pinephone_modem_sdk

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Librem_5

Why start from scratch?

Remember that GrapheneOS is not Android: it's an AOSP-based OS.

It is finnish, anyone knows how are they going?

i used that for 2 years, it's linux+kde bottom to top, a terminal + shell is a builtin, though only supporting 5+ years old Sony phones got tiresome.

Still.. it seems the only one that's usable enough apart of the duopoly. May have to switch to it again.

In regular use, main difference will be that /e/OS comes with access to the alternative cloud service that project provides. It uses the default FOSS solution microG for google api compatibility, unlike GrapheneOS with their sandbox approach. /e/OS sets on AppLounge to install and upgrade both play store or F-Droid apps. Graphene has a small curated app repo instead.

I'd never use GrapheneOS since I don't trust the project. /e/OS is also not my favorite since it feels like it is developing slowly, having had issues with outdated software versions - though it does work well in practice. Have a look at iode for an alternative.

- If your phone is supported by GOS, you should go for GOS.

- If your phone is not supported by GOS, you should look carefully and compare between /e/OS and Stock Android.

I had a Fairphone 3, and after 5 years, /e/OS was outdated by 4 years w.r.t. the manufacturer updates. In other words, Stock Android coming from Fairphone was more secure than /e/OS on that Fairphone.

In my experience, /e/OS has a tendency to claim that they support everything, but they just can't, there is too much. And then they complain when GrapheneOS criticises the fact that some /e/OS users believe their phone is well supported but actually isn't. And GrapheneOS is not wrong: I realised I was in that case after 4 years with /e/OS.

To put it concretely, GrapheneOS recommends running all the proprietary Google apps in a locked "sandbox" so they can't read data on the phone outside the sandbox -- but obviously Google still gets to see everything you do in their apps. /e/OS tries to provide [largely but not entirely FLOSS] alternatives (e.g. their own Maps app, their own email, their own calendar) that make your phone usable out of the box without Google software.

/e/OS (and similar "non-LineageOS" ROMs really) instead focus more on de-Googling. They're still generally security focused, but the priority is less "someone's after you" and more "corporate surveillance is kinda scary innit". The aim is less to avoid someone actively trying to drain your phone of data and more to prevent your phone from passively sending everything it can possibly find to the Big G's ad machine (as well as whatever other trackers get snuck into apps.) Because of this, they usually have better depreciation timelines and support a lot more devices compared to GOS who only support the Pixel line (which is an increasingly awful set of phones truth be told); their scope is much smaller.

Finally, it's worth noting that the GOS community is absurdly toxic to anyone doing anything privacy-related that isn't under the banner of GOS. It's extremely maximalist, tends to get very upset at other projects whenever they get attention (see sibling reply to this, where they pretty much melted down because an outlet dared to recommend a Fair phone+/e/OS) and the projects official channels have generally encouraged this sort of behavior. It doesn't really damage the software itself, but it's worth considering.

/e/OS community talking about it: https://community.e.foundation/t/article-from-grapheneos-abo...

And then maybe this: https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm

Hope that helps.

https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm

In short, GrapheneOS is vastly superior.

A common misconception is that people believe GrapheneOS is less usable than much less private and far less secure options but it's the other way around. GrapheneOS provides nearly perfect app compatibility when taking into account the per-app exploit protection compatibility toggle and sandboxed Google Play. Nearly the only apps not working on GrapheneOS are ones banning any alternate OS and a larger number of those work on GrapheneOS than elsewhere due to a subset specifically permitting GrapheneOS due to far higher rather than weaker security. Apps have legitimate reasons for being concerned about the poor security of many alternate operating systems but they're wrongly grouping it all together as if GrapheneOS.

/e/ lags weeks, months and even years behind on providing updates for drivers, firmware, the Linux kernel and more. They miss a large portion of the monthly Android security bulletins which are a limited subset of the patches in the first place but then claim to provide the latest patch level despite many of the required patches being missing.

/e/ has a supposedly private speech-to-text sends data to OpenAI and their own servers without obtaining explicit user consent to share sensitive data with a third party.

https://community.e.foundation/t/voice-to-text-feature-using...

They say the data is anonymized based on passing it through their own servers before OpenAI but OpenAI is receiving all of the user speech data under their usual terms of service enabling them to store and leverage it.

Fairphone lags significantly behind on OS updates and patches with only a small subset of what should be provided being shipped. Their hardware omits important security protections required by GrapheneOS which it uses to protect users against widespread commercial exploit tools. Fairphone doesn't provide upstream Linux kernel updates in practice which is a massive omission for their updates. Fairphone 4 has an end-of-life 4.19 kernel branch and the Fairphone 5 despite not being very old already has an end-of-life 5.4 kernel branch. Neither was providing the LTS revisions prior to end-of-life so from their perspective nothing really changed but it means it's a huge task for an alternative OS to provide basic updates since they'd need to port everything to a newer kernel branch.

/e/ does not provide similar privacy features to GrapheneOS such as Contact Scopes, Storage Scopes, Sensors toggle and much more. It focuses on bundling things which can be provided with apps such as RethinkDNS on GrapheneOS with a higher quality implementation. GrapheneOS delegates as much as it can to apps while focused on the core OS. If a feature can be done better with an open source app, we'd rather leave it up to that app and many provide privacy and security protections which apps cannot. For the most part, apps can't improve OS privacy and security. Enumerating badness via blocklists which cannot block anything that's dual purpose functionality is also a very weak approach to privacy which is increasingly less useful. The most privacy invasive behavior of apps is nearly all done through their own services which also provide their functionality. Among other things, /e/ uses this system for labeling app tracking and permissions which is incorrect and misleading as shown by this example:

https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/reports/com.faceboo...

Facebook clearly doesn't have no tracking but rather this system only detects a small number of specific third party libraries they've decided are trackers. Those choices are often very questionable such as portraying even opt-in crash reporting as tracking because it used a third party library on their list. Meanwhile, Facebook's lite app supposedly has no trackers. The permissions list is thoroughly inaccurate and not how Android permissions work. The core permissions are opt-in with apps having to request them so listing those as if they're granted on install and mandatory due to being possible to grant is incorrect. Most of the rest have special access toggles which are opt-in for the sensitive ones or other toggles such as the battery optimization mode where Restricted stops apps starting themselves and delays those things until it's run by another app or the user.

Privacy requires providing privacy patches and strong privacy protections. It also depends on security which means providing security patches and strong security protections. GrapheneOS is heavily focused on all of that rather than simply treating not having bundled Google apps and services as meaning a private OS. There are also worse things for privacy than Google apps and services. /e/ sending speech data to OpenAI vs. Apple doing the processing locally as we've it implemented for GrapheneOS is a good example. Google at least has partial local speech-to-text support and a better privacy policy than OpenAI for the cloud portion. Avoiding Google apps/services is not the same thing as providing strong privacy.

It does have a network-level ad blocker. What it doesn't have is a blocker which modifies/injects Javascript into pages, which iiuc is the main reason that the blocker doesn't help with ads on YouTube much, or pages which employ similar techniques.

> They recommend against using Firefox.

To clarify: they recommend against Firefox Mobile because it didn't support site isolation until last month's v147 updates. I don't know if the goalpost has moved since, but in any case: there's nothing on Graphene that would prevent you from using Firefox.

GrapheneOS is based on the Android Open Source Project. It's incorrect to say it's solely developed by Google and it's open source software which we're free to change as we see fit.

> GrapheneOS only supports Google Pixel devices. Thankfully, they are working on partnering with a different manufacturer, but details are still very limited.

No, we already have a partnership with a major Android OEM. It's not something we're working on obtaining and we've provided a fair bit of details including that it will be publicly announced by the OEM in March, that the devices will launch in 2027 and that they'll use a high end Snapdragon SoC which is either the flagship (most likely) or one step below it.

> They recommend using the Google Play Store

No, that's not our recommendation.

> recommend against using F-Droid

We recommend against F-Droid due to it being an unnecessary middleman between users and app developers which does not truly reduce trust the app developers. F-Droid apps are consistently out-of-date and often lag months being on important privacy and security fixes. F-Droid consistently makes problematic undocumented changes to apps including rolling back dependency updates. F-Droid is known to use highly outdated build infrastructure which is very poorly secured. They have a bunch of bad security practices throughout their approach and have made it clear it isn't a priority for them. They've repeatedly said they don't believe app sandboxing is useful and much more than that. Many open source apps including Signal and WireGuard have asked to have their apps omitted from F-Droid due to the security and trustworthiness issues with the project. That's not at all something specific to GrapheneOS.

> Their Vanadium web browser is based on Chromium, which is controlled by Google.

Chromium is an open source project which is collaboratively worked on by multiple projects using it as the basis for their browsers. That includes Microsoft who implemented the WebAssembly interpreter available in the upstream Chromium codebase which is used by Vanadium but is dead code in Chrome and regular Chromium builds since it was added for Edge.

> It also does not have an ad blocker

No, that's not true. Vanadium has a default enabled ad blocker which uses EasyList, EasyPrivacy, EasyList's Adblock Warning Removal List and also selectively activates a whole bunch of EasyList affiliated language/regional lists based on the currently active languages. This approach avoids adblocking being used for fingerprinting, avoids greatly weakening site isolation sandboxing as extensions do and is much higher performance which is important on mobile. It very clearly has ad blocking and a per-site toggle for it.

> or support extensions

Extensions greatly weaken site isolation and give third party code without verified boot extensive access to website content similar to dangerous Android accessibility service apps. Very few extensions are focused on privacy and security in a similar way to GrapheneOS and would compromise what we're trying to build. It's not the approach we want to use in Vanadium. If you want to use extensions then you can use a browser with them but it doesn't fit into what we're building with Vanadium where we want to implement features ourselves in a very private, secure and robust way which cannot be done with extensions. Extensions fundamentally reduce security including because they used a shared process across all isolated websites which inherently reduces isolation. Few extensions take this seriously, even the ones focused on privacy. They commonly add leaks between sites. There are plenty of other browsers available but ours is aiming for a standard of privacy and security which cannot be achieved with extensions.

> They recommend against using Firefox.

Firefox's Android app has atrocious privacy and security. A browser without even basic content sandboxing let alone sandboxing with full site isolation. That's combined with major other major security deficiencies and it isn't something we could recommend using. Recommending against it doesn't mean people can't use it...

You'll still be using Vanadium as the web content engine within apps using the WebView such as email clients rendering HTML email and many more. Many people have a misunderstanding of what the WebView is and confuse it with custom tabs which are provided by the user's selected default browser rather than the WebView used within other apps.

> This is not a criticism of the GrapheneOS project or developers.

How isn't it criticism of GrapheneOS? Regardless, Vanadium does have an adblocker and we don't specifically recommend the Play Store as you said. The biggest issue is that what you're saying about what we prioritize, advise or provide isn't accurate.

> I understand that security is the biggest priority of GrapheneOS

Privacy is the biggest priority of GrapheneOS and privacy depends on security. GrapheneOS is a privacy project.

> It is more directed towards the GrapheneOS community that often blindly recommends GrapheneOS as the only option and treats any alternative as inferior and not to be considered.

Our project and community regularly recommends iOS as an alternative which provides far better privacy and security than non-GrapheneOS options. Most other options have very poor privacy/security including lacking even basic privacy/security patches and protections. Similarly, our project and community regularly recommends using macOS for better privacy and security than either Windows or desktop Linux. What you're saying are blind recommendations are anything but that but rather very well informed information provided by the GrapheneOS project.

> Most users do not need security at all costs.

GrapheneOS is not about security at all costs and this misconception which regularly comes up that it's about security rather than privacy is completely wrong. Many projects failing to provide decent privacy treat it as if privacy is solely about which apps/services are bundled rather than needing to provide privacy patches, privacy protections and solid security to protect that from being bypassed. Much of what GrapheneOS provides are privacy features such as Contact Scopes, Storage Scopes and the Sensors/Network toggles along with much more. The security protections it provides exist to protect privacy. Why else would the security protections be there other than to protect privacy? It's not a separate thing from privacy but rather is a huge part of providing it. There's no other reason for us to work on security than protecting privacy. It doesn't make sense to say we work on security instead of privacy.

Most users do need basic privacy/security updates and protections. Failing to keep up with basic updates and misleading users about it is a severe issue. There isn't any major non-GrapheneOS AOSP-based OS that's doing the bare minimum of keeping up with updates.

> Especially among the free and open source enthusiast community, freedom and user control are often prioritized. There should be more awareness and discussion about what the user wants and whether that actually aligns with the security-first goals of GrapheneOS.

You aren't accurately representing what GrapheneOS provides, our approach or our priorities. People can see for themselves from the detailed article that it provides a highly usable and compatible system with a huge amount of user choice. People can choose from a wide range of approaches based on their privacy and security goals. It doesn't impose choices on people. You treat it as if people are forced to use Vanadium when it's another choice of browser which people have on GrapheneOS but not elsewhere. GrapheneOS users have more choice among browsers and the one we have DOES provide ad blocking contrary to what you said. GrapheneOS users can use F-Droid despite us recommending against it due to the major security deficiencies. Providing well informed recommendations with detailed explanations does not in any way hinder user choice but rather informs people so they can make better choices. Our recommendations not aligning with your personal beliefs or preferences doesn't mean we're somehow reducing user choice.

https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices

GrapheneOS is partnered with a major Android OEM working on improving their future devices to meet our requirements. The first devices with official GrapheneOS support from them are planned for 2027. It takes time and resources to make reasonably secure devices. Future generations can improve further including adding hardware-based privacy/security protections unavailable on Pixels.

If anyone wants this without GrapheneOS: https://f-droid.org/packages/dev.ukanth.ufirewall

If anyone wants this without GrapheneOS and without root: https://f-droid.org/packages/net.kollnig.missioncontrol.fdro...

Note that this is just one example, there are also other problems with traditional desktop OSes and a large portion of desktop hardware.

Also, they are working with a partner to get their own phone hardware, hopefully by next year.

I've had less issues than with CalyxOS for example, where more apps broke.

https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compa...

This is linked to from the Banking Apps section on GrapheneOS docs: https://grapheneos.org/usage#banking-apps

Sample size of 1: my UK banking apps all work fine.

https://grapheneos.org/articles/attestation-compatibility-gu...

https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compa...

Although this is not the case, moving away from proprietary services (and self-hosting your own) is an important goal in itself. See for instance the recent controversy regarding Discord's age verification.

Do you know if it's the same for Fairphone or Shiftphone? Or is there another manufacturer that doesn't require this?

I've recently bought a new phone so it's not relevant for me anymore but when I next go looking, it can factor into it. As it was, I had Google marked in my spreadsheet as the most accessible unlock method together with brands like Oneplus and Fairphone

As an aside, from the latest release notes: Sandboxed Google Play compatibility layer: add toggle for granting Play services access to ICC auth in order to support RCS with carriers requiring it for RCS in Google Messages including T-Mobile (see RCS usage guide)

https://grapheneos.org/releases#2026021200

https://grapheneos.org/usage#rcs

If anything, iOS seems buggier and less reliable, but I know (and am related to) a lot of people who insist on using iMessage/RCS, and I can't be missing messages.

The best thing would be to switch to Signal (Molly) for texting.

I think this might just be what you're used to. Android doesn't feel old to me at all, conversely iOS always felt aged even when it was new with the lack of basic features it had for a long time.

for apps that demand invasive permissions i don't wish to grant, i use web pwas, like for banking. they work like a charm.

being able to grant or revoke permissions that are of paramount importance for security like MTE, JIT, DCL etc on a granular level for each and every user-installed app, and to grant/revoke network permission alone is such a huge W using GOS.

u will not find this in any iphone, now or in the future (i would bet).

But of course that's entirely up to how their algorithm happens to feel about you.

(Also it is possible to do these things if you root your phone, but caries its own risks and I wouldn't recommend. Ending your dependency on third party processors is probably the best outcome)

I have issues with Freedom on my iPhone too. Poor signal, or else “good” signal but poor data backhaul.

Are you pretty sure your issues went away after going back to stock Android? Or is it possible it’s just Freedom Mobile’s general issues?

And no tap to pay.

Hopefully the new EU banking system will work on Graphene and Ill switch back

https://blog.tomaszdunia.pl/ubuntu-touch-eng/

https://blog.tomaszdunia.pl/droidian-eng/

> I'm not sure it's really breaking free when the first task to do is intall Google Play Services so your banking app works.

sandboxed Google Play Services. It's an important difference.

For the end user, breaking free from Google means exiting from Google’s services surveillance system wherever possible. It doesn’t mean complete elimination of the use of source code written by Google employees.

GrapheneOS is really the most private option of all viable daily drivable smartphone operating systems available, because your only other options generally involve Apple and Google services dependency.

You can use GrapheneOS and never send any user information to Google, that’s how you “break free.”

This sounds like your phone may have been one of the Pixel 6a models with a defective battery[1]. It was a major problem for which Google pushed out an update that nerfed the battery life. There is a tool online where you can check if your particular 6a was one with a battery from the bad production batch[2].

But that unfortunately doesn't help if you are in Brazil where, as you say, Pixels aren't officially sold and import/export controls tend to make tech warranties useless in practice.

[1] https://www.lifewire.com/pixel-6a-battery-overheating-warnin...

[2] https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/16340779?hl=en

The flag ship should not be more than $500

Saving a click, it looks like any bare Android without vendor customisations. You just get extra settings like turning off network per app

I don't disagree that some screenshots might be good marketing

But yeah, same binary blob issues for firmwares, but Linux on Mobile has the same issues.

You don't need a Google account to use YouTube and can use it via the browser, NewPipe or several other alternatives rather than their app.

The linked article covers someone's first experience with it with a lot of detail. They're using it as their daily driver with mainly open source apps and separate profiles with mainstream apps they still need. They're using those with much better privacy protections including having sandboxed Google Play in those profiles for using mainstream apps rather than regular highly privileged Google Play heavily integrated into the OS and not running with the standard app sandbox or privileges.

There are many useful videos about GrapheneOS here:

https://www.youtube.com/@sideofburritos/videos

Any of the videos older than December 2025 will be prior to Android 16 QPR2 so the overall UI will be outdated. That's part of why we don't focus on screenshots or videos because many would need to get updated every 4 months. We'd mainly be using them for our own features which often improve more frequently than that.

https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices

8th, 9th and 10th gen Pixels provide our full set of requirements with 7 years of support from launch. 6th and 7th gen Pixels are missing the ARMv9 security features including the extremely important hardware memory tagging (MTE) feature we heavily use to protect against exploitation. Even the first devices we supported back in 2014 including the Nexus 5 had isolation for the cellular radio but similar isolation for Wi-Fi/Bluetooth started with the Nexus 5X.

GrapheneOS supports Android's Quick Share, which (on the Pixel 10 family) is compatible with AirDrop [2].

[1] https://grapheneos.org/faq#supported-devices

[2] https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/platforms/android...