Luckily I have hardware 2FA keys from my bank so I can authenticate using that. It also slightly decreases the suck-factor from whenever the phone decides to fly off down a drain. This may not be the case for you, so do your research on what you need for daily living.
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?!)
There are countries where it's possible to pay everywhere with the banking app scanning a QR code. No need for NFC :-).
NFC is by far more convenient and reliable.
QR codes are reliable.
It's pretty common here that people will be told they need to turn off an otherwise working Wifi connection when facing problems because bank apps will often just not work properly on wifi.
But as I said, even without that, the convenience level is ridiculously different. It's arguably quicker to open your wallet and use a debit card with an NFC chip than it is to use QR codes, before we even talk about the convenience of watch/phone payments using NFC.
Got it, that's a fair point!
> But as I said, even without that, the convenience level is ridiculously different. It's arguably quicker to open your wallet and use a debit card with an NFC chip than it is to use QR codes
This part sounds like those people who use a different unit system than I do and explain to me how my unit system is objectively more inconvenient than theirs. To which I answer: "I think I know better than you what is more convenient for me, given that I use it everyday" :-).
I use QR codes instead of opening my wallet, which kind of hints towards the former being more convenient than the latter for me. And for the millions of people who also do that.
I'm not saying "yours" is less convenient. I'm saying the one you and I both use regularly is less convenient than anything NFC based, which I also use semi-regularly.
> It's arguably quicker to open your wallet and use a debit card with an NFC chip than it is to use QR codes
So I assume that even though QR codes are available where you live, you use your debit card with an NFC chip because it is quicker than using QR codes...
Anyway, the important part is that NFC doesn't require an internet connection, and I had missed that. Now I wonder why a QR code couldn't work without an internet connection just the same. I'll have to look into that!
Yes, I generally use my card rather than than QR unless the shop doesn't take cards, doesn't have a paywave/etc-enabled card reader, the card reader is broken, the sales person doesn't know how to use it, or the sales person insists I give them my card and PIN to pay (none of those are hypotheticals, I've experienced all of those first hand, some of them quite repeatedly).
> Now I wonder why a QR code couldn't work without an internet connection just the same.
Because a QR code is just a short piece of information to tell your banking app who to send funds to - it's like putting a mailto: link on a website rather than asking people to re-type your email address to contact you.
NFC (EMV) works offline.
You need the Google/Apple app though, don't you? Or can you write your own personal app that will handle that?
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.
The problem is not GrapheneOS, but rather that phone manufacturers other than Google don't care. Now if there were millions of GrapheneOS users, it would start becoming interesting for other phone manufacturers to care.
My point being that I buy Pixel in order to give more weight to GrapheneOS, in the hope that other manufacturers will eventually realise that.
Given that there exist vendors like Fairphone/Murena that sell lower-performant hardware at much lower price points, it seems to me that the expensive but decent hardware (like Google's flagship) might be priced appropriately as well
Other competitors (that do track you, like Samsung) have similar price points for their high-end hardware and are again much cheaper for slower hardware. If selling data is so essential, they wouldn't allow removing the tracking. (Samsung may be a bad example because they removed it last summer, but root popularity has been diminishing since early android days anyway so I can't imagine it's a big factor for them)
E.g. a new Pixel 9a is currently 369 Euro in The Netherlands and 367 Euro in Germany. The Pixel 10a will be released soon, but the 9a will run GrapheneOS just fine (same SoC except modem as the vanilla 9).
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.
https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compa...
Not really. On GrapheneOS, the Play Services/Play Store run as sandboxed apps, i.e. they are not system apps like on Android. They just run like a normal, unprivileged app. That's a lot better than on Android.
> I'd rather break free from Google and Apple, not just (stock) Android and iOS
If you want to break free, you don't have to install the Play Services / Play Store on GrapheneOS, just like you don't have to install microG on LineageOS. There is a misconception that microG is better than sandboxed Play, but I disagree. With microG, your apps still connect to the Google servers, so you're not "breaking free".
Moreover, some OSes (e.g. /e/OS) give certain Google apps higher privileges than other apps even with microG, install Android Auto and it's still game over. GrapheneOS does not have this issue because as you say, Google apps/services get sandboxed.
Obligatory link: https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm
Edit: ignore this - there's a list elsewhere in this thread!