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Comment by madduci | Hacker News Reader

I wish they will bring a €200 device with GrapheneOS out

Unfortunately the privacy/security features GrapheneOS requires as well as just the ability to replace the OS are only put on premium phones. You can buy an a series Pixel a few years behind to get it in the price point you want. But this won't save money long term because the price per year of support is worse than newer models like the 10a or 9a.

So, 7a at your pricepoint:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/820099695470

But, it's only supported for 1.6 more years.

So that puts it at $143 per year of support. While the 10a [1] will be supported for 6.4 more years, which puts it at $55 per year of support.

[1] https://www.ebay.com/itm/137767347717

Although if you just want a degoogled phone with some features and don't want to hide a criminal enterprise, I doubt an out-of-support Graphene phone is any worse than an out-of-support Huawei or Xiaomi or Realme or Motorola phone.

It wouldn't be worse than those but with AI, AOSP is patching way more vulnerabilities than before and people without technical skill can abuse vulnerabilities, and those with skill can abuse them even more. It simply is not wise to run out-of-date GrapheneOS.

I'm curious how many months/years before out-of-date GrapheneOS becomes the worse option security wise compared to various brands' stock Androids. Obviously it is nuanced and there's no clean answer but it would be interesting on average.

We could think of metrics in public patches, but GrapheneOS has exploit protections that prevent against 0-days which would be hard to factor in.

£200-ish for Pixel 8, 4 more years of support.

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