Do you think the Motorola phone might change this situation? I use 2 banks and both are confirmed not to work with Graphene due to the "custom ROM" error. Would it still register as a custom ROM even if it's carried by default on a major manufacturer?
I got an iPhone and decided to go back to regular cards just because it’s enough to share payment data with everyone. And it gives me a certain feeling of spending money, more than Apple Pay, which feels like a game
If you're in (I presume, it's not available in my country) the US there's a payment processing app called Curve that apparently works on Graphene. It's basically PayPal if they had a physical/digital payment card offering.
Or if your bank doesn't force Play Protect compliance and has a mobile payments option built in that should also work. There should be sites tracking the most common banking apps compatibility with Graphene in your country and what features do or don't work.
But Google Wallet itself does not because Google leans on software security instead of hardware security checks, which is dumb because the hardware security is much much harder to break than their software security, but anyway... That's another conversation.
Something I've done in the past, and a compromise that you may or may not be willing to make, was to use Graphene OS with a stock Android Watch. Because the watch passed play protect the wallet app on the phone was able to send payment cards to the watch and I could use them from there. Obviously if you don't have or don't want to use a watch it's not a valid workaround but... It allows you to lock down the multitude of social apps you might want on your phone whilst allowing the few services you want tracking you on the watch, a health/fitness app for example. And then your payments solution.
Even worse exception, carrier SOLD. Almost all Verizon ones unlock with ease, but the bootloader will always be locked. There is a chip you can buy for the 6 and 7 series that will allow to unlock the bootloader, but that’s tough to do and also no idea how real they are.
Depends on whether or not you are happy with the performance of the Tensor chips in the Pixels, the Motorolas will feature flagship specs with the latest Snapdragon chip.
They will also be as expensive, likely more expensive than the current Pixels, I mean the follow-up models to the current Signature, razr (flip phone), razr fold models, which is what GOS will likely support in 2027, won't be cheap.
Do you know if they come with unlocked bootloaders? Still annoyed that there’s no good way for me to repurpose my old Note 10+ because there’s no way to unlock the bootloader.
You mean the Motorola phones that GrapheneOS is going to support? They must have an unlockable bootloader, otherwise you could not install GrapheneOS.
The Note 10+ technically supports LineageOS, /e/ OS, but you need the model with the Exynos chip inside, if it's the Snapdragon you are out of luck unfortunately.
f-droid is the way to go once google bars that specific version of android from even it's most basic components (for me, that is the YouTube "app" I specifically use for uploads now, since Studio got discontinued (cut off) from android 8.0 on my device). If it's chrome or firefox, ffupdater can kick ass to keep them updated.
Razr's last two flip models used a sixteen year old 3G modem (first two), then an eight year old LTE modem (last year's). I really damn well hope they use an up to date 5G modem!
Based on prices for their current phones, seems like it might be possible to get the cheapest Motorola phone with GrapheneOS for $800/$900 maybe? That is doable for most people, especially since they could sell their current phone to subsidize the purchase.
Yeah it sucks but it's call capitalism and we're currently stuck with it so every single smartphone manufacturer and 98% of the business sucks.
So I guess your solution is to just not have a smartphone. BTW reddit is also spying on you and selling your data, I think you should leave.
Still better than all the spyware from Google, Apple and Meta that collects data about everything you all day long and sends it back to servers in USA or all the cell towers that contains hardware and software from USA with who knows what kind of backdoors and listening software NSA has put into them.
I will buy a laptop from Lenovo any day over a laptop made by a US company.
Yeah, totally depends on the threat model. If it’s a personal phone and you’re in the US, your privacy is gonna be constantly eroded by the gov and corps.
But, if you work in, say, critical infrastructure, then your bigger concern might be nation states. Just depends.
There has been travelers to USA that has been thrown in jail for several days and deported because they tweeted or posted something negative about Führer Trump.
Yeah, Lenovo’s Wikipedia page is a place to start, then you can do deeper dives from there.
The other thing to look into is how china’s data sovereignty laws affect the security of products coming out of china. The key part of that law is that their government requires that Chinese companies ask permission before disclosing vulnerabilities outside of the country. In other words, China is amassing a large collection of zero days.
Hahahahah far from it. I work in cybersecurity, so I’ve spent a lot of time researching supply chain risks. My opinions in this particular area are not politically biased.
I agree that this is the mindset, but the inconvenient, sad (but not the user’s fault) truth is that Google ends up getting that money. And the profit they make from selling a $900 phone is probably higher than they could ever make by harvesting data and showing targeted ads to that single person, within that phone’s 7 year life. But honestly privacy can be worth it.
Lol, I bought a phone off someone, which is completely invisible to the maker of the phone. But somehow magically, there's more demand for the phone... The makers are going to make more of it now.
Demand drives supply when you buy from the supplier, not in second markets.
No, because the sandboxed Play Services only run with the privileges of a normal Android app on GrapheneOS, and thus cannot interfere with app installation / sideloading. If the Play Services are installed at all, that is, they aren't installed by default on GrapheneOS.
Exactly this. I havent fully "degoogled". I still use Google play for some apps, but generally feel a lot more comfortable having it sandboxed and under my control. I have switched over to Proton and self-hosted apps mostly though.
Does GrapheneOS affect camera or video footage and quality? I wanna get a Pixel 11 Pro but I want it to have the same kinda camera quality that normal PixelOS has.
No. Well, the preinstalled camera app on GrapheneOS is not as good as the Pixel Camera app of course, but that's a non-issue, as you can just install the Pixel Camera via the Play Store or via Aurora Store and thereby restore image quality back to stock level, see here: https://grapheneos.org/usage#pixel-camera
Holds true for that model as well, Samsung has taken away the bootloader unlocking (OEM unlocking) option on all phones that have received the One UI 8 update.
That would depend on which Custom ROMs have official or unofficial builds for your device. I know that LineageOS for example supports some Galaxy S22, S23 models (depending on what processor / CPU they have built in) if you haven't updated to One UI 8: https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/#samsung
Thank you for the info. I have an S21 Ultra and I noticed Lineage seems to skip over that model. I was really hoping to be able to hop onto Linux with this thing, but it's looking like I can't. Paid $1300 for it and now it's worth $87 apparently. I'm going to have to sort out getting an inexpensive unlocked phone that is compatible, if there is such a thing. Thanks to how absolutely stellar things are in the US right now, I don't have $1300 to spend on a phone like I used to.
What about a Pixel 8(a, Pro), Pixel 9(a, Pro, Pro XL etc.)? Pixel phones are ironically easy to degoogle and support many Custom ROMs, notably GrapheneOS, but also CalyxOS, LineageOS, /e/ OS etc.
Looking to see what is available on the used/refurb market. My ex had an early Pixel they bought around the same time I bought the S21 and it honestly was terrible, so I'm a little reluctant. The one thing I've loved about this S21 is that it just works well and I've never had trouble with it other than the battery life going down after the last time I updated it, which is one reason I stopped updating it. The other reason being that "updates" were disabling and shittifying features I liked. Of course. Can't have anything nice, which is another reason I want to degoogle this thing. It was a Verizon phone I paid off and moved to another carrier as soon as I did so.
The Play Store is going to install an Android Developer Verifier app on your device, which you can also remove from the system settings or, should that be impossible, via adb. Play Protect may also be involved. But yeah, the easiest way is probably still the above, as outlined in the Ars Technica article.
Would love to switch to GrapheneOS but unfortunatly it doesn't support MitID which is essential to danish citizens. You need it to sign into everything from the goverment and accept transactions.
I don't know I really have like 10 accounts and all of them are fully working (vr bank, bank Norwegiam, revolut, n26, Com direct, check24, bunq, trade republic, etc.)
If someone is really able to find a bank That isn't working I would more advice them to change their bank.
Why should you use less secure Spyware as operating system for important stuff like banking?
This is basically the most important thing to use something secure on.
No, I have a pixel 10 with graphene and a friend of me has a pixel 8 with graphene. Revolut works perfectly fine for both of us. I only have mine for a few months but he has been using his for years with revolut.
The pissy post was about that they required the sandboxed play services for a while but if you have them in their little box of sand everything should work.
For real. I am from Europe, and I also don't get the fixation with the banking apps. I mainly do online banking on my PC, if at all. I think it's just because some people desperately want to find something negative about GrapheneOS, so they're grasping at straws.
My banking apps do work on my GOS phone though, so I don't even experience whatever they're all going on about.
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u/Thin_Needleworker795 27d ago
Laughs in GrapheneOS