7 Things You Should Know Before Switching to GrapheneOS
7 Things You Should Know Before Switching to GrapheneOS
Nice write up.
I feel like everyone under-sells the speed difference, though. I haven't seen performance differences this impressive from an OS switch in many years.
For those that know the feeling of switching a tired old x86 to Linux and getting a peppy performant device - this is better.
Maybe it just feels better from being a pocket device, or maybe my last phone was more deeply bogged down with vendor crap than I can fathom.
Either way, my affordable older Pixel is running GrapheneOS substantially more responsive for daily tasks than the most expensive phones I have ever bought before.
That Sounds Great! But Will It Work on My Phone? Currently, GrapheneOS is supported on Google Pixel devices only...
Aaaaaand, you lost me.
I've got so many spare phones that I'd love to install this on. Not a single one is from Google. They screwed me once with their hardware (Pixelbook), and I don't feel like giving them any more money.
Yeah it only being supported on pixel is what made me lose interest too but there is a good reason why it's specifically pixel phones, it's one of the only phones that doesn't have a bootlocker/ you can disable it. GrapheneOS can't operate on phones with a bootlocker. I could be a little off on this explanation but that's the gist I remember.
I would flash custom roms all the time years ago, then I just... lost interest since most of the features I liked came bundled with Samsung phones. But Samsung phones are now (apparently) hard to flash decent custom roms on, so I do guess you're stuck with a pixel.
Yeah, that's the main blocker for me, too.
A was annoyed too, so I ended up buy a used one so I wouldn't give Google any of my money directly. Saved a lot and it works fine.
That said, I wish I could just throw it on my old phone, which still works fine, but the mfg stopped supporting w/ updates.
Is dual booting possible? I'd love a Google boot for when maps/pay/etc are needed, then switch back for the rest
I think those should work, but if you're entirely degoogled, maybe running a container would work?
You can use different user profiles in Graphene for this purpose.
Thank you I'll read about this.
Need Google Pay...I don't even know the pin for my debit card anymore..
Chime is good with it? I've got no worries then!
"Imagine browsing without trackers following you everywhere or your phone’s performance lagging because of ads. That's the kind of freedom GrapheneOS promises."
It's hard to take the sales pitch seriously after such disingenuous statements such as this. The OS itself doesn't serve ads, but rather the apps you install and the web pages you visit. As well, as soon as you browse the web or install one of your most loved popular apps, you're being tracked. For the average user, the one that wants to use the same apps on the gOS OS that they do on stock android, they will be faced with basically the same ads and the same tracking.
The OS itself doesn’t serve ads, but rather the apps you install and the web pages you visit.
I don't know what phone you use, but a stock Samsung phone absolutely serves ads and tracks like crazy. You can monitor the activity with something like Adguard. Not to mention the bloat like Facebook will call home even when you aren't using it.
So yeah, it would be nice if the OS itself wasn't an open door for this type of crap.