[armajid]

From my experience (which isn't worth much but I have had similar thoughts about this) I went with a used iPhone 8 last year for around $180 because I thought it was going to get iOS 16, which it did. It's good until September next year (when the next iOS probably comes out) and at that point I will probably get a newer iPhone albeit probably a used one to save money.

On custom ROMS, a security researcher named 'madaidan' states that ROMs such as Lineage are insecure (https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/security-privacy-ad...) with GrapheneOS being an exception.

On the GrapheneOS website, it recommends getting a Pixel 6 and above which has 5 years of guaranteed full security updates (https://grapheneos.org/faq#recommended-devices).

Louis Rossmann recently released a video talking about GrapheneOS as his daily driver and breaks down some usability misconceptions. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIZmUINSvQ4)

[hedora]

GrapheneOS is OK.

The keyboard kind of sucks.

Assuming you are unwilling to use google location services, GPS is flaky. As a consequence, Camera image location tagging is flaky. Most apps that use map views are broken. (Third party map apps like Here WeGo and Organic Maps and are generally fine, oddly enough.)

Backup is non-existent. (There is a thing. It does not work.)

Unless you want to sync documents through google or some other untrustworthy third party, there aren't any competitive "keep a text document synced between N devices" programs. (Standard Notes is the closest on this front.)

Phone calls and notifications work. Google Camera can be coerced into working (but geotags are iffy).

Google services that normally support anonymous users (especially Meet) aggressively detect android and refuse to work if you are not logged in.

Battery life is OK (as advertised) if you install google services in a sandbox. Stellar without them.

The pixel wireless fast charger has settings that cannot be changed through graphene. The charger setting app requires kernel level permissions for some reason.

Bluetooth support is the best I've seen.

No kernel panics, or strange battery drains, in my experience.

Always on VPN seems to work.

Performance is good.

My next phone will not be an android.

The tire fire caused by not allowing google location services is the main reason. App ecosystem is number two. Lack of working backup is three. The system keyboard is number four. The over processed aesthetic of the camera is number 5 (this last one comes down to taste).

Edit: I shouldn't have said app ecosystem. I meant the lack of non-privacy-invading apps that provide functionality that should be built in: Open PDF/docx/etc, scan + OCR to PDF from camera, print without granting randos permission to send documents to third parties, note sync, photo search, health data, etc...

Hope this helps!

[_emacsomancer_]

One can, of course, install a different keyboard. Including gboard (disabling network access, if desired) or an open source one like FlorisBoard.

You can also change to use Google's geolocation if you like, cf. https://grapheneos.org/usage

[strcat]

GrapheneOS supports running Google Play as regular fully sandboxed apps without any special privileges and without the OS using them as the backend for anything. It has near 100% Play Store app compatibility when using sandboxed Google Play. You can run GSF, Play services and the Play Store as regular apps. All of the improvements to the sandbox and permission model in GrapheneOS apply to them. We reroute Google Play location service requests to our own OS implementation by default to avoid needing to grant Location access to Google Play services to use it in apps using Play services but it's possible to use the Google Play network location implementation if you choose. We'll offer an entirely local pseudo-network location service as part of the OS location service in the future via publicly available cell tower / Wi-Fi databases (a decent Wi-Fi database isn't available yet).

https://grapheneos.org/usage#sandboxed-google-play

There's also a per-app exploit protection compatibility mode toggle for apps with memory corruption bugs uncovered by `hardened_malloc` or which have compatibility issues with the larger address space (48-bit as opposed to 39-bit).

Due to the advances in the sandboxed Google Play compatibility layer over the past year and the exploit protection compatibility mode, only a few apps aren't working. Most of those apps are choosing to disallow using a non-Google-certified OS via the Play Integrity API. SafetyNet attestation API was the previous legacy approach.

GrapheneOS has a system backup service and it does mostly work. It doesn't have great UX, and has a lot of issues, which is why we plan to replace it. It was originally developed for GrapheneOS but was taken over by a hostile group and we're going to make our own instead. Until then, we still have the existing one.

Many Android apps still disallow backups from backing up their data but this problem was solved for apps targeting Android 12 and above which is about to become mandatory for the Play Store for both new apps and app updates. That issue will be resolved by the end of the year. It was caused by a poorly designed Android manifest configuration option for disabling backups. Most apps just wanted to disable cloud backups for bandwidth, size or privacy reasons. It now means disable cloud backups for apps targeting Android 12 and above. It's still possible to exclude files from backups but it requires a new Android 12+ API with separate lists for local backups, E2EE cloud backups and non-E2EE cloud backups. This issue isn't in any way GrapheneOS specific. It applies just as much to Google's device-to-device backup/restore system shown as part of the initial setup wizard and their cloud backups. It just takes time for the new API level to become mandatory: a bit over a year after the new OS release.

[joemazerino]

Madaidan claims LineageOS is insecure but fails to compare an outdated and unsupported phone with a supported LineageOS install. Take heed.