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GrapheneOS – Break Free from Google and Apple

blog.tomaszdunia.pl

371–380 of 967 posts

Re: GrapheneOS – Break Free from Google and Apple

#371
About his comment:

> Unfortunately, I must recommend Windows 10/11 here, because then you don’t have to mess around with any drivers; it’s the simplest option.

When I worked at Microsoft but ran FreeBSD at home, I often used my work Windows laptop to install custom ROMs. This is because FreeBSD was finicky with adb.

Now I run Fedora and the Android drivers are pre-installed. I installed GrapheneOS on both a Pixel 10 Pro (main) and Pixel 9 (spare) that way.

On Windows, I've had more trouble with Android drivers than I did on non-Windows.

Re: GrapheneOS – Break Free from Google and Apple

#372
post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's regularly unreliable here, because it's reliant on a bank app which in turn is reliant on an internet connection 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 an…

Did you miss the part where I said I use both? 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.

I'm confused. You say:

> 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!

Re: GrapheneOS – Break Free from Google and Apple

#373

My observation is - It is the ecosystem that is sticky not just the OS.

You can install Google Apps as a regular set of user apps rather than a system-level admin monstrosity, and it mostly works - Play Store included.

Whether or not that defeats the purpose is an exercise left to the reader.

Re: GrapheneOS – Break Free from Google and Apple

#374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A collegue of mine was tech lead at a large online bank. For the mobile app, the first and foremost threat that security auditors would find was "The app runs on a rooted phone!!!". Security theater at its finest, checkboxes gotta be checked. The irony is that the devs were using rooted phones for QA and debugging.

Oh how I fucking wish "security" wasn't a stupid cargo cult checkbox list 3/4 of the times. Unfortunately, the rot runs too deep.

Your password must be between 8 and 12 characters, and must have lowercase, uppercase, numbers, and punctuation.

Pick up the can!

Re: GrapheneOS – Break Free from Google and Apple

#375
post #120
post #20

GrapheneOS is Android isn't it? Same binary blob issues and such? Or is that not an issue on Pixel devices?

It is not. GrapheneOS is AOSP-based. But yeah, same binary blob issues for firmwares, but Linux on Mobile has the same issues.

It's not very important but what are you referring to with "it is not" ? AOSP is Android (it's in the name) so I don't get it. Are you talking about blobs re Pixel devices?

Re: GrapheneOS – Break Free from Google and Apple

#376
I had a Pixel 6a with Graphene OS for a year before the phone started to glitch and eventually die. It ran pretty hot; sometimes it was hard to even hold the phone in my hands without burning myself.

I could not get a replacement as I bought the phone in a foreign country (Google doesn’t sell Pixels here in Brazil).

So as much as I love the idea of running a more private phone, I found the hardware extremely fragile and poorly designed, so I will not buy from them again anytime soon.

Re: GrapheneOS – Break Free from Google and Apple

#377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does a banking app that I'm not currently using need to ping a server occasionally? When I want to do banking I'll open the app, do my business, then close the app. A banking application does not need push notifications.

Unfortunately it needs push notifications to authorize online payments.

So open the app when performing an online payment.

Re: GrapheneOS – Break Free from Google and Apple

#378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They do it so they don't have to stand up their own push servers I don't agree with this dependency on being in good standing with Google either. But there is a technical reason that isn't wanting to avoid using their push servers. It is about battery usage and radio bandwidth. Keeping open an idle connection over WebSocket, long-poll HTTP or TCP/IP needs regular pings (typically 30 seconds are used), one ping per…

Why does a banking app that I'm not currently using need to ping a server occasionally? When I want to do banking I'll open the app, do my business, then close the app. A banking application does not need push notifications.

My comment was about push service sharing generally, not banks, from a technical point of view that many people aren't aware of but may find interesting.

Clearly, real-time notifications are useful with many apps, notably real-time messaging, even if you don't think they have a place with bank apps.

For bank and credit card apps, I find their push notifications to be very useful. They are among the most useful notifications I get, because they tell me about things I find important, which I wouldn't notice otherwise.

They tell me things about transactions that have gone through, sometimes after a long delay, transactions that need confirmation right now or they will be blocked, balance being too low, or too high (credit cards), payments that are required today, refunds that came through after a product was returned, transfers that completed on the receiving said, payment received from a client, direct debits that are going out tomorrow so I will need to make sure there's enough in the account, customer service messages that require a response from me or they will eventually close the account, and so forth.

"Just open the app" doesn't work: All of those, except transaction confirmations, are things where I wouldn't know to open the app if I didn't get a message of some kind to tell me.

These days, in some juristictions it's also required to send real-time notification to confirm some purchases, because the phone's security is considered better than card details alone. Depending on how the purchase is made (e.g. in-person vs online, different payment terminals), you might not know the reason a transaction is blocked or held is because it's waiting for you to confirm in the app, so the notification is useful for this.

All these used to be done by SMS, and that was useful too. But SMSs are just push notificatons with a worse UI and worse visual cues.

Re: GrapheneOS – Break Free from Google and Apple

#379
post #306

"Break free from Google" and buy a Pixel phone from them to do so. But unironically Pixels are currently some of the best actually open phones. They do not lock down or require shady practices for unlocking the bootloader (although they do require a network check once that happens automatically, but it will permanently allow unlocking the bootloader if successful once. Pixels are very easy to restore and almost un-br…

Pixels are really great despite being from Google. I hope they will continue to make them unlockable/relockable. As you say they are also surprisingly hard to brick. Here is someone trying to break it intentionally during the GrapheneOS install: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ik0AiO0WtuU If you don't like giving money to Google, plenty of companies offer refurbished Pixel phones.

In the US, many refurbished Pixel phones are Verizon variants which disallow OEM unlocking.

When was in college and had Sprint this was a nightmare since then I wanted root for unlimited hotspot (Sprint made it easy that way), but most refurbished Pixels were Verizon variants.

And I couldn't just use OnePlus because they were only designed GSM networks or later Verizon CDMA-less. Then, new Pixels were unaffordable for me, but parents insisted on using Sprint.

I ended up getting a Pixel 3 off Mercari (which I still own) just to keep root.

Now, I can afford a Pixel 10 Pro new (which I am right now), alongside spare Pixel 9 and OnePlus 13R units. But even then (a) my income is lower than when I worked at Microsoft and (b) The OnePlus was from a trade-in deal.

Re: GrapheneOS – Break Free from Google and Apple

#380

Been running GrapheneOS for a while on a Pixel 9, and extremely happy with it! Apart from the usual perks of the FOSS ecosystem, there are a few things specific to GrapheneOS that are not immediately apparent but have turned out to work very well - 1. The Pixel camera app works, including all modes and settings. A camera that takes good photos was absolutely a requirement for me, and the FOSS camera apps are not quit…

> 3. Android Auto works!

Does this require installing google play and other google services to work?

Edit: https://grapheneos.org/usage#android-auto

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