Anyone like GrapheneOS better? Like it has some features? Or is it a locked down version of Android?
GrapheneOS – Break Free from Google and Apple
391–400 of 967 posts
Re: GrapheneOS – Break Free from Google and Apple
#392Earlier 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.
Yeah that's the first thing a pentest will complain about, had the same problem too. I pushed back enough so that it's trivial to bypass but the bank and pentesters also agreed with me that it's security theater or else I would never had the chance.
Re: GrapheneOS – Break Free from Google and Apple
#393Look, it's better than stock android overall, UI much more simplified even though it gives you a lot more security control, battery feels slightly longer, but there are drawbacks, i.e. twitter/x wouldn't install, neither would my bank's app. However from time to time I go to use iOS on the iphone and it just feels like better software, with better ergonomics overall, the combination of the xnu kernel plus the design and feel of the..buttons.. on iOS is still years ahead in my opinion. So keep that in mind if you're switching away from apple to it, as android still feels like decade plus old software.
Now for the upsides.. there's a built in terminal and debian vm you can install and run your agentic AI tools (claude code,opencode etc) in a portable sandboxed environment which you just don't get onios. You can even fire up a graphical xfce session albeit that takes quite a bit of work to get it to go.
As for the tablet form factor of the phone itself when unfolded, i found it amazing the first few weeks and then later found myself rarely using it.
Overall I'm going to stick with itand will never go back to stock android, but am quite annoyed at how much better it could actually be.
Re: GrapheneOS – Break Free from Google and Apple
#394Switched to this from Apple a year and a half ago. Works for most things. Unexpectedly, replacement apps lack polish. Also, RCS works very inconsistently (been without it for months), seems to be Google's fault. There may be workarounds, but I haven't had the energy to try the more complicated suggestions. I am probably going to switch back to a used old iPhone for "phone appliance" tasks, but keep around the Pixel f…
As an aside, from the latest release notes: Sandboxed Google Play compatibility layer: add toggle for granting Play services access to ICC auth in order to support RCS with carriers requiring it for RCS in Google Messages including T-Mobile (see RCS usage guide)
Re: GrapheneOS – Break Free from Google and Apple
#395I personally tend to own two Phones. One all-day carry GrapheneOS device (Pixel 8) and an older WiFi and at home only iPhone for all payment and ensurance stuff. This is inconvenient in some ways, but at least it is sort of privacy as good as it gets while still being able to run official apps when I need them at home. To de-google the phone, I use F-Droid as primary App store, Aurora as fallback for non-f-droid Apps…
Re: GrapheneOS – Break Free from Google and Apple
#396One of the only big downsides I've noticed with GrapheneOS is that several banking apps don't work with it at all thanks to being tied to Google's verification ecosystem. Luckily I have hardware 2FA keys from my bank so I can authenticate using that. It also slightly decreases the suck-factor from whenever the phone decides to fly off down a drain. This may not be the case for you, so do your research on what you nee…
yep - tried GrapheneOS for the first time today and my banking app detected that the phone was jailbroken.
Re: GrapheneOS – Break Free from Google and Apple
#397I personally tend to own two Phones. One all-day carry GrapheneOS device (Pixel 8) and an older WiFi and at home only iPhone for all payment and ensurance stuff. This is inconvenient in some ways, but at least it is sort of privacy as good as it gets while still being able to run official apps when I need them at home. To de-google the phone, I use F-Droid as primary App store, Aurora as fallback for non-f-droid Apps…
I like Organic Maps because it isn't full of the social things. Every time I open Google Maps it shows that card at the bottom with "what's popular in your area", full of pictures of people's breakfasts and other nonsense. Organic Maps is free of this noise. Also, the desktop client on Linux is quite useful. Alternatives for Windows etc. are Cruiser Maps, a Java application (and also available as an Android app).
Does anybody know of a project that offers public transport routing? Ideally with real time information, but I can live with only using schedules or even just average passage interval.
The other general sticking point for me is the reviews, but I could invite more serendipity to my restaurant search.
Re: GrapheneOS – Break Free from Google and Apple
#398Earlier quoted context omitted.
In Estonia you can easily do banking via the website on all the banks (LHV, Swedbank, SEB). That said, we do have it all integrated with our digital-ID (which every ID card has private keys encoded into with a PIN you know) so it's not like you can access it with a simple password (our online voting works the same way).
Can the PIN change? How to issue new key if needed? How does it integrate with the voting?
You can change it in the app, yes.
> How to issue new key if needed?
I think you’ll have to reissue your ID.
There’s also digi-ID (similar e-signature certificate on a card, but without any ID features), Mobiil-ID (e-signature on a SIM-card, no idea how it works), Smart-ID (in app, tied to secure storage in Android/iOS, cross-signed by the server which is supposed to check the device somehow) and probably something else I don’t remember. All of these are independent options, so you can, for example, revoke your Mobiil-ID if you lose your phone, and still use the your main ID card to sign things.
Re: GrapheneOS – Break Free from Google and Apple
#399Been using this for about a year on a p9 pro. It works very well. I hear the google tap to pay does not work, but I've never tried it. However Vipps with their tap to pay works fine. BankID works but not with biometric login, which some things require IIRC. And for some reason DnB private works fine, but you are not allowed in on the corp app. It's mind boggingly stupid that they lock down apps like this, when you ca…
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.
Re: GrapheneOS – Break Free from Google and Apple
#400One of the only big downsides I've noticed with GrapheneOS is that several banking apps don't work with it at all thanks to being tied to Google's verification ecosystem. Luckily I have hardware 2FA keys from my bank so I can authenticate using that. It also slightly decreases the suck-factor from whenever the phone decides to fly off down a drain. This may not be the case for you, so do your research on what you nee…
What about the small matter of having to purchase a Google phone in the first place?
E.g. a new Pixel 9a is currently 369 Euro in The Netherlands and 367 Euro in Germany. The Pixel 10a will be released soon, but the 9a will run GrapheneOS just fine (same SoC except modem as the vanilla 9).