this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2024
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I am currently in the market for a new mobile phone. The current's one battery is basically dead and because of security patches now being about 2 years old I have to replace it whole instead of just getting the battery replaced again.
Pixel with GrapheneOS has been my number one choice for some time but...
It's a "consumable" product for me. Loosing/drowning it is not a big deal, where drowning 800 euros is just hard to justify no matter how much money I make.
I will probably just get the OnePlus Nord 4 instead because of their pledge to do 6 years of updates.
I'm not sure about over in Europe but around here the trick to an affordable Pixel is to just buy last years model since you can usually find them lightly used or even new in the $300 - $400 range and updates are only incremental anyway and since they get 7 years of updates now it should be good for quite a while.
For google play protect yeah thats a bummer, I just use my banks website but I don't know if European banks allow that.
Personally though I love Graphene OS it turned my phone from a device I hated due to anxitey I feel around corporate surveillance into a device I genuinely like again.
I'm very close to pulling the trigger on Graphene. One question though - usually when I try open source / secure alternatives to some popular software the UI is janky and super old looking.
Is Graphene like this with their custom apps / UI stuff? Will I notice? Or is it identical to the stock OS UI design?
The os and the apps that are built in are quite nice basically just look and feel like stock android. Beyond the built in stuff it is a bit more hit and miss if you want to stick to FOSS only like osmand is ok for maps but not really close to google maps. Personally I stick to only FOSS apps but you dont need to be as paranoid as me even while using graphene you can install apps from the play store including google apps. Graphene does have additional privacy protections when using google apps and you can take that a step further by having a separate profile for apps you dont trust. Really though you should read through some of the docs on the graphene website because only you can decide whether the convenience tradeoffs are worth it for your specific case.