What about graphene? 👀
Discussion
Yus
Pixel phone with quality (official preferred charger) and installing Graphene is a few clicks.
Android actually uses the Linux kernel as it's base. And there is work towards being able to run full Linux desktops on your grapheneOS phone. Soonâ„¢
Node said people have issues with the camera. Others I’ve talked to gave up on graphene and went to back to stock.
Not quite true, they should have done more research. While the stock camera software isn't as good, it easy to install the Google one, there an easy options in the grapheneOS app store to enable Google tools. Literally the only feature my grapheneOS pixel lacks compared to my stock pixel is tap to pay, but I get improved security and privacy in return.
I never use tap to pay on my iPhone anyway lol but the Google camera is bad for privacy no?
GrapheneOS puts Google apps in a sandbox so they don't have access to most the information they do on stock Android. Combined with putting it on a seperate user, it severely cuts back on the amount of information it can access.
Privacy and security exist on a spectrum, nothing is absolute. GrapheneOS gives me 99% of the functions of my phone, while greatly enhancing privacy and security. If I were more paranoid I wouldn't enable the Google tools, and have less function, but maybe more privacy. Everything in life is figuring out what trade-offs you want to make to get what you want.
I heard about the sandbox thing but I don’t understand what that means. How is that different from users? Does it really matter if it’s the same IP?
I'd do some basic research about what sandboxing is, it's more an internal software thing. Think about how other apps on your iPhone can't access the keys in a Bitcoin wallet. Apps have separation, different users have separation. A sandbox is just another layer of separation.
It means that Google apps don't have access to the information from other apps on GrapheneOS, on a stock pixel they have total access. You can't track and leak what you don't have access to.
IP address are something different. That's what a VPN is for. But even if they did know my IP, there's far less data to leak. Your phone company (and the govt) has access to all that info anyways, including your location, and a bunch of other information just by you having a phone.
Security and privacy are a spectrum, not an absolute. With GrapheneOS you have more choices of what to share or not. On stock Android or iOS you have fewer choices.