What do you think the tradeoff is between this and calyx?
I've only tried calyx so far,
Phone firmware could've also been the culprit, maybe his phone was unknowingly sending data back to Apple or Samsung? Who knows.
Way too many factors and we'll probably never be told exactly how the Feds compromised him.
Best line of defense is https://grapheneos.org and practicing good opsec.
Discussion
Graphene is more secure, a little more inconvenient tho but from my experience with a little bit of setup you can get it working just as great as a proprietary Android OS.
Google Play services are optional and sandboxed and they can only access only what you explicitly give them access to.
What makes graphene more secure?
Nice write up 👍🤝