this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2024
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Graphene OS changed my life, seriously. Completely changed my relationship to my phone and made it possible to focus again. Go open source
What specific features did you notice the most? (I'm assuming switching from Android?) 90% of my phone usage is through a browser, so I could probably install Graphene pretty easily.
#1 through #69: no push notifications, no feeds on my home screen, nothing I don't explicitly turn on and configure. No bloat whatsoever, the phone comes practically empty. I got this at the beginning of 2022, before then I kept finding myself reading articles about Johnny Depp and Amber Heard. Like I could not give less of a fuck about them, that story, whatever. I don't know who she is, and I don't particularly like JD movies except maybe Dead Man from the 90s, he probably beat the shit out of her idk. But for some reason I kept finding myself reading these articles on my phone absentmindedly. That kind of shit ended immediately.
Downsides? Not everything works, because there's no google play, and I couldn't get it even if I wanted it. I can use most google services on the browser, but for maps I have to use Osmand, which works but doesn't give me the fastest way to a place, and its kind of a trick to find a specific house or business without looking it up on a computer first and locating the nearest cross street. Schools, hospitals it has saved no problem, but not the optimal routes ore even anything relatively close. Great for my city where I can get myself 98% the way there already knowing the fastest ways around. Out of town we usually use my wife's navigation.
Those drawbacks are a little annoying but I will never go back to android, and I would never use apple in the first place. I love my phone, it feels like its mine in a way no phone ever has.
Hope this helps, ask if you have other questions
Interesting. Not having a good maps / navigation app might be a bit of a dealbreaker for me, since that's pretty much the last 10% of what I use my phone for. Degoogling myself there will require some effort....
As for push notifications and feeds, I don't really have a problem with that on my current phone with base android. I'm pretty aggressive about blocking random notifications or uninstalling apps entirely if they show me push notifications ads or "use me" reminders. And my home screen is just a clock and calendar.
GrapheneOS lets you choose whether you want to have a sandboxed google play installation. This way apps such as Maps work. Basically you are in control (except for Google Pay).
I didn't realize GrapheneOS is only supported on Pixel phones, so I can't run it after all...
Learn to love OpenStreetMap
You can get Google play working by sideloading it with adb, and enabling graphene's microG service in the apps menu.
Any further apps installed with Google play, and Google itself, will still be under the default restrictions imposed by graphene, instead of having full access like with stock android.
It can be a little clunky starting out, but once you get used to it, the only major downside I could find was that I couldn't verify my bank details to enable nfc payments, because Google hasn't whitelisted Graphene in their API for "security reasons"
Yeah, I can't imagine what about Graphene would make that big of a difference. Smart phones and slabs of glass with apps on them. There's very little that truly impacts the experience after you get past specs.
without software, what is hardware? same vice versa, you need good software and hardware to match for a good user experience.
stock android's software is extremely shit, bloated, and slow. but I guess that goes for every out of the box os these days ¯_(ツ)_/¯
You need good software to make the most out of good hardware, but I think our definition of good is different. For software, as long as the software doesn't get in the way of launching the app you want, most normies will consider that good. It doesn't matter that Android is bloated and inefficient if the user can tap the Instagram or Facebook icon and have that open up without user perceptible delay.
The average person is remarkably able to put up with shit. Look at the experience on smart TVs for example. The vast majority of people are fine with the absolutely shitty experience as long as they can open up Netflix.
The reasons listed are things I can already do. I disable any bloat and white-list notifications.