Alright AI maximalists, what's the estimated token budget to remove the Google dependency?
GrapheneOS has the bootable AOSP and will have Google-alternative device support.
We probably need an equivalent to Play Services, app signing/porting/publishing tools.
With these in hand could we talk Valve into providing the scalable alternative to the play store?
GrapheneOS accepts donations and, to my knowledge, they spend it in hiring full time engineers.
They have replacement portions for Play Services already (attestation, an app store, and location), but it'd be interesting if they also offered something for push notifications.
If you have it to give you can spend your budget on a donation and fund the effort directly.
I believe GrapheneOS talked about hosting their own unifiedpush server and baking it into the OS not long ago
The trouble is that banking apps will not work if you degoogle your phone. GrapheneOS was an attempt to make this sort of thing work, in a phone OS more secure than stock Android
But to be honest, many banking apps randomly stop working with GrapheneOS anyway. So if you see this...
https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compa...
https://github.com/PrivSec-dev/banking-apps-compat-report
And check the issues, it's unpredictable whether a bank will continue to work with GrapheneOS
So.. if you accept GrapheneOS might not be reliable for this use case, and decide have two phones (one just for banking stuff, another for.. using), then degoogling is fine.
Only thing is that the banking device probably needs to be a phone (or tablet I guess), I don't think you can emulate a real device good enough for it to work on something like Waydroid
This is something that gets mentioned a lot, especially from people who don't use Graphene or other custom ROMs themselves. Personally, I have not had any issues using banking apps on Graphene without Play Services. While this is just anecdotal, even if apps required them, I use a separate "secure profile" where I dump all the fishy, but necessary apps that require Google. I used to run a separate Lineage phone with microG for this purpose, but it became too cumbersome
Yes, if the banking app refuses to run on Graphene, you can forget about Waydroid completely. Hell will freeze over before Waydroid passes play integrity.
My bank can support my phone or accept that I'm going to come waste their time in person, I'm not backing down here.
Many banks nowadays charge higher fees for teller service.
I went in to cash a check at a bank a few years ago and they made a huge show of it, taking over half an hour and various employees for a couple hundred dollars. They will absolutely win if they want to. A large organization can easily create more friction than an individual can bear.
Thats their issue that they want to pay several staff half an hours wage for cashing a cheque. I would have been enjoying every second of the farce.
Your time must not be valuable to you, which is a very limited perspective.
You don't understand. They will make you pay for it by charging a handling fee. How about $10 flat per transaction?
My phone is not that old but it stopped getting OS updates and I stopped considering it a way to do anything banking related when my bank declared that my phone OS was too old to run the app.
This is what I ended up doing. I have LineageOS running on a Moto G. For banking, I have a tablet.
I didn't want two phones, because it just seems so silly. The tablet, based on it's larger size, at least offers things that another phone cannot.
People always bring this up but I don’t get the issue. How often are you using your bank’s app? Banking apps are probably the least essential apps on my phone.
Literally insane that banks will allow you to do banking on ancient phones with an unpatched Android full of CVEs, but won't allow you banking on a modern ungoogled OS.
It's not about security, it's about lazyness. These are the people who still employ Cobol devs cause they don't want to migrate off existing mainframes. I've yet to see a banking app that was not an objective trainwreck.
> cause they don't want to migrate off existing mainframes
Dont confuse intent with laziness, running on cobol genuinely gives them many advantages.
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The token budget isn't to remove Google it's to create drivers for individual phone hardware, which phone and chip manufacturers keep closed source. Also it would be used to find exploits to unlock permanently locked bootloaders
GrapheneOS won't be interested in other hardware support, since the only devices that meet their hardware security standards are Pixels and the upcoming Motorola phone.
The answer to this is - the real world comes knocking. Govt, banking, investment, grocery, transport, even some mainstream social/communication apps, all stop working - yeah, kinda cold turkey. And if your, or someone else's, answer to them is: ".. well then don't use those apps.. or maybe in mobile or desktop browser.. " (this is usually the tone on those "privacy" guide forums), then yeah it will work and can be done in hours theoretically, or days max :)
I think you could actually look at this via the OPPOSITE lense: OpenSource was good for companies before, because they got free code/bugfix/labor, which would have been expensive to produce themselves.
Now with LLM and agentic factories pumping out bugfixes/code, does the equation on opensource still look attractive to a for-profit company? Why give away that sweet source code?
AI is definitely going to cause a chilling effect for (human-written) code. Why connect with other young nerds to make something cool when an AI can make it for you? Why share code if you've never sought out shared code yourself?
Further contribution to the trend of humans becoming more capable but less social.
If only Graphene had a better marketing team. It pains me to say this but it is the absolute truth: the public does not know Graphene and does not care about Graphene. Even it’s name is absolutely awful. This is like the Linux distro hell: “you should use BingaBoingoKonohaOS_v34 or Peppermint_Cinn4monR0ll with the OutOfThisWorld DE, but steer clear of the Pancake package manager, use openMsPacMan with GrassFaceWhazzit frontend instead.” How is anyone (as in not us, the tech nerds) supposed to reason about this?
Things will keep as is for as long as they keep making these OSs FOR the tech nerds.
Downvote me all you want. You know it’s true. An OS made for nerds and by nerds will never reach mainstream and will not, ever, move the needle anywhere. Tech is no longer a hobbyist’s game.
GrapheneOS has a growing userbase, and of course many of the people who would like to switch to GrapheneOS are extra mindful of their devices' privacy and security. Maybe a majority of those people are more technically capable, but I can assure you our users aren't all "nerds."
We (yes, "we," not hiding who I am, check my bio) have seen many users from all walks of life asking for assistance. For example, I remember multiple times newcomers in our community asking for help self-identified as old, or retired, or grandparents switching to GrapheneOS. It's not hard to use, and we have a fairly large community of people who are happy to help others learn the ropes.
GrapheneOS is easy to use, just ask the grandparents rocking it. Our userbase will only continue to increase as we continue to deliver features that people want, with the latest being Secure Paste. Many of users are very excited about the feature. More are planned.
As for the complaint about the name, okay? GrapheneOS is open source. You can change the name everywhere and build it yourself.
Marketing team? You only need to market something if you're selling it. GrapheneOS isn't a product, people buy device brands not OS names. People don't buy OneUI they buy Samsung, they don't buy PixelOS they buy Google, they don't buy OxygenOS they buy OnePlus, people don't buy SteamOS they buy Steamdeck ad infinitum.
Great way to demonstrate you don't know the general public and think and speak only nerd.
That being said people DO buy Google Pixel for GrapheneOS and they WILL buy Motorola for GrapheneOS too.
That is the power of GrapheneOS that all the other BingaBoingoKonohaOS can only wish for.
What a weird angle to have a pop over.
> How is anyone (as in not us, the tech nerds) supposed to reason about this?
People have more than enough brain power to reason about this. "There are several distributions, I recommend this one" is not exactly rocket science.
We really need to stop treating people like they have an IQ of 30 and only 5 minutes of free time per day, or we'll never defeat Google et al that purposefully maintain us in this belief.
Well, Motorola's next flagship is shipping with GrapheneOS, so we'll see.
And I don't see how the name "GrapheneOS" is any worse than "Android". Really, the biggest barriers to adoption are:
- No phones come with it pre-installed (yet)
- They only work with Pixel phones (for now)
- Some apps like certain banking apps don't work
People can buy Pixels with GrapheneOS preinstalled from a bunch of companies despite it not being shipped that way from the factory.
Pixels are currently the only devices providing the required updates and hardware security features. There will be at least one Motorola flagship with GrapheneOS support in 2027 meeting the same requirements. It will expand to more Motorola devices from there. iOS only runs on iPhones but that's hardly a barrier to adoption for it. Pixels aren't quite broadly available enough and it will take time before we can support lower end Motorola devices in the same price range as an 'a' series Pixel.
The vast majority of Android apps do work. Banking apps are a special case where around 10% don't work due to banning using a non-Google-certified OS. Most banking apps definitely work on GrapheneOS.
Google will destroy any OEM which ships an Android fork out of the box. Google only permits alternative ROMs as long as they are niche and keep developers distracted from creating real competition.
Samsung is already largely free from Google's egregiously anti-competitive licensing rules for Google Mobile Services. Why do you think it's going to survive for the rest? It's already unsustainable to have different rules for the largest OEM and that's without even taking into account future court victories similar to what happened in South Korea.
The MADA has been illegal for a long time, but you'll still find nobody willing to cross it. Samsung is indeed the only company with the power to actually escape Google and survive its penalties intact, which is why they are paid so lavishly to stay in.
> An OS made for nerds and by nerds will never reach mainstream
By your own definition, is it meant to make the mainstream?
GrapheneOS is not made for nerds, it is made for normal people.
You don’t know any normal people, do you?
It's the OS every drug dealer uses and the government can't break it. In privacy circles you can't get better marketing than that.
It is not the OS "used by drug dealers". The vast majority of criminals use the stock OS on whichever device they purchase. It is pure make believe to think that people are installing any alternate OSes to commit crimes.
There is also no statistics resulting from surveys, studies, reports, etc., that would indicate such a conclusion about user demographics.
If only privacy circles were big enough to matter.
I still dont get your point, its designed for the security audience and it has a very good reputation there. Its not aimed at normal people, by your own admission they wont even understand what it does and why they would want it. So why are you talking it down for not reaching more normal people?
This was literally a comment:
>GrapheneOS is not made for nerds, it is made for normal people.
What's particularly bad about the names of Graphene, Mint and Cinnamon? Especially compared to Android and iOS!!
On their own? Nothing.
But Graphene doesn’t mean anything to the general public. People aren’t buying “an iOS device”, they are buying iPhones. People aren’t buying “an Android phone”, they are buying “a Samsung/Galaxy” or a “Pixel”.
Mind you, when I say people, I mean the general population. Not those actually interested in these subjects.
My point is: people don’t care about these specifics, people care about having a frictionless experience (or as close to frictionless as possible). Having to explain what Graphene even is is friction enough for most people to not even bother listening to your explanation.
> People aren’t buying “an iOS device”, they are buying iPhone
Well, they kinda do. Apps are available on Android and iOS. They are not "available on Android, iPhone, iPad and Apple watch". iOS is actually used and recognized by the general public.
> They are not “available on Android, iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch”.
No. They are available on the “Play Store” and the “App Store”. OSs are rarely mentioned. Store tags only feature store logos and store names, for device specific ones you get the device itself. The OS remains irrelevant in this scenario.
What's the token budget to build a new phone OS?
It doesn’t really matter if most app providers won’t be porting their apps to the new phone OS.
exactly
A lot. But I don't think you can do it with just tokens. Android without the Play store and Google Play Services is just not very useful (in the West anyway).
Which is why Grapheme runs them in a sandbox. You can too.
Buy HarmonyOS device. No google jumk, android compatible os, fdroid works, years of security updates from maker, and 40% lower price.
As a personal device it works pretty well. For ssh terminal and reading markdown, it has by far best display.
HarmonyOS kernel (HongMeng) is not only closed source but also encrypted. Those devices do not allow you to unlock the bootloader or install apps not signed by them (albeit I don't know how that works for emulator apps, a signed Android emulator could possibly allow arbitrary apks).
Huawei made a big mistake by not fully open sourcing HarmonyOS, you can't flash OpenHarmony so it doesn't count.
That's Huawei's Android fork, right? Is it available on devices outside of China? I'm not seeing an obvious place to buy a device running it.
I think it started like this, but it no longer is the case.
I feel like Huawei missed a gigantic opportunity there: forking AOSP may have gotten them traction. I would totally buy a Huawei device if it could run GrapheneOS, and I wouldn't mind if GrapheneOS was based on Huawei's fork rather than Google's.
Why would China allow the domestic sale of a device that could run GrapheneOS?
Historically, some very large Android OEMs based in China and selling in China also provided bootloader unlocking support in their devices including Xiaomi https://github.com/zenfyrdev/bootloader-unlock-wall-of-shame... and Oppo https://github.com/zenfyrdev/bootloader-unlock-wall-of-shame...
It doesn't have anything directly to do with GrapheneOS, and would have enabled custom OS support of any Android distribution.
Xiaomi claims to provide unlocking, but doesn't actually. I don't know about Oppo.
Why not?
Because it's a totalitarian state that does not tolerate dissent? It's the same reason North Korea requires all devices to be bootloader locked to RedStarOS, but weaker.
So you're saying that running AOSP is fine, but running GrapheneOS is not? Huawei used to run Android, I don't think it was blocked...
I don't think they allow AOSP (which is not Android) either.
Well whatever you call it, when you run something that looks like Android, it has AOSP inside.
LOL an OS controlled by the Chinese government?
As long as it's OSS, you could always fork it back l.
It's not.