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Degoogled phones running privacy oriented OS
- hedora 5y agoTyping this on a grapheneos pixel 6 pro. It makes a fine daily driver. Main complaint: Location stamps for google camera photos are a bit intermittent unless I give the sandboxed play services network access. Not sure why it's so hard to ping GPS occasionally in the background, and stick the last known location in the exif data. Still, I would recommend this setup to the HN crowd.
- aaaaaaaaata 5y agoCan't recommend the smooth experience, their hardened_malloc, and Auditor enough (what socially distributed security looks like!)
- aaaaaaaaata 5y ago> stick the last known location in the exif data. You weren't the end-user in mind for this feature, it seems.
- ea550ff70a 5y agoI've been driving Graphene for over a year. Absolutely amazing experience (for a degoogled phone). Kudos to the great team.
- gostsamo 5y agoHi, can you check the accessibility services on Graphene? Are there any screen readers?
- bitminers 5y agoYes you can use Android accessibility features with Graphene such as magnification.
- gostsamo 5y agoGood for the magnification, but I need a full screen reader with a tts engine.
- EnigmaCurry 5y agoLooking in the settings, I see there is something called TalkBack: ``` When Talkback is on, it provides spoken feedback so that you can use your device without looking at the screen. Talkback is intended for situations or people who have difficulty seeing the screen. ```
- gostsamo 5y agothanks, good to know
- Proven 5y ago
- hef19898 5y agoGraphene was one of the two alternatibes, the other being Calyx. Since I'm using my old and tristed Pixel 2, it was Calyx because Graphene didn't support the Pixel 2 anymore. At first I had to adapt to the lack of Google services. Now, I wont go back anymore.
- L_226 5y agoI am looking at installing grapheneOS. Do you use a banking app, and if so any issues?
- circularfoyers 5y agoI do without issues, but it varies on your bank's app. There's a good chance you'll need Google Play Services, so you can receive two factor push notifications for example. But thankfully GrapheneOS has the option for Google Play Services to be installed sandboxed to varying degrees.
- L_226 5y agoThanks. I actually see now I will have to build it myself for my non-pixel phone, so let's see how it goes.
- vodkapump 5y agoI've recently switched to GrapheneOS, and I had issues using my old banks app (DNB, Norwegian bank) but my current bank (Sparebank1, also Norwegian) works perfectly on GrapheneOS. I've also discovered that some apps that require safetynet, can be grabbed from the Huawei store and used, because apparently on chinese phones your bank suddenly doesn't need safetynet to be secure.
- throwaway48375 5y ago>mad that google photos doesn't know his exact location i don't even
- netizen-936824 5y agoYea this is a bit baffling >installs grapheneos which focuses on security and privacy >wonders why their location isn't being logged by the camera app
- JeremyNT 5y agoThese aims shouldn't be incompatible. The device should be able to use purely local location data to tag the photos, and then the photos should only be made available to applications the user trusts. We've been so brainwashed by saas companies to expect that simply collecting information implies sharing it. The point of distributions like this is to remove those cloud dependencies while retaining functionality, and placing that functionality at the control of the user.
- netizen-936824 5y agoFine if you decide to have GPS enabled for photos, but it should be opt in rather than opt out. Anyone who manages to get access to your images could reconstruct a map of where and when you have been
- hedora 5y agoGoogle camera prompts about saving location on first startup. Graphene's default camera defaults to "off". I naively assumed, given how GPS works, that I could enable location access, and disable network access for the camera app, and that it would still be capable of copying two floating point numbers from the local GPS chipset to the exif data. Instead, it wants to call out to some questionable network services. I'm clearly not the only one that wants this feature. Graphene even includes a reimplementation of the necessary Google API. However, it (and the original google implementation) are flaky. This all "just worked" on my iPhone and (before that) Windows Phone. It didn't even occur to me that it was a thing that could be screwed up.
- uo21tp5hoyg 5y agoThe US government has really shaken my trust in services like these (which I guess is their ultimate goal). With the risk that these "secure devices" type sellers are fronts I think it's best practice for anyone wanting a de-googeled device to just buy one of these phones in store with cash and then load the custom OS themselves, it requires the level of technical knowledge you'd need to even know you'd want something like this in the first place so anyone that wants it can easily do it. Also I find it ironic that this website is full of Google requests, we've got YouTube, google translate, gstatic content, google recaptcha, googleapis, and google fonts requests all just on the landing page alone. Doesn't help that it's sending data to Facebook either.
- yaomtc 5y agoIt's even easier these days with the web installer that GrapheneOS uses. https://grapheneos.org/install/web https://grapheneos.org/install/web
- BLKNSLVR 5y agoThe frontend seems to be 100% shopify dependent (ie. the page is blank if the shopify domain is blocked), but I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.
- i67vw3 5y agoArcaneOS comes to my mind as a recent example. I always suggest anyone to load the custom ROM themselves or ask someone you know IRL to do it for you. If you think you do not have the expertise to do it, you should ask for help. There is a good chance that you will do something wrong and compeletely brick the phone. Rob Braxman sells degoogled phones on his online store https://brax.me/prod/host.php?f=_store&h=rob&p= https://brax.me/prod/host.php?f=_store&h=rob&p=. Some say he is goverment psyop while some think he is pretty legit https://www.reddit.com/r/privacytoolsIO/comments/imf6vx/how_good_is_braxme/ https://www.reddit.com/r/privacytoolsIO/comments/imf6vx/how_...
- Osiris 5y agoHe ow can you trust the ArcaneOS releases to not be free from backdoors, etc? Even if you build the image yourself you're still relying on someone else's code. It reminds me of the office space quote, "no one can check all that code. Thumbs up their a$$es."
- hans_castorp 5y agoThere is also eFoundation: https://e.foundation/ https://e.foundation/
- em-bee 5y agoi was wondering why de-googled.com does not offer e.foundation as well, but then they sell phones as well, and i guess there is no need to compete on the same product. very happy with /e/OS for more than two years now.
- inediblePotato 5y agoDitto. Have a fairphone3 with /e/ (bought directly from them) for 2 years also. It has it's quirks and compromises, though most of those are 'features' of not having google. Overall I am happy with it but it takes a bit of work to get most of the features back of a googled phone. Signal backups, shared notes, banking apps, etc. Most banking apps work, though some only with micro-g. I would like to test some other degoogled options to compare/contrast but I would recommend /e/ (which is very close to lineage+microg) to at least technically capable people, not yet ready as a birthday gift for granny though.
- em-bee 5y agomy mother in europe uses a phone with /e/OS just fine. she doesn't do phone banking though. i live in a degoogled country ;-) so for me the experience is even smoother than local phones which are filled with spy and ad ware.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- npteljes 5y agoI use an S9 with their dev build, and with my own NextCloud, and it works fine.
- emsixteen 5y agoWhen I see a website that looks as woeful as this I can't help but think that that lacklustre approach leaks over to their actual product.
- flerp 5y agoThe website is completely unusable from a phone.
- Ambolia 5y agoAre there any good phones that haven't been "googled" in the first place?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- nerdponx 5y agoI believe the Librem 5 never was "Googled" or "Appled". PinePhone too, but that doesn't seem ready for regular users yet.
- a-t-0 5y agoIf this is your jam, it might be worth to contribute to: https://github.com/hiveminds/productivity-phone https://github.com/hiveminds/productivity-phone it is an opinionated, low-quality repo that automatically swaps the operating system of the Fairphone 2 to de-googled LineageOS (and back again if you want to). It is tested using sample-size=1, does not yet have good documentation and I'm in the process (low priority) of setting up meaningful testing and CI. However, I think the code, once cleaned up, is relatively portable to other devices (that support LineageOS). Disclaimer, I'm involved in the development of that repo.
- vhsdev 5y agoDid anyone look at the business address? It's placeholder text...
- numlock86 5y agoIs this real? It has the appeal of a typical scam/phishing site ... and I am not just talking about the design. Some things like business address appear to be placeholders.
- de-googled 5y agoHi, I understand the doubters. Please note that the business address is the building where we currently work from :). As written on the website "This is not our full time job (may be one day), but we enjoy seeing others realize that they have options when it comes to their phone."; this is why we haven't specified the full address (with room/floor). We are based in Hong Kong but we have also have other people helping us from other parts of Europe and US. Cheers
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- laurent123456 5y agoI don't trust Google but I would trust them more than this website. Who knows what they are going to install on the phone before shipping it.
- a3w 5y agoFor me, the website does not even load since it uses way too many javascript hosts which I have to trust.
- _8j50 5y agoSee, my frustration is, apps can still track you even with all this and copperheados or whatever. And you still get pwned no matter what. If you have to use android I agree, this is the way to go but all I would be doing is giving myself false assurances of privacy and security if I believed there is a significant difference in effective security or privacy if I just used an iPhone that is better supported,nicer UX and nicer (quality) hardware. I prefer to treat smartphones as hostile devices and move important data elsewhere to retain control.
- dangStupid 5y ago
- QuarterReptile 5y agoThis will probably be buried because I'm too late to the party... This website is probably just selling you the results of following a guide from a guy who goes by Michael Bazzel. He has a podcast (Privacy, Security, and OSINT show) and releases a privacy book every other year, alternating with an OSINT book. He also has good guides on his website and they sell all sorts of training. Anyway, if you want it done right, do it yourself and know what you're getting. My understanding is that his guides are aimed at an audience significantly less technically capable than HN.
- de-googled 5y agoYou are completely right, as we write on the website the most secure and private way to degoogle your phone is to do it yourself. The phones we sell we the pre-installed OS are more for people that are not technically able to do it themselves.
- toastercat 5y agoBeen running CalyxOS on my Pixel 5 for half a year now, and it's been great. I'd advise just doing the installation yourself instead of buying a pre-configured phone, since it's not very hard if you already have a bit of technical know-how. The only downside is I hate Android 12. :P