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I really appreciate having a non-Google Android OS, free of Play services and other lock-in, and use Graphene on my own Pixel. The focus on security and hardeni

I really appreciate having a non-Google Android OS, free of Play services and other lock-in, and use Graphene on my own Pixel. The focus on security and hardening is also appreciated, but I wish the project were more ambitious in terms of actually improving on Android in terms of usability, features, and overall experience. As-is it feels like a barebones AOSP with all the security improvements existing as a sort of hypothetical improvement in the background.

ForHackernews 1y ago
You might like /e/OS. It's less secure/hardened than Graphene, but offers a de-Googled Android with a focus on privacy and usability.
- user2722 1y ago
  It uses microG which has its own set of issues, though.
  - cookiengineer 1y ago
    And it's a 1:1 copy of LineageOS, so there's that.
  - strcat 1y ago
    It has very poor privacy and security. See https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/24134-devices-lacking-standard-privacysecurity-patches-and-protections-arent-private https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/24134-devices-lacking-stand.... It lags extremely far behind on kernel, driver and firmware patches even when they're available. It lags far behind on AOSP and browser patches too. As an example, /e/ on the Pixel 7 is still on Android 13 with multiple years of missing High and Critical severity kernel, firmware and driver patches since they didn't backport it to Android 13 while the Pixel 7 is on Android 16.
- ysnp 1y ago
  The base operating system is quite far behind on app compatibility, privacy and "deGoogling" in comparison to GrapheneOS https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm.
  - ForHackernews 1y ago
    /e/OS blocks trackers in apps out of the box. AFAIK Graphene doesn't do anything similar.
    - ysnp 1y ago
      Because the technicalities of accomplishing something like that are quite complicated from what I understand. If an app has the necessary permissions and network access, almost anything you try to stop it from transmitting data about the platform and data about its usage is futile. You're firing a starting pistol for a race to the bottom where app developers just end up sending all that information to their own first-party servers instead to be shared with whoever they wanted to anyway. GrapheneOS absolutely tries to deal with the root of the issue, by giving the user control over sensors and network permissions that return fake/simulated data to keep the app running while denying access to data in the first place. Or contact scopes and storage scopes which restrict access to contact information or storage locations in the first place. As you can imagine, more are planned like location scopes, app communication scopes etc.
      - ForHackernews 1y ago
        /e/OS has native support for feeding fake data to apps, too: https://doc.e.foundation/support-topics/advanced_privacy#fake-my-location https://doc.e.foundation/support-topics/advanced_privacy#fak...
        strcat 1y ago
        Global Mock Location is a standard Android feature not specific to /e/. GrapheneOS also supports it, and is building a better replacement for it similar to our Contact Scopes and Storage Scopes features providing otherwise missing functionality in Android that's partly available in iOS. /e/ doesn't have either of those things or other privacy features such as the Sensors toggle. /e/ can't prevent tracking by apps and doesn't do it. It has built-in DNS filtering, which doesn't stop the most privacy invasive behavior by apps but rather only single purpose domains for the least invasive tracking making no attempt to evade filtering as explained in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45598100 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45598100. Any app or SDK wanting to evade DNS filtering only has to use a dual purpose domain, perform their own DNS requests via DoH or fall back to an IP address so many apps and SDKs do those things. However, the most privacy invasive behavior almost always happens through the servers used for app functionality with server side data sharing with third parties. It's not considered good practice to put API keys into the client and do things client side in the first place. There are some exceptions such as crash reporting, analytics and telemetry where that's common which are far from the most privacy invasive behaviors. If they want to evade DNS filtering for those, that's easy.
- strcat 1y ago
  /e/ has extraordinarily poor privacy and security. It's largely the opposite of GrapheneOS. It's hardly focused on privacy and security. See the information available at https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/24134-devices-lacking-standard-privacysecurity-patches-and-protections-arent-private https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/24134-devices-lacking-stand... including the information that's linked from third party privacy and security researchers. /e/ always uses multiple Google services and builds in privileged support for Google apps and services so the branding as a degoogled OS doesn't really make sense. GrapheneOS doesn't brand itself that way but doesn't make connections to Google servers by default and doesn't provide privileged access to Google apps and services.
- pcdoodle 1y ago
  I can't trust someone that names their product /e/OS.
esseph 1y ago
What more do you want your phone to do at this point?
- beeflet 1y ago
  work in 10 years
  - tasuki 1y ago
    I'm with you, but we're not far from that? I had my previous cheapo Chinese phone for 7 years. Only bought new one this year because the battery was gone and the display had some scratches. The photos are a little nicer I guess?
- mxmilkiib 1y ago
  an in-built stylus + swipe input to help avoid RSI
  - Kudos 1y ago
    Swipe input isn't the responsibility of the OS. Just install a keyboard that offers it.
jojobas 1y ago
While this is awesome, I'm kinda skeptical on the premise on two points. Almost nobody cares about privacy, and this is going to be super expensive. I might be fine with paying extra, but the economy might not work out, like it didn't for Blackphone. Fairphone is barely alive as well. Seeing as phones are just source of ad money Google can drop the prices on their phones as well. Some European countries and banks already require crap like Play Integrity for essential apps. So far it's possible to hold out, but for how much longer?
- XorNot 1y ago
  This is the real problem: I need my phone to work with my bank. So whatever we're doing, that's the bar to clear.
  - foresto 1y ago
    Is there something important in banking apps that cannot be done with a web browser?
    - Gee101 1y ago
      My bank uses the banking app for auth if I try and login via a browser.
      - HPsquared 1y ago
        Barclays in the UK offer (or used to) a hardware device with a keypad allowing the user to do a challenge-response using the bank card's chip and PIN. Not sure if they still do, though. Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_Authentication_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_Authentication_Program
      - array_key_first 1y ago
        That's because they're stupid or doing something suspicious, probably both. There's legitimately zero reason to allow 2FA only on your own propreitary app. You can't even make a financial argument - allowing other TOTP methods is cheaper because now you don't need an app!
udev4096 1y ago
It would be a complete waste of time for devs to focus on making the AOSP apps pretty. I don't really get the hate, AOSP apps are completely fine and it's not like you have to look at it all the time
- whatshisface 1y ago
  Anyone who doesn't like how they look has an absolute right to fix it and no right at all to complain. ;-)
  - bestouff 1y ago
    You can't fix GrapheneOS. It's not LineageOS.
    - whatshisface 1y ago
      I'm not sure what you mean. They do have a secret key used for hardware attestation, but to my knowledge it's not supported anywhere and your own build would pass attestation just as well. For apps outside the core you wouldn't even have to do that much - just fork them and install your own. https://github.com/GrapheneOS/Camera https://github.com/GrapheneOS/Camera
  - monooso 1y ago
    They have every right to complain. They don't have any right to expect their complaints to be acted upon.
- jeroenhd 1y ago
  AOSP apps look and work terrible in my opinion. The music player hasn't changed since what, Android 2? There's a reason ROMs like LineageOS develop their own alternatives. Most ROMs seem to use those open source alternatives rather than the apps Google abandoned with AOSP.
  - udev4096 1y ago
    I was talking about the AOSP apps GOS ships, which is handful and doesn't include a music player. Apart from maybe the gallery app, I don't see any other as completely unusable. They already maintain Camera, PDF viewer, Vanadium, App store and Auditor
whatsupdog 1y ago
Why is this the most top voted comment? Do a lot of people really feel this way? Honestly, I feel it's ridiculous to expect this from Graphene OS. It's a privacy focused OS. If you want shiny features there is iOS.
- AntiqueFig 1y ago
  I mean there could be a middle ground between no shiny features at all and iOS.
  - Vilhelmina 1y ago
    There are 15 degoogled custom ROMs listed in the wiki at https://customromhardware.miraheze.org https://customromhardware.miraheze.org so saying this is a binary choice is just wrong.
- alex77456 1y ago
  If anything, it would be detrimental to their mission. Asking them to improve android in every way is the lawyers equivalent of ddos'ing an adversary with paperwork
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- ASalazarMX 1y ago
  It's a good idea, if not for Graphene. Graphene could be the Debian of mobile OSs, they keep doing what they do best, stay aligned with their goals, and others could use it as a base and add dancing hamsters to the bootloader.
- ulam2 1y ago
  And with all the progress in LLMs and MCPs, I thought the number of smartphone OSs would just explode
ysnp 1y ago
They are already stretched a bit in terms of doing what they are comfortable and best at which is implementing privacy and security enhancements in AOSP and maintaining them across AOSP changes and upgrades (or getting them upstreamed if palatable to Google/AOSP). They have made major usability improvements like eSIM support and network-based location. They have also been forced to work on things due to unrelenting popular demand like Android Auto support, sandboxed-google-play and the compatibility layer and Google Messages & RCS support.. to the cost of working on other security/privacy enhancements. At the end of the day, this is more a question of resources available. I think the task of usability, features and overall experience is better delegated to another group of developers who might then contribute those improvements to GrapheneOS as well in an ideal world.
- idle_zealot 1y ago
  > I think the task of usability, features and overall experience is better delegated to another group of developers who might then contribute those improvements to GrapheneOS as well in an ideal world I agree completely. I don't expect one small team to carry the weight of building an ideal OS. I'm just disappointed that while there's loads of work being done spinning up interesting desktop OSes with new paradigms for UX and system management, the same can't be said of the mobile space. Everything there is basically some slight variation on iOS.
npteljes 1y ago
What does Android need "in terms of usability, features, and overall experience"? I personally don't feel that anything is missing. I'd love a denser battery maybe.
- idle_zealot 1y ago
  I'd like to see some experimentation with core system UI, like the notification/quick settings thing. I'm not convinced the weird double-pull-down hybrid thing Android uses is a good design. I'd love to see some experimentation on a multitasking system that isn't clunky and inconsistent. Some of the tweaks Samsung puts in their Android spin could be nice. I'm not expecting a security-focused team to work on this stuff, but it's too bad that nobody is. I feel like we've settled on a pretty lousy core mobile operating system paradigm, and just generally wish people were experimenting and iterating on a variety of ideas.
  - jampekka 1y ago
    A lot of people get Pixel and other "vanilla Android" phones to avoid spins like Samsung's.
  - npteljes 1y ago
    I see what you mean, but GrapheneOS has completely different goals. Simply put, Graphene strives to be a secure, degoogled Android. Other than that, it has the same goal as the Pixel phones: to be as close to mainline Android as possible.
  - phatskat 1y ago
    I watched my partner adjust the volume on her android phone (some Motorola phone) and first there was the vertical slider, she tapped it, and it expanded to idk 5-6 different volume sliders? I appreciate having the option, and I feel like that’s a lot to shove into the UI for a mobile device. I prefer the iOS model, though it’s not without its own issues. For iOS, if no media is playing, the volume buttons control the ringer/notification volume. If there’s music or a video actively playing, the controls adjust the playback volume. Honestly, my biggest gripe is not being able to easily set ringer volume while something is playing - I just did a quick test with Spotify open, and going to the settings app and adjusting the ringer stopped playback for the ringer sample to play.
rldjbpin 1y ago
> I wish the project were more ambitious in terms of actually improving on Android in terms of usability, features, and overall experience. i agree with the sentiment, but not for the features part. just getting the core functionality working across devices (securely of course) is already a lot of tedious work. just look at the dearth of supported devices that do not run a specific soc or from a famous brand. for vast majority of features, one can personalize themselves by getting apps. most don't need rooting or any technical know-how. it will be unproductive to spend time ricing the os for users when they got their own personal preferences regardless. which is why it is fine to focus on getting the core things right first.

ForHackernews 1y ago

You might like /e/OS. It's less secure/hardened than Graphene, but offers a de-Googled Android with a focus on privacy and usability.

user2722 1y ago
It uses microG which has its own set of issues, though.
- cookiengineer 1y ago
  And it's a 1:1 copy of LineageOS, so there's that.
- strcat 1y ago
  It has very poor privacy and security. See https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/24134-devices-lacking-standard-privacysecurity-patches-and-protections-arent-private https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/24134-devices-lacking-stand.... It lags extremely far behind on kernel, driver and firmware patches even when they're available. It lags far behind on AOSP and browser patches too. As an example, /e/ on the Pixel 7 is still on Android 13 with multiple years of missing High and Critical severity kernel, firmware and driver patches since they didn't backport it to Android 13 while the Pixel 7 is on Android 16.
ysnp 1y ago
The base operating system is quite far behind on app compatibility, privacy and "deGoogling" in comparison to GrapheneOS https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm.
- ForHackernews 1y ago
  /e/OS blocks trackers in apps out of the box. AFAIK Graphene doesn't do anything similar.
  - ysnp 1y ago
    Because the technicalities of accomplishing something like that are quite complicated from what I understand. If an app has the necessary permissions and network access, almost anything you try to stop it from transmitting data about the platform and data about its usage is futile. You're firing a starting pistol for a race to the bottom where app developers just end up sending all that information to their own first-party servers instead to be shared with whoever they wanted to anyway. GrapheneOS absolutely tries to deal with the root of the issue, by giving the user control over sensors and network permissions that return fake/simulated data to keep the app running while denying access to data in the first place. Or contact scopes and storage scopes which restrict access to contact information or storage locations in the first place. As you can imagine, more are planned like location scopes, app communication scopes etc.
    - ForHackernews 1y ago
      /e/OS has native support for feeding fake data to apps, too: https://doc.e.foundation/support-topics/advanced_privacy#fake-my-location https://doc.e.foundation/support-topics/advanced_privacy#fak...
      - strcat 1y ago
        Global Mock Location is a standard Android feature not specific to /e/. GrapheneOS also supports it, and is building a better replacement for it similar to our Contact Scopes and Storage Scopes features providing otherwise missing functionality in Android that's partly available in iOS. /e/ doesn't have either of those things or other privacy features such as the Sensors toggle. /e/ can't prevent tracking by apps and doesn't do it. It has built-in DNS filtering, which doesn't stop the most privacy invasive behavior by apps but rather only single purpose domains for the least invasive tracking making no attempt to evade filtering as explained in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45598100 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45598100. Any app or SDK wanting to evade DNS filtering only has to use a dual purpose domain, perform their own DNS requests via DoH or fall back to an IP address so many apps and SDKs do those things. However, the most privacy invasive behavior almost always happens through the servers used for app functionality with server side data sharing with third parties. It's not considered good practice to put API keys into the client and do things client side in the first place. There are some exceptions such as crash reporting, analytics and telemetry where that's common which are far from the most privacy invasive behaviors. If they want to evade DNS filtering for those, that's easy.
strcat 1y ago
/e/ has extraordinarily poor privacy and security. It's largely the opposite of GrapheneOS. It's hardly focused on privacy and security. See the information available at https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/24134-devices-lacking-standard-privacysecurity-patches-and-protections-arent-private https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/24134-devices-lacking-stand... including the information that's linked from third party privacy and security researchers. /e/ always uses multiple Google services and builds in privileged support for Google apps and services so the branding as a degoogled OS doesn't really make sense. GrapheneOS doesn't brand itself that way but doesn't make connections to Google servers by default and doesn't provide privileged access to Google apps and services.
pcdoodle 1y ago
I can't trust someone that names their product /e/OS.

esseph 1y ago

What more do you want your phone to do at this point?

beeflet 1y ago
work in 10 years
- tasuki 1y ago
  I'm with you, but we're not far from that? I had my previous cheapo Chinese phone for 7 years. Only bought new one this year because the battery was gone and the display had some scratches. The photos are a little nicer I guess?
mxmilkiib 1y ago
an in-built stylus + swipe input to help avoid RSI
- Kudos 1y ago
  Swipe input isn't the responsibility of the OS. Just install a keyboard that offers it.

jojobas 1y ago

While this is awesome, I'm kinda skeptical on the premise on two points. Almost nobody cares about privacy, and this is going to be super expensive. I might be fine with paying extra, but the economy might not work out, like it didn't for Blackphone. Fairphone is barely alive as well. Seeing as phones are just source of ad money Google can drop the prices on their phones as well. Some European countries and banks already require crap like Play Integrity for essential apps. So far it's possible to hold out, but for how much longer?

XorNot 1y ago
This is the real problem: I need my phone to work with my bank. So whatever we're doing, that's the bar to clear.
- foresto 1y ago
  Is there something important in banking apps that cannot be done with a web browser?
  - Gee101 1y ago
    My bank uses the banking app for auth if I try and login via a browser.
    - HPsquared 1y ago
      Barclays in the UK offer (or used to) a hardware device with a keypad allowing the user to do a challenge-response using the bank card's chip and PIN. Not sure if they still do, though. Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_Authentication_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_Authentication_Program
    - array_key_first 1y ago
      That's because they're stupid or doing something suspicious, probably both. There's legitimately zero reason to allow 2FA only on your own propreitary app. You can't even make a financial argument - allowing other TOTP methods is cheaper because now you don't need an app!

udev4096 1y ago

It would be a complete waste of time for devs to focus on making the AOSP apps pretty. I don't really get the hate, AOSP apps are completely fine and it's not like you have to look at it all the time

whatshisface 1y ago
Anyone who doesn't like how they look has an absolute right to fix it and no right at all to complain. ;-)
- bestouff 1y ago
  You can't fix GrapheneOS. It's not LineageOS.
  - whatshisface 1y ago
    I'm not sure what you mean. They do have a secret key used for hardware attestation, but to my knowledge it's not supported anywhere and your own build would pass attestation just as well. For apps outside the core you wouldn't even have to do that much - just fork them and install your own. https://github.com/GrapheneOS/Camera https://github.com/GrapheneOS/Camera
- monooso 1y ago
  They have every right to complain. They don't have any right to expect their complaints to be acted upon.
jeroenhd 1y ago
AOSP apps look and work terrible in my opinion. The music player hasn't changed since what, Android 2? There's a reason ROMs like LineageOS develop their own alternatives. Most ROMs seem to use those open source alternatives rather than the apps Google abandoned with AOSP.
- udev4096 1y ago
  I was talking about the AOSP apps GOS ships, which is handful and doesn't include a music player. Apart from maybe the gallery app, I don't see any other as completely unusable. They already maintain Camera, PDF viewer, Vanadium, App store and Auditor

whatsupdog 1y ago

Why is this the most top voted comment? Do a lot of people really feel this way? Honestly, I feel it's ridiculous to expect this from Graphene OS. It's a privacy focused OS. If you want shiny features there is iOS.

AntiqueFig 1y ago
I mean there could be a middle ground between no shiny features at all and iOS.
- Vilhelmina 1y ago
  There are 15 degoogled custom ROMs listed in the wiki at https://customromhardware.miraheze.org https://customromhardware.miraheze.org so saying this is a binary choice is just wrong.
alex77456 1y ago
If anything, it would be detrimental to their mission. Asking them to improve android in every way is the lawyers equivalent of ddos'ing an adversary with paperwork
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
ASalazarMX 1y ago
It's a good idea, if not for Graphene. Graphene could be the Debian of mobile OSs, they keep doing what they do best, stay aligned with their goals, and others could use it as a base and add dancing hamsters to the bootloader.
ulam2 1y ago
And with all the progress in LLMs and MCPs, I thought the number of smartphone OSs would just explode

ysnp 1y ago

They are already stretched a bit in terms of doing what they are comfortable and best at which is implementing privacy and security enhancements in AOSP and maintaining them across AOSP changes and upgrades (or getting them upstreamed if palatable to Google/AOSP). They have made major usability improvements like eSIM support and network-based location. They have also been forced to work on things due to unrelenting popular demand like Android Auto support, sandboxed-google-play and the compatibility layer and Google Messages & RCS support.. to the cost of working on other security/privacy enhancements. At the end of the day, this is more a question of resources available. I think the task of usability, features and overall experience is better delegated to another group of developers who might then contribute those improvements to GrapheneOS as well in an ideal world.

idle_zealot 1y ago
> I think the task of usability, features and overall experience is better delegated to another group of developers who might then contribute those improvements to GrapheneOS as well in an ideal world I agree completely. I don't expect one small team to carry the weight of building an ideal OS. I'm just disappointed that while there's loads of work being done spinning up interesting desktop OSes with new paradigms for UX and system management, the same can't be said of the mobile space. Everything there is basically some slight variation on iOS.

npteljes 1y ago

What does Android need "in terms of usability, features, and overall experience"? I personally don't feel that anything is missing. I'd love a denser battery maybe.

idle_zealot 1y ago
I'd like to see some experimentation with core system UI, like the notification/quick settings thing. I'm not convinced the weird double-pull-down hybrid thing Android uses is a good design. I'd love to see some experimentation on a multitasking system that isn't clunky and inconsistent. Some of the tweaks Samsung puts in their Android spin could be nice. I'm not expecting a security-focused team to work on this stuff, but it's too bad that nobody is. I feel like we've settled on a pretty lousy core mobile operating system paradigm, and just generally wish people were experimenting and iterating on a variety of ideas.
- jampekka 1y ago
  A lot of people get Pixel and other "vanilla Android" phones to avoid spins like Samsung's.
- npteljes 1y ago
  I see what you mean, but GrapheneOS has completely different goals. Simply put, Graphene strives to be a secure, degoogled Android. Other than that, it has the same goal as the Pixel phones: to be as close to mainline Android as possible.
- phatskat 1y ago
  I watched my partner adjust the volume on her android phone (some Motorola phone) and first there was the vertical slider, she tapped it, and it expanded to idk 5-6 different volume sliders? I appreciate having the option, and I feel like that’s a lot to shove into the UI for a mobile device. I prefer the iOS model, though it’s not without its own issues. For iOS, if no media is playing, the volume buttons control the ringer/notification volume. If there’s music or a video actively playing, the controls adjust the playback volume. Honestly, my biggest gripe is not being able to easily set ringer volume while something is playing - I just did a quick test with Spotify open, and going to the settings app and adjusting the ringer stopped playback for the ringer sample to play.

rldjbpin 1y ago

> I wish the project were more ambitious in terms of actually improving on Android in terms of usability, features, and overall experience. i agree with the sentiment, but not for the features part. just getting the core functionality working across devices (securely of course) is already a lot of tedious work. just look at the dearth of supported devices that do not run a specific soc or from a famous brand. for vast majority of features, one can personalize themselves by getting apps. most don't need rooting or any technical know-how. it will be unproductive to spend time ricing the os for users when they got their own personal preferences regardless. which is why it is fine to focus on getting the core things right first.