this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2026
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It’s better than the alternatives, unfortunately. I really want to dump Apple; the products are waning in quality and the company is spending a lot of time genuflecting for king tangerine. But it just works.
“Just install grapheneOS” my brother in Christ, I have no time or interest in fucking up with the primary communication device I rely on to reach family, friends, and work. I don’t have time for the hobbies I want to do let alone adding work-adjacent activities under the cloak of a hobby.
Installing graphene was not like flashing a ROM ten years ago. You just follow the simple steps on the web installer.
When for xiaomi...jpg
I'd love to jump ship.
The ecosystem is really seamless, especially with a MacBook and Apple watch in the mix.
Though I don’t think there is any winning in the smartphone space. There is a duopoly and even if you personally use graphineOS you still are benefitting and helping the Google ecosystem by using Android apps.
Sadly I don’t think we can “vote with our wallets” on smartphones. We need legal legislation that forces both Apple and Google to be consumer friendly.
Agreed. And someone on this side of the Atlantic with the teeth to bite Apple's face off when they pull shit like they did with right to repair or not allowing progressive web apps.
"You need to let end users be able to repair your devices."
"Okay we will sell a $700 repair 'kit' and each replacement part is $1000 and also they're hardware locked to the original device so you can't reuse older devices for parts. BTW you need our certification."
Nothing would prevent you from communicating with a Graphene OS phone. It's a smartphone OS, not compiling Arch here...
But use whatever excuse you can find to stay in the Apple ecosystem, that's fine.
I'm already there & I don't have money to switch. THATS A PRETTY GOOD FUCKING REASON.
It totally could and probably would. I am a phone OS tinkerer myself, but the above poster is right that it is a lot of hobbyist type tinkering and you can brick your device and fuck it up so you can't communicate with your friends and family.
I agree with the main sentiment that these alternative OSs for phones and computers are a lot better in a lot of ways, but we are unwise to act like getting your computer or phone that way is that easy. Trying to get an alternative OS working well on a device can very easily consume an entire waking day or more, and bricking is not impossible, especially with phones.
Perhaps the parent commenter has apps they need to run for work? I know Microsoft Authenticator isn't supported on Graphene, which is admittedly bullshit but it's a requirement if you work in the government or high security industry like utilities. If that's the case they should be given a work phone, but companies don't do that most of the time in my experience.
Or perhaps they've had a bad experience with an older version. I know that Ubuntu Mobile couldn't even make calls on a lot of devices for a while. I recently had an experience where DTMF signaling didn't work, which meant I couldn't navigate phone trees to do things like get prescriptions filled.
Point being, there are lots of real reasons folks are stuck in their predicament.
The temptation to be snarky is strong, but we risk hurting imperfect allies instead of fighting our real enemies.
Just buy a Fairphone from Murena with /e/OS preinstalled. You don't have to do anything yourself. It mainly works like a phone without any issues, all the features I need work on it and I didn't have to install it manually and supported the devs