What is the advantage over Calyx/Lineage/iode OS on compatible devices? I just don't want Google to have any of my money at all. Buying a privacy solution from them recoups their loss.

I was just wondering earlier today if Google kept the bootloader open to allow custom OS installation only because they had other hardware on the phone that would send them their information anyways, possibly through covert side channels.

Like they could add listeners for cell signals that pick up data encoded in the lower bits of timestamps attached to packets, which would be very difficult to detect (like I'm having trouble thinking of a way to determine if that's happening even if you knew to look for it).

Or maybe there's a sleeper code that can be sent to "wake up" the phone's secret circuitry and send bulk data when Google decides they want something specific (since encoding in timestamps would be pretty low bandwidth), which would make detection by traffic analysis more difficult, since most of the time it isn't sending anything at all.

This is just speculation, but I've picked up on a pattern of speculating that something is technically possible, assuming there's no way they'd actually be doing that, and later finding out that it was actually underestimating what they were doing.

Please read the many write-ups by developers of well regarded privacy and security ROMs, such as grapheneOS and divestOS.

Who detail in great length why root access is a bad idea, and why many apps that require root access, are just poorly developed security nightmares.

That said, I agree that it should be an option, or at least a standardized means of enabling it. As well as all bootloaders should be unlockable. But phones are more personal devices than the PC ever was, and there are good reasons NOT to push for the proliferation of standardized root access.

Weirdly, Pixels are actually the best Android phones for installing custom ROMs, at least out of the major manufacturers. So for me, there isn't another choice, because I can finance a Pixel, and I can't finance a Fairphone or something.

GrapheneOS is really the furthest away from Google you can get on an Android phone and it's mainly developed for Pixel.

do you have root access to YOUR phone?

Yes. On a Pixel 9 Pro Fold.

Ironically, Google Pixels are among the few (US available) brands that still let you fully unlock the BL

And this is different from Apple. Right? Right?

Yep, what radicalized me against Google was all the way back when they had bought Android and rolled out the Play Store for the first time.

I was on my first-ever phone, and yes, it did have rather limited internal storage, but then the Play Store got installed, taking up all the remaining space. I had literally around 500KB of free storage left afterwards, making it impossible to install new apps.

Couldn't uninstall the Play Store, couldn't move it to the SD-card and it didn't even fucking do anything that the Android Market app didn't do. It just took up 40MB more space for no good reason.

It’s so ironic that Pixels are the go to devices for privacy roms these days.

It's so ironic it's a show-stopper for me. I'm not paying fucking Google to escape the Google dystopia. Nosiree! That's just too rich for me.

This is why I own a Fairphone running CalyxOS. Yes, I know GrapheneOS is supposedly more secure - I say supposedly because I think 95% of users don't have a threat model that justifies the extra security really. But I don't care: my number one priority is not giving Google a single cent. If it means running a less secure OS, I'm fine with that.

There's no way on God's green Earth I'm buying a Pixel phone to run a deGoogled OS. That's such an insane proposition I don't even know how anybody can twist their brain into believing this is a rational thing to do.

Citation needed. I get that it's healthy not to trust anyone, but with the amount of security research that goes into these devices if something like that was happening then we would know about it.

Maybe and maybe not. We need to encourage robust alternatives, unfortunately this requires a ton of capital to develop hardware and reserve fab time and get your devices fabricated instead of a major player like Google or Samsung.

We basically need something in the smartphone space equivalent to the Framework laptop, that can meet the security hardware requirements, allow bootloader unlock/relock and support GrapheneOS and other custom ROMs.

Pixel 7 Pro with GrapheneOS

pixel 6a with graphene os

not a phone just a literal block of graphene

Pixel 8a with graphene

Pencil with graphite

iPhone 16 Pro Max, but Graphene does look dope.

The Pixel 9 line had GrapheneOS avaliable a couple of days after launch. That's how fast. You order the phone, and by the time you got it, GrapheneOS was ready to replace Stock Android.