this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2026
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Privacy
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Graphene really is the next best thing. If you can get your hands on a used Pixel or splurge for a new one, you won't regret converting. At least until there's a production-ready gnuPhone
I don't really understand why Pixel is that evryone likes/they support.
I can't accept the fact that there is no external sd card support.
I believe I am getting old because I am very stuck on this point, even more than the headphone jack.
Nevermind I just saw Motorola is actually making a deal with gaphene OS. They were my next future phone with sd cards and even styluses- if this goes through, can't wait!
Pixels are the main target of aftermarket ROMs because they are reference Android devices with highly available unlocked developer modes. Most companies producing phones do things like add propriety changes that require substantial workarounds for relatively basic hardware functionality and make it much more difficult to even install an aftermarket ROM.
Really this is all a consequence of capitalism itself and the need to lock in ecosystems to establish controlled markets (allowing for controlling one's own profit). Every phone could be fully unlockable and hackable by the end user, but companies specifically prevent this in order to maximize their own profits.
Apple did a hell of a job teaching people that means it’s more fancy.
Yeah but apple actually takes care of its customers. They are one of the few ones that is exactly what it seems, and isn't expensive or cheap. Most people saying apple devices are overpriced simply aren't the target demographic for the products.
They sure don't do that from the good of their heart,
they make their customers pay for a 'service' that robs them of their freedom
Apple routinely slows down its phones with every major update, promoting people buying $1k+ phones every 2-3 years.
Bullshit. Upgrading from 1 TB of internal storage to 2 TB on a laptop is not a $250 expense. Before the memory crisis, I could have bought a brand new M.2 SSD with the full 2 TB for less than that.
yeah but it is nearly double that now
I did say before the memory crisis. It's not a bad deal now comparatively with everything else being overpriced, but that doesn't change the fact that Apple hardware is itself overpriced.
I wasn't disagreeing just pointing out that a 2TB NVME went from like $180 to $450 :( (as of yesterday at Microcenter at least was $400 last week)
"poor people making poor people noises" is all I'm getting out of you. what are you doing on lemmy dont you have an ai chatbot to flirt with?
You sound fun.
I see! Thanks for this explanation.
No problem friend. It is fairly hard to handle all those other phones - see how LineageOS keeps it's supported list fairly small!
I also like having expanded storage. But if you actually care about privacy?
You want the minimum amount of data on your phone at any given time. Your recent camera roll, any cached music and apps, and that is really it. Everything should be offloaded to your private storage ASAP
Because for as shit as google and apple are? You can also remote wipe those devices. less effective if it is a government agent that has it, but it is a thing. And, depending on the storage setup, that sd card might be raw dogging it to begin with.
It shouldn't be difficult for a custom ROM like GrapheneOS to make the user explicitly allow a microSD card to be mounted if that would cause any security issues.
And welcome to software development. Every feature needs time (money), engineers (money), and testing (money). With most testing continuing in perpetuity because any pull request could break it.
And when you add on that graphene is a nonprofit baked FOSS project... Well, if it is as simple as you think it is then get to making a pull request, I guess?
Couldn’t you encrypt the SD card? And while you’re at it encrypt the internal storage also. Linux should support that, right?
I understand sd card is a security risk. But you don't have to use it.
The utility is the key.
I'm just 100% against corporations enshittificating their products so you pay hundreds more for a 50$ part.
It is because there are hardware security features that most other Android phones do not support and Graphene OS is going for maximum security and privacy. Besides, they're coming out with their own hardware by partnering with Motorola shortly.
Do you mean internal SD card slot? Because pixels absolutely support external sd cards
OK, this is going to sound dismissive, and I really don't mean it to be. But why?
For data transfer, you can still use the USB port (I do it all the time). Other than that, there's more than enough storage available onboard for any reasonable amount of usage. I don't even really keep anything critical on my device at all, so what there is is kind of overkill already.
I just don't understand the need for an SD card with storage being as plentiful now as it is. I want to understand.
If you want to carry your whole music library around, a big SD card makes that work. I understand streaming is the trendy thing and I was using Navidrome myself, but I rolled back my plan and switched to SD card for it. I've saved money.
Another use case is for carrying a heap of ROMs. I've also done this until I realised gaming on my phone was uncomfortable and bought a dedicated device.
Having the SD card wasn't a dealbreaker for me when I bought this phone but I do really like having it.
An ezpz 256 gigs without spending an extra $200 used to be orgasmic is all I can say
I'm a data hog. Storage is cheap and it should be available on my phone also.
People always saying physical Media is important, and most of the time they tink of cds and dvds.
I use my sd cards for physical Media sorage.
I used my camera and accidentally recorded 40 gigs of video.
With external card I do not have to worry.
Music, books, picture heavy pdfs, movies full tv series sits comfortably in my palm.
I use an encrypted offline raid at home and encrypted cloud storage that automatically backs up. My phone is basically empty, plenty of room to accidentally record 40 gb+
Interesting. Thanks for letting me know.
I think of myself as a data hog also, but only on my computer; I'm mostly a minimalist on my phone.
It really depends on how much you are using your phone.
If I would go back 20 years I would be attached to my desktop pc and my ebook reader pocket pc. ln that case I would not need extra storage for my phone. Tho thinking of it... I had two different external cards for that handheld even back then. :)
I feel your pain on storage and headphones but Graphene is worth the sacrifice to me. I also like that my 8a will get updates until at least 2030.
They're not that impressive specs wise, somewhere between mid range and a "real" flagship that has a Snapdragon Elite chip. The only reason to get it is the top of the line security features that allow GrapheneOS to function. Or the software if you're into Ai and such and don't want Graphene, but that's like the opposite of privacy.
I'd argue that Graphene is a better thing since it's based on an OS that's been designed for mobile from the ground up. I expect it's going to be a while before Linux UX on mobile catches up to desktop, but Graphene works great already.
Sad thing is that Linux used to be ahead on phones. Everyone swore by N900 and it was sabotaged by ms buykilling Nokia.
It would've been a cool world if we got Linux that could work seamlessly between desktop and mobile. Imagine if you had architecture where apps were built as services with an API, and then you could connect either desktop or mobile UI to them. Heck, at that point you could even make custom UIs across apps, or pipe them together the way you do with shell scripts. And then you could also have a device like a phone which has all your apps and data, and you could plug it into a dock with more memory, GPU, etc. So, you wouldn't have to juggle a bunch of devices and sync data between them.
By those standards, Halium + ubports might be worth while, it's using enough of the android binaries to get the job done but is still real linux.
For most use cases though, you don't really have much of a benefit of running Linux over Android on a phone though. There's enough Linux compatibility on Android already to make it work seamlessly with your Linux devices. In my opinion, as long as the stack is open source and well supported, it doesn't really matter whether it's Android or Linux based.
The binary blobs handling drivers are both the rub AND the part we can't seem to work without.
reverse engineering this stuff is pretty challenging unfortunately
Is it actually usable for everyday stuff though? I heard that bank apps are pain in the ass among other things. Maybe this new deal with Motorola changes things.
You can install Google app store in a container, and all the apps I've used work fine on it out of the box. It absolutely works fine as a daily driver.
That’s great! Well, I think I’ll give a shot when my iPhone dies.
I have been using it for 2+ years exclusively. I had a few issues with mobile deposit with my old credit union, but I moved to a new one and it works. So does the Discover app. Pretty much everything else is great, and I worry much less about my phone spying on me.
(Edit: Maybe) You can't do mobile deposit, but surely you can still just use the bank's website.
I can do mobile deposit with both my credit union and Discover.
Well, I stand corrected. Even less reason to not switch to Graphene.
The Motorola in 2027?
Maybe. But for now I'm on an 8a.
what about something like fairphone? why is pixel better?
Graphene only supports pixels currently.
They have hardware encryption tech other phones don't have that graphene uses
Fairphone can't run Graphene and the other de-Googled Android ROMs that it can run aren't nearly as secure