Thanks for sharing. For someone who is not so well versed in these technicalities, what does that mean for the user? That you’re more susceptible to fraud and hacking and malware?
From a user’s perspective, when you install an app, you can:
Determine if that app is allowed to access the internet.
If it needs access to your contacts, you can share which of your contacts, it can see (or none at all)
If it needs access to your files, you can determine which files/photos/music it sees (or none at all, but the application still believes it has access to everything)
There are a bunch of other, security features it provides, but from a “normal user” experience, the ability to take control of your data is probably one of the most impactful.
It is possible to do similar things with other CFW, but AFAIK, graphene is the only one to cleanly integrate it as a polished feature of the ROM.
Well, if you’re patient Graphene release some messages that they’re teaming up with a large phone manufacturer and will release a Graphene phone in Q4 2026 or 2027.
However, this announcement was made before all the AI hype which is consuming all the RAM.
You would choose it for security hardening in general. E.g. it is harder for malware to infect, harder for unauthorized parties to gain access to data when the phone is locked, etc.
That and privacy, you also have a lot of control over what each app can do with gOS’s permissions settings vs standard ROM and most of that is enabled by default. Can break some apps, especially banking related. I have 122 installed, of that three gave me a little bit of trouble where I had to disable some protections to get them functional. DeGoogled by default, I use microG for some limited Play services to get stuff like Youtube Revanced working.
Thanks for sharing. For someone who is not so well versed in these technicalities, what does that mean for the user? That you’re more susceptible to fraud and hacking and malware?
From a user’s perspective, when you install an app, you can:
There are a bunch of other, security features it provides, but from a “normal user” experience, the ability to take control of your data is probably one of the most impactful.
It is possible to do similar things with other CFW, but AFAIK, graphene is the only one to cleanly integrate it as a polished feature of the ROM.
edit: fix formatting
I see, and it can’t be installed on Fairphone?
No, currently only on Pixels. Plans to support another future platform exist.
Hmm, in mean time I prefer buying Fairphone over supporting Google.
You can buy second hand! Backmarket, Ebay, Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist.
Well, if you’re patient Graphene release some messages that they’re teaming up with a large phone manufacturer and will release a Graphene phone in Q4 2026 or 2027.
However, this announcement was made before all the AI hype which is consuming all the RAM.
A big thing is gOS not using JIT compiling. So, app updates are pretty slow but this kills a lot of malware exploits.
https://grapheneos.org/features#exploit-mitigations
So if I were to choose graphene over eOS it would mainly be to be more protected from malware?
You would choose it for security hardening in general. E.g. it is harder for malware to infect, harder for unauthorized parties to gain access to data when the phone is locked, etc.
That and privacy, you also have a lot of control over what each app can do with gOS’s permissions settings vs standard ROM and most of that is enabled by default. Can break some apps, especially banking related. I have 122 installed, of that three gave me a little bit of trouble where I had to disable some protections to get them functional. DeGoogled by default, I use microG for some limited Play services to get stuff like Youtube Revanced working.