I agree with that.. additionaly, I'm finding it to be insane that organizations are trying to force you to have a "audited" phone to interact with them. (I.e. events, businesses, etc)

Don't phones have identifiers outside of phone number anyway? I feel like you have to trust the hardware/os vendor anyway. So if you don't trust apple to not misbehave, maybe not getting an iphone is better than chasing the whole phone-number idea.

I’m on the edge of migrating from my iPhone to a Pixel with GrapheneOS.

But there is ONE feature I love on iOS and it’s the Live Photos. I feel like it’s an amazing way to keep family memories. Do you know if it exists on GrapheneOS?

I mean... your sentiment is in the right place, but Android phones (non-GrapheneOS) can be used without Google account just fine.

Yes, you need to use F-Droid & Co. to get apps (just like on Graphene), but otherwise they're functional and many people are actually using them like that.

well you cant blame apple for that since Government can literally force your company to doing shit like this

This is not an issue with GrapheneOS, this is an issue with your configuration, which is trivial to solve.

All of those apps support using google services FCM for push notification delivery. I dont think Telegram has a fallback, and Signal and Whatsapp have power-intensive fallbacks. You may also need to reinstall these apps for them to detect google services (apps generally dont check for google services more than once on initial launch).

Since it seems to be missed, in GOS you can disable these alerts completely.

GrapheneOS supports fully disabling wireless alerts via the Settings app. It's possible to disable it on other Android devices via ADB.

You should be able to disable these alerts via the Wireless Emergency Alerts.

Getting a new phone is very useful to someone that's a victim of a controlling partner but it doesn't particularly need to be a GrapheneOS device. GrapheneOS has features useful for this including Auditor and standard Android profiles (Private Space, secondary users) with improvements but we're not specifically recommending it for this ourselves. People who are victims of this probably just need a new phone of any kind and to prioritize other things.

> and 5-10x the price of an older, but still perfectly useful degoogled phone from Marketplace

Devices with drastically worse privacy and security than the Android Open Source Project including lack of bare minimum updates aren't in the same space as GrapheneOS.

It's generally better for people to install GrapheneOS themselves since it's very easy and saves a lot of money. It takes 10 minutes to install GrapheneOS with the web installer. It also avoids needing to trust a company to do it, although it's possible to verify an install done by someone else is genuine with the verified boot key fingerprint and/or Auditor. An existing install by someone else should be factory reset it to avoid any sketchy configuration.

> So I'm assuming Graphene is at least as strict as that?

GrapheneOS is a privacy and security hardened OS. LineageOS and CyanogenMod aren't in that space. GrapheneOS preserves the standard privacy and security features and updates of the Android Open Source Project as a baseline. It greatly improves privacy and security with major privacy and security features along with much better privacy/security updates. It keeps up with the major OS updates including having a release based on Android 17 since the day it was released (2026-06-16).

> Can someone explain this? I've used custom ROMs back in the day (Cyanogen!) but I'm not familiar with GrapheneOS.

GrapheneOS is a production quality OS with around 15 people paid to work on it. It's not a hobbyist project. We've never used the term custom ROM since it isn't accurate and propagates misconceptions. It's best to avoid it.

> The article mentions that an abuser could put spyware on your phone? Is that a realistic scenario?

Yes, stalkerware is very common and there are a bunch of apps marketed for this purpose. It's helpful to get a new phone set up from scratch without the same accounts or automatically restoring any data on it. This can be a GrapheneOS phone but it doesn't particularly need to be. It's not GrapheneOS recommending itself for this purpose. There are an assortment of privacy and security features relevant to this in standard Android 17 and in the features added by GrapheneOS but nothing essential to this. GrapheneOS makes sense as a general choice for a new phone for many people due to being a highly usable, compatible, private and secure device but we're not specifically recommending it for being who are victims of stalkerware ourselves.

> The article mentions that an abuser could put spyware on your phone? Is that a realistic scenario?

Yes, stalkerware is an entire genre of software and it is designed for exactly this purpose.

How “stalkerware” apps are letting abusive partners spy on their victims https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/07/10/134249/stalkerwa...

The Abuser in Your Pocket: How Stalkerware Threatens Women’s Privacy https://safeescape.org/stalkerware-threatens-womens-privacy/

'I thought I'd been microchipped': How abusers spy on partners with 'parental control' apps https://news.sky.com/story/i-thought-id-been-microchipped-ho...

A web search for the term will turn up many more results. Graphene OS's hardening against exploits, compared to the abysmal record of Android vendors, gives much better odds against any of these apps being able to run with elevated privileges, which means Android's sandboxing is effective.

(Happy Graphene OS user of many years here.)

Zero Google services are shippsx by default, but you can install Play Store and Services in a sandbox and it has minimal privacy problems, depending on the permissions you give it.

Their docs are really good, not only for their phone but for learning about privacy and security: https://grapheneos.org

You could still install an app that spies on you on grapheneos because it has 99.99% android app compatibility, so if you gave an app designed for spying the relevant permissions, it would still be able to spy. No way it could hide location indicator or anything like that, but I doubt it could do that on other OSes (don't quote me on other OSes).

It's an advertisement. That's pretty much the difference, the company selling these phones has a very high margin for essentially resell of Google phones with reflash of GrapheneOS.

I mean, some obvious things are there in the article, IMHO -

- App isolation and hidden profiles (up to 32 separate profiles)

- Verified Boot (tamper detection on every startup)

So you can do stuff on there that's not going to tip off someone who's controlling enough to demand to see your phone, and so you'll at least be tipped off if someone compromises it.

It's funny the page recommends de-Googled phones, but requires a Google service(reCaptcha) to view the page.

Just open your favorite browser MCP and ask it to beat the captcha

Try megaladon.jp/https://example.com uses cloudflare instead

Any data collected can be abused. This is like saying why care about what flock knows about you, when it's been used by far too many police to stalk their romantic interests.

Police can obtain data from Google. Police can be abusers or friends with abusers.

So that your abuser cannot obtain real-time information about you via integrated accounts.

You should google 40% of police..

> It's not like Google is going to sell your tracking data to abuser.

No, that's exactly the fear. With enough disclaimers and third parties involved, a motivated, highly intelligent and rich attacker with the right connections could get that information.

Here's an article explaining why one should care: https://privacypros.com.au/privacy-hub/articles/dv-safe-phon...

The tl;dr is that you can either share this data by accident through some sort of "locate my family" app, or because your abuser gets access to your Google/Apple account (for instance because you're signed in on another device they have access to).

The threat model here can be: domestic abuse victim flees a situation at home in a hurry, stays signed in on a computer. Abuser uses the sign-in on that computer to track their phone, figures out they're staying at their aunt's place.

Yes, you can avoid this on a regular Google phone as well, but that requires correctly configuring it (and a lot, such as location and search history, can be re-enabled remotely!). If you're running Graphene you are protected by default, rather than compromised by default.

Stock photo - yeah that triple camera is equivalent to an Apple logo. Perhaps royalty-free image chosen without enough care or b/c it’s just a stock photo. (Or they already licensed that one.)

Installing Graphene can be done through the browser: https://grapheneos.org/install/web

It's not as easy as it can be (the text is aimed at people familiar with Android flashing) but in practice you need to toggle one setting, reboot holding the volume button, and then click four buttons in your browser in order, with the exact names for settings spelled out in the guide itself.

I don't think wiping an abuser's malware is such a great solution unless you've already managed to get out of the DV situation. Perhaps GrapheneOS is a good idea on a secret second phone?

You'd be surprised how easy GrapheneOS is to install. You literally do it through a browser with your phone connected via USB.

Yes, I find it much easier to set up and use than any other Android phone. There’s less bloatware, and battery life is noticeably better.

Two tips for beginners:

Google Play Store and Google Play Services can be installed from the App Store. They aren’t included by default because GrapheneOS works fine without them.

If a trusted app has trouble running, try enabling Exploit protection compatibility mode on the app’s Info screen (long-press the app icon → Info → Exploit protection).

Check whether your bank is supported: https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compa.... If it isn’t, it likely depends on the Play Integrity API, which means it requires customers to stay under constant surveillance by the world’s largest advertising company, with no real security justification (see https://grapheneos.org/articles/attestation-compatibility-gu...). In that case, you should switch to a more trustworthy bank.

Yes it's usable by everyone. It's secure by default but anyone can make something insecure. For example granting malicious apps accessiblity permissions would not be great for security.

It has 99.99% android app compatibility. Over 90% of banking and government apps work. These apps take extra measures to ban grapheneos, apps must put in work to make their app incompatible, not the other way around.

I wouldn't say anyone can use it, if you can't sign in to a Google account by yourself then you would have trouble setting it up. But that would be similar on iOS. For the average person, definitely. There's no code or anything like that. Works just like stock Pixels.

If I was giving it to my grandma then I would install her apps and she would be fine clicking icons. But similar on iOS.

Yeah that RAM mention is very strange, not the best article.

Agreed. It'd be great for after the person has left the DV situation but not really beforehand.

It's generally better for people to install GrapheneOS themselves since it's very easy and saves a lot of money. It takes 10 minutes to install GrapheneOS with the web installer. It also avoids needing to trust a company to do it, although it's possible to verify an install done by someone else is genuine with the verified boot key fingerprint and/or Auditor. An existing install by someone else should be factory reset it to avoid any sketchy configuration.

Getting a new phone is very useful to someone that's a victim of a controlling partner but it doesn't particularly need to be a GrapheneOS device. GrapheneOS has features useful for this including Auditor and standard Android profiles but we're not specifically recommending it for this ourselves. People who are victims of this probably just need a new phone of any kind and to prioritize other things.

I flashed a pixel using their webpage. They have made it remarkably simple to do.

The website also says:

"Australian research shows that 99% of domestic violence cases now involve some form of technology-facilitated abuse."

Where the "Australian research" is linked to a page where the first Key Finding states:

"Over one quarter (27%) of domestic violence cases involve technology-facilitated abuse of children."

Doesn't fill me with confidence in anything they say (even if I do believe the advice is right).

I'm curious what you are considering with recommending buying a privacy phone vs buying a regular phone and flashing in a DV situation?

I disagree, it's cool to promote good projects like GrapheneOS that help people.

Have you seen how many articles recommend not secure and not private alternative phones, that's not cool.

Edit: damn some of their phones with it preloaded are like 4x the price your can get for pixels in the state's. Can't speak to Australian prices for regular pixels tho.