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Recommendations for a new phone (midwest.social)

submitted 1 week ago by Brutticus@midwest.social to c/privacy@lemmy.ca

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Hello, everyone,

I've had my current Samsung Galaxy running Android for about two or three years now. It was an older model then. I am about ready to get a new phone; mine has been put through the ringer.

I was interested in Graphene or Divest, or some of these other open source phone OS. but I dont know much about what they have and what they can do. How reliable are they? Will the manufacturer or the carrier fuck me over? Which phone models are compatible and how expensive are they?

I'm a contractor; not only do I NEED a reliable phone, but I also need a phone that can run certain apps. I've tooled around with game emulation and modding since the DS flashcart days, and I have even recently had Switch accounts banned.

I'm sorry if there was a README but I haven't been able to find any information as to if this was reliable enough to become my primary telephone.

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[–] Danitos@reddthat.com 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (5 children)

I bought an used Pixel and installed GrapheneOS in it. Highly recommended, I've had 0 issues related to it.

In my country (Colombia), phones cannot be carried-locked, so no idea in that regard.

Basically, all recent-ish Pixel are compatible, but Graphene devs recommend some bases on their support: https://grapheneos.org/faq#supported-devices and https://grapheneos.org/faq#recommended-devices.

Pixels are rather expensive, although not prohibitely. GrapheneOS's team is making a deal to bring the OS to another manufacturer, however, no idea how long it will take to 1) seal the deal, and 2) have a usable and stable GrapheneOS in it.

I've run SNES and GBA emulators on mine just fine.

The only kind of app I've known to cause troubles with GrapheneOS are banking ones. Mine work perfectly, but there is a crowdfounded status repository.

Overall, I think the consensus is that GrapheneOS is the golden standard in smartphone security+privacy (excluding Linux Phones, but they are not ready for average modern use). If you want to buy a new phone, go for Pixel with Graphene. There also exists LineageOS, Calyx, e/OS, which are not as good, but are way better than stock Android from Samsung, and have a waaaay bigger list of compatible phones, so maybe your current one will work.

[–] Brutticus@midwest.social 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (4 children)

The apps I need for work that concern me are authentication apps; Google and Microsoft authenticator, respectively. Do these work?

My work also has a proprietary timeclock app that I have to use to clock my timesheets when I undertake a particular task. Are there any known issues running this app?

[–] fraksken 2 points 1 week ago

With the aurora store you should be fine to run the authenticators and time management app even on a degoogled graphene phone. Profiles also work great for containerization in case you do need google services for something.

Go with a pixel 7 or 8 to get a few years of os support

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