- Break free from Google
- requires purchasing a Google smartphone π
this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2026
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For now. GrapheneOS is partnering with an OEM that will offer smartphones that meet their hardware security standard. They announced this a while back and are expecting to be able to reveal the new OEM either this year or 2027. The exciting thing is it will be running on modern Snapdragon processors rather than Google Tensor.
Hopefully all the hardware component shortages due to AI wonβt have an impact to this OEMβs plans.
I rather think that's cool tho. If you don't want to give Google money buy a second-hand.
some random persons blog about graphene? why not post to graphene directly?
What do you mean?
at a glance it just looks like a rehashee version of what's already on the graphene site, while also running the risk of being wrong/inaccurate/opinonated(subjective i guess)
Call me when they are doing the snapdragon beta. I really want to put this on my fairphone.
Graphene is unlikely to ever support fairphone
Weird reaction there though, how many phone suppliers with an open bootloader and documented architecture are there really? If Fairphone doesn't live up to their standards, I'm sure they can cooperate as a team instead of clinging to a big tech US monopolist that can make their lives hard at any moment.
That would be so great. The security part missing from e/os is the only thing preventing me from buying Fairphone.
Can it run on iPhone hardware? I would love an alternative that is not tied to apples garbage Ai and forced upgrade loops.
I don't think anything but ios runs on iPhones, they're pretty locked down
Graphene is awesome! I use it
Thoughts on pros and cons? Do you still install apps through the play store or are you using FDroid?
Not the person you asked, but fellow Graphene user here. I don't whole ass into everything so I still grab a few things from the play store, but I use Aurora instead of play. The details on apps and ability to install older versions of apps is fantastic.
I honestly haven't run into a con yet. It's been equally or more stable than even AOSP for me so far. I've been on it for several months now.
Maybe one con might be that a non savvy user won't know what to do with everything. Even if they don't though, there is so much that's just default in support of privacy and security they will be miles better on Graphene than on another platform.
I did decide to find a few alternative apps to replace ones I had used previously. Finding an alternative keyboard to swiftkey was the biggest pain but worth it. I got Heliboard and installed a swiping library and once I got the dimensions of the board dialed in it has been an excellent replacement.
This is the first I'm hearing of Aurora, that seems promising. I'm guessing you'd use FDroid for anything that is available there but use Aurora for anything that is only on the Play Store?
Yup, I always hit FDroid first. I often look at alternatives to apps as well. I ditched Swiftkey as I mentioned. I've switched to organic maps for mapping but I hit the google maps website for business info. And lastly I'll go to Aurora.
Funny, I've just read this https://www.reddit.com/r/degoogle/comments/1r7rg9p/how_much_money_graphene_team_made_for_google_by/
That's definitely an opinion of all time. I think a lot of the replies cover the rant though.