GrapheneOS: First Impressions

this morning I received a Google pixel 5A that I bought on eBay for 150 quid it's a pretty nice phone in my opinion it's got a very clean look and feel the camera's decent it has a very thin bezel and it still has a headphone jack it doesn't have crazy specs or a 120 HZ display but I'm not a phone guy so I don't really care about any of that this video is not about the phone itself but rather the OSI installed on it prior to this I was using a OnePlus 5T which came out towards the end of 2017 and I installed lineage OS on it it's still a great phone and the only reason I upgraded was because a relative of mine needs a phone and they offered to buy my OnePlus of me and the reason I bought a pixel specifically was because it supports graphine OS a based free software Android ROM with no Google apps or Services now before I talk about my experience with graphine OS and how it compares to lineage OS I just want to talk about why you'd want to run a custom Android ROM in the first place probably the most significant reason is privacy of course mobile phones are privacy invasive by nature and a truly private phone is kind of an oxymoron but there's no doubt that a huge aspect of that tracking is due to the software and services that smartphone manufacturers load into the operating system so by running software that doesn't include those Services you're mitigating some of those problems another reason is bloatware on Android this usually consists of Google Apps the manufacturers apps carrier apps and sometimes things like Facebook come preloaded and the worst part is these are installed as system apps so you can only uninstall them using a computer and it's possible that these apps could just be reinstalled with a software update and the final reason is longevity custom Android rums allow phones that are no longer supported by the original manufacturer to run an up todate version of Android and of course without as much crap preloaded it may even have better performance than the original software now installing graphos is very straightforward and a large part of that is due to the web USB installer on the graphos website you'll need to enable USB debugging on your phone and load up the fast boot menu but after that it's a matter of plugging a USB into your computer and following some instructions it mostly consists of clicking a few buttons to unlock the boot loader download graphos Flash graphos and then relock the boot loader I would recommend reading the instructions before you start though to ensure things go smoothly and to avoid bricking your phone for example the developer advise against using incognito mode but it's still neat that you can do this without installing any software on your computer or using a terminal you can also buy phones with graphine OS pre-installed but I wouldn't recommend it because they can be quite expensive and honestly it's not that difficult to flash it yourself now building into graphine OS you realize it's very Bare Bones and only comes with apps like an SMS client a browser and a calculator so out of the box it just functions like a dumb phone in fact it doesn't even have a default wallpaper there's a default app called apps which allows you to easily install Google Play services and Google Play Store in a sandboxed environment though I use the Aurora store as this allows you to install Play Store apps without signing into a Google account I also installed F Droid which is an App Store that exclusively has free and open source apps the Play Store and Play services are installed as regular apps so unlike stock Android you can uninstall them and modify the permissions now there were two concerns I had with graphine OS the first was GPS not working as I had this problem when I installed lineage address on my OnePlus 5T but after installing Google Maps and giving it location permissions it appears to work just fine I was also concerned about my banking app not working but my banking app also worked fine probably because my phone isn't rooted I know some people were concerned about banking apps when I made the video about lineage OS and at least in my case it works as long as the device isn't rooted gra Universe also has a few neat security features for example it has the feature that allows the number pad to be scrambled when you enter your PIN it isn't enabled by default and I don't know if it's Unique to graphine OS but I think it's a neat feature as it can make it harder for an onlooker to see what your PIN is especially from a distance another benefit of graphing RS is the fact that we have a locked boot loader which add a bit more security compared to lineage R where your phone's boot loader will remain unlocked after installation so far I haven't run into any problems with graphing OS the experience has been really solid however there is one downside to graphing OS and that is supported devices or rather the lack of supported devices graphine OS only works with Google pixel phones it's kind of ironic that you need a Google phone to run this deg Googled operating system and so it really limits the kind of phones you can buy in comparison lineat can run on hundreds of different devices another YouTuber by the name of Everything E also points out that Google pixel phones are praised for their exclusive software and so by installing graphine OS you lose out on those features personally I don't care about those features but if you do then it might nullify the value of buying a Google pixel of course I've only used graphos for a day and this is largely my opinion so if you have any thoughts on graphine or you'd like an update in a month then please let me know in the comments below as for now thank you guys for watching and until next time cheerio

Channel: GNULectures

Views: 10,179

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Id: vhWtA6zFSqk

Length: 5min 48sec (348 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 04 2024