Similar to how you can throw even a high end version of Linux, like Mint Cinnamon, onto an old device (or something like Xubuntu if your device is really old), does GrapheneOS run faster on older devices? As my 6a starts to get older and slows down with stuttering animations and slow app opening, I'm curious if Graphene is better or worse for performance. I understand that it's lighter, but if it's unoptimized, I imagine it would still be detrimental.
Does GrapheneOS run faster on older devices?
I don't think it will make much of a difference. Maybe if you choose not to use Google Play Services, but then you lose compatibility with some apps
- Edited
I have a Pixel 6a.
Speed reasons
It may be slow because of much storage use, its encrypted and thus needs CPU power to decrypt.
Android also uses the FUSE filsystem, not sure what for, but that just recently got a speed improvement in the Linux kernel, and Android and GrapheneOS use the LTS kernel, so this speed improvement will need some years to arrive.
RAM may be high because of bloat apps. GrapheneOS has no bloat, not a single bloat app. They dont even ship a calendar or good gallery, install your own. So it may be faster, and it is fast on my device.
A Pixel 6a is not slow at all.
Changes in GrapheneOS to vanilla Android
GrapheneOS is slower than vanilla AOSP (like LineageOS). There may be many factors that make it slower, and you should not disable them.
- secure app spawning instead of zygote
- hardened kernel in lockdown mode
- hardened malloc
- ...
Look at grapheneos.org for explanations about these things, they are all very nice.
It may be quicker
At the same time GrapheneOS's security hardening may also improve speed. Security is always "as simple as possible", which will be faster. Standard apps are minimal and quick (camera without AI stuff, ...) and many apps like the fossify suite you may install are also simpler than the Google bloat.
I cant use Google Android, in the past it was somehow tolerable, but it got extremely invasive. This will slow down speed (even though its a bit insane to value speed over this amount of user tracking).
Battery Life
pros
People also report longer battery life on GrapheneOS. This is a double edged sword.
When not doing anything, my Pixel 4a (that I use as a music player, fuck Google, give us AUX ports back) lasts for a week on a charge, and its "old".
My 6a also roughly uses 3% or something over night.
This is due to very efficient sleep handling in Android, and the tiny amount of processes running in the background.
You can control background apps through the dropdown menu, down on the right is a display.
GrapheneOS will not record your location or do unneeded background network connections, unlike stock android.
GrapheneOS also has a LTE-only setting, blocking old insecure standards like 2G/3G, which also consumes less power.
Play Services
AOSP (Android without extras, FOSS) does not use FCM (firebase cloud messaging) or an NLP (network location provider).
FCM
FCM is used on apps, and its a quite strange concept. Instead of apps listening to new messages, a single Google Play service process does it. And the backens, like chat apps or mail providers, and all companies thinking they can send you push messages, connect to the Google FCM servers.
It is known that Google and Apple abused this traffic and using the sent message data to target users.
But it highly improves energy consumption, by default.
Apps like SimpleX bypass this by allowing to change the connection frequency.
And if you follow the advice above and disable apps at night etc, these apps dont run, at all. Also not possible on stock android, play services are NEVER stopped.
NLP
GPS location uses a ton of battery life. This is improved by A-GPS, which works and is way improved via their hosted servers that filter sensitive information and act as a proxy.
A-GPS connects to Google servers to query the rough network location. Then it gets a list of possible sattelites to search for, which speeds up the fixpoint.
But the swap from GPS to network for location is not only quicker but uses way less energy. Via triangulation, measuring the distance between surrouding network antennas (by connection speed), or by using the local WIFIs or even Bluetooth devices, your device can get different informations about your location.
It sends this sensitive data to Google, which gives you the "fine location" back.
It is more accurate than GPS ("rough location") and works fast, efficient, indoors, underground, on modern standards, not dependend on objects in space...
But it is controlled by Google, again extremely scary
GrapheneOS has mo NLP, and projects like UnifiedNLP are not available standalone, they work through GrapheneOS' sandboxed play system though.
UnifiedNLP has some backend solutions you can use for location, mozilla, openwifimap, apple, baidu, yandex and more. Offline data is possible, completely avoiding the creepy aspects of it. This just needs some love, an easy setup, as NLP is critical infrastructure if Russia decided to shoot down sattelites.
optimization
Battery life:
- disable energy saver, enable darkmode, make it independend on energy saver mode, enable energy saver
- disable GPS, enable airplane mode
- enable network saving mode
Speed:
- under accessibility disable animations
- remove apps and internal storage stuff
Overall I can recommend GrapheneOS a lot.
If you meant to compare GrapheneOS with Stock Pixel OS(Which I think you mean but apparently it wasn't clear to everyone) I don't think there will be a big difference in performance. In my opinion, the phone got a slightly longer battery life, but that could have been thanks to some optimization by Android.
Guys let's please focus on the OP and not discuss semantics.
Resupply8986 I would assume that reinstalling an OS will speed up a cluttered device no matter if it's GOS or Pixel OS. Pixel 6a devices being much slower nowadays isn't a widely reported issue from what I can see. If we consider there's no hardware defect, it's usually either a full storage or a background app taking up resources.
If I were you I'd restart the phone and end all background user applications to see if it runs smooth again. You could also check the battery usage settings to see if there's any weird behavior from specific apps.
If you have the time, you could also just do a backup of your current setup, install GOS and see if you like it. It will most likely feel much faster because whatever is slowing down your device now is not present at the beginning. You will not only have great security and privacy advantages, but the benefit of a more convenient user experience in your specific case. What better time to try GOS than now. :)
Cleaned up some posts since there was a debate about whether OP wanted a comparison of Stock vs GrapheneOS or something else.
I'm going to assume Stock vs GrapheneOS, so I left the on topic posts here.
Any issues, let me know privately (contact info is in my bio).
other8026 Cleaned up some posts
so I left the on topic posts here.
Why did you remove my initial post? It was on topic and in response to the OP's question...
ErnestThornhill like I said, any questions people can contact me privately. Contact info is in my bio here. Don't want this thread to get off topic again discussing moderation.