DudeSweet
Fingerprint is not secure, the police in the US can compel you to put your finger on the screen to unlock your phone.
Fingerprint unlock is not available as a primary unlock mechanism, only secondary unlock for After First Unlock state with a 5 attempt limit (instead of 4 sets of 5 attempts for 20 total) and within a 48 hour timer from the last successful primary unlock. GrapheneOS supports adding a PIN as a 2nd factor to fingerprint unlock for use with a stronger primary unlock method. It's entirely someone's choice to use fingerprint alone instead of with a random 4 digit PIN (or longer, but 4 digits is fine for this purpose due to the 5 attempt limit).
Fingerprint doesn't always work; dirty fingers, fresh out of the shower and dried, or worn due to working with your hands basically makes it next to impossible to use. Too many frustrating times I've had it fail every attempt and fall back to the PIN.
That's fine since it's a secondary unlock method.
Not everyone wants to use multiple options together for unlocking.
They can simply use a random 6 digit PIN.
The argument of seeing a pattern across the room works just as well for PINs, making the argument that PIN is more secure untrue.
PINs have far more possibilities along with the option of PIN scrambling on GrapheneOS. They are much more secure. Patterns are essentially a crippled PIN with limited possibilities and heavily encouraging using a highly insecure setup.
Obviously I don't get to dictate/decide things, but I feel like removing unlock options is a disservice to users. It may be well intentioned and practical, but not everyone wants a fully hardened phone. There's plenty about Graphene that's very useful to more casual users looking to take back some control of things without going all the way. Maybe add very clear warnings about the insecurity of using a pattern and let the users decide what they want to do? Just a thought.
Pattern lock is even more dangerous to people who are as you say more casual users. It is a badly designed and dangerous feature. iPhones not having this is very good for users. We will not add back a major flaw in the OS security design. You don't have to use GrapheneOS. If you do, your choices for primary lock are a PIN or password like iOS. This protects users rather than doing a disservice to them. Let us know when Apple adds the feature. Android added it long before there was a comparable focus on security as there is today and doesn't remove it as an option primarily to avoid making people angry. It would NOT be added by Android today. It is grandfathered in and we did the right thing getting rid of it. It's not grandfathered in to GrapheneOS since it has been gone so long.