Howdy. Just telling my story incase it's useful to someone.

I've been on GOS for about 6 months. I was originally looking for a dumb phone to minimise my digital-ness then stumbled upon GOS. I already had a Pixel 6 so I DL'd it and off I went. I went full James Bond no Google VPN out the wazoo. It was great! In the little country town where I live it was perfect, no complaints. However I also travel from time to time with work and I found when I was moving around domestically and internationally, I missed the creature comforts. So in the end I've stayed with GOS but run it full google. Have all the google apps back, I'm signed into everything.. zero fucks so to speak. The only thing I've done is taken the network settings off Gboard (and anything else I feel is unnecessary), and my finance apps are in a separate profile with a VPN. Sandboxed Google Play works a treat. Just wanted to let people know who are thinking about it but aren't sure whether the transition will be easy. I found it seamless. I still can't get Texty to work on my Macbook but that's ok. Also no cards in Google wallet but I'm ok with that too. I realise I'm sacrificing privacy by using it this way but my threat level is pretty non existent. I figure I'm at least limiting Google's stranglehold on my life a tiny bit by running GOS. I'm about to embark on a big trip to Brasil so I'll see how I go over there!

    loopdubs It's perfectly fine to use GrapheneOS this way. You're still greatly improving your privacy and security. We want GrapheneOS to be usable by everyone as a regular device including with mainstream apps and services. Using a bunch of Google apps and services should work fine, and you can do a much better job protecting your privacy from them with GrapheneOS. Sandboxed Google Play services / sandboxed Google Play Store are the same as other regular apps which is a huge benefit for you. Storage Scopes, Contact Scopes and other privacy features also still benefit you. It's perfectly fine to choose how much you want to sacrifice for privacy and perhaps gradually work towards using other apps and services. That's largely not up to you but rather alternatives to their apps and services getting better until you consider them good enough to use instead.

        • Mmrn

          • Post #4

          I am going hardcore mode, no play services, trying to install as much open source as possible with as little apps from Aurora as possible, at home that's fine, but I can tell you that traveling is a nightmare.
          Thank god that I have Proton Drive for cloud backup of pictures, but I have no way of paying if my wallet is stolen.
          I have to find my way with open street map, which is completely doable on foot, but as soon as transports is involved, it depends.
          Also it's very difficult to find new places to visit, I usually go on Google Maps web to get suggestions of places to visit which I then search in open street maps.
          Finally, depending on the public transport apps and country, I can simply not use them, or I am one thing away from not being able to use them anymore and having to do everything on foot till the end of the trip.

          It works, but for most folks I would really not recommend going that way, go the play services route instead, because it is a constant challenge and I am always one incident away from being stuck in the country with no money, transport or places to sleep at.

          • thmf replied to this.

            mrn It works, but for most folks I would really not recommend going that way, go the play services route instead

            You could install Play and its friends in a separate profile and just have it as a backup when you really need them while still mainly using your regular owner profile with your more privacy respecting setup. You could use Private Space for this purpose and have all the 'good' and 'bad' apps working side by side and switch between them in realtime while the profiles still would be separated under the hood.

            • mrn replied to this.

                • Mmrn

                  • Post #6

                  thmf Yes it's true, I could do that, but I made the choice to go completely Google free (except Aurora). It's just a choice I made, personally I have nothing against Google, I love the Pixel OS and find it a joy to use, but nowadays I put a lot of value in my devices being as independent as possible from for-profit companies.
                  If I have to be dependent on a company, as a matter of values I would rather to depend on a European company (Japanese is fine too).
                  But I admit that for traveling it's a real challenge, usually what I do is keep some change at the hotel and print a paper copy of documents like the plane ticket that I keep at the hotel as well.

                    GrapheneOS This is what I love about GrapheneOS, that the user can decide what their privacy concerns are and act accordingly and still have many of the privacy and security enhancements of the os itself.
                    Thanks to the Graphene team for making this possible. I urge all Graphene users to contribute to the cause. I have and will continue to because I feel that Graphene is by far the best option for a mobile os.

                        madduke

                        I feel that Graphene is by far the best option for a mobile os.

                        I agree. I don't think that there is any need to feel like it's 'us' versus 'normies'. I'm as 'normie' as the next person but I just try to keep my eyes open and ask 'why?' a lot.

                          a month later

                          Totally. I think side by side is best. It's fantastic like you say to have whatever level of privacy you're comfortable with. I just got back from Manila and using the phone with play services active and all the apps I needed was mostly a breeze. However Google maps was all over the shop. I think because I let Graphene handle my location instead of Google. It was also problematic for Grab, the rideshare app. It could never locate me but I could put in the addresses no probs. But walking through random suburbs with Gmaps was pretty much impossible. It seems to work fine here in Australis but next time I'm abroad I might try and flick back to using google location to see if that works, at lease just while I'm navigating through unknown areas.

                            12 days later

                            I guess so? I install all the automatic updates so I presume so. Now I'm back home the nav is working perfectly again.