GOS with GMaps/SMS or iPhone with Apple Maps and E2EE iMessage?

qwerty401

Hi everyone! Longtime watcher of this project, finally feeling like I'm almost ready to make the switch from iPhone, but have a couple hang-ups. I am not very proficient in the weeds of privacy and security practices, so I'm wondering if someone can provide an analysis for me of the following considerations:

After investigating alternative apps, I think it's highly likely that if I were to switch to GOS, I would end up just using Google Maps without a Google log-in (perhaps through GMaps WV). Similarly, I simply cannot get most of the people I know to use Signal, so I would likely have to use Google Messages in the hopes that Apple will update their RCS support to v3.0 with E2EE.

Given these assumptions that I will be leaking location information to Google and possibly having them read my text messages, is it even worth it to move to GrapheneOS? Apple Maps has much better privacy practices than GMaps, and iMessage is E2EE between iPhones (which most of my friends have). Since this is most of what I do on my phone that I would be interested in keeping private (messaging and location-based navigation), I'm wondering if it might be better for my privacy to just get another iPhone.

Perhaps there are other privacy-protecting features in the background that would tip me towards going with GrapheneOS. I'm very curious to hear what someone smarter than me on the subject has to say.

P.S. I've already tried Organic Maps, OSMAnd, Magic Earth, etc. and I don't think they're good enough for me (unless there's some magic OSMAnd plugin I don't know about). In your response, please assume that I will be using Google Maps if I were to get GOS.

treenutz68

qwerty401

I think this is a wonderful question and one most people should spend time thinking about if your use case is one where most of your contacts use iMessage (which unfortunately is the case in the USA).

I personally stuck with an iPhone for 90% of my phone usage. Not only do I get e2ee messaging for 99% of my conversations, but (just my opinion) I also I think the following things have been better on my iphone than my GrapheneOS phone (a pixel 8):

1) Better hardware. I like the volume rocker, I think the camera is better, faceID is infinitely better than the shitty pixel 8 fingerprint reader (this has been improved in the pixel 9)
2) Every app's push notifications works flawlessly on my iphone. Not the case with my graphene phone even with play services installed.
3) VoIP: I can easily run mysudo on my iphone to have access to all the numbers I need. On Graphene, mysudo requires me to use a secondary device for purchases and to have google play services installed for notifications
4) Apple pay: I didn't realize how useful this was until I moved close to the beach. I no longer worry about carrying my wallet with me when I go for a morning run and want to stop by the grocery store or a coffee shop on the way home. Not to mention the privacy benefits of using your credit card through apple pay vs using your card directly with a merchant.
5) Battery life: my 3 year old iphone 12 still gives me better battery life than my pixel 8 did when it was brand new

However, I will say I still like the graphene project and still follow it and use graphene daily (on my pixel tablet) and keep my graphene phone for more sensitive use cases. I am hopeful that with a new hardware partner, most of the 'issues' I personally have with graphene can be resolved as I'd prefer having an open source, security focused phone as my daily driver. It just isn't at the point where I feel the tradeoffs are worth it today.

GrouchyGrape

qwerty401 for what it’s worth, I ended up moving my partner off of GOS and to an iPhone for nearly the same reasons.

I use signal and flat out tell people it’s the only way to get a hold of me. My partner wasn’t willing to do that (I don’t blame them at all).

For what it’s worth, iMessage may be E2EE by default, but iCloud backups are not. So Apple can see nearly everyone’s chats anyway. I recommend you educate those in your circles to enable ADP.

User17623

You can disable network access or the entire GMap app when not in use; put it in Private Space in the same profile; or install it in a separate profile, so that you only allow it access to your location whenever you allow it.

If in the future you can send E2EE messages between Google Messages and iMessage, then the GMaps app shouldn't be able to see your messages in Google Messages especially if you separate those two using Private Space or separate profiles, of course unless reported when in decrypted form like Whatsapp.

If you do switch now, you'd be using SMS and the concern would be your cell provider seeing your messages.

If your main focus is privacy of your messages given your constraint that you can't use any other E2EE messaging apps that are widely available and popular, then iOS seems to be the choice or wait till the E2EE support arrives.

However, Graphene OS offers so much more than just privacy - so much more control, features, and security. I'd like to say so much more but this isn't directly related to your post, and our needs are likely different.

qwerty401

User17623 Thank you for your response!

Downloading maps offline and putting GMaps into Private Space and turning off location services is a good suggestion. I have heard that GMaps collects data even when offline, then sends it as soon as it's able to get a network connection (for example, if Google were to force me to update my downloaded map). Although I suppose this could be mitigated by deleting and reinstalling the app in a new profile to try and clear out any accumulated data.