Pixel 10a vs 10 vs 9/9a for GrapheneOS security?

AlexAbra

Worldisnotsafe I own 10 personally, one of the key facts is processor. Old models used to overheat for me, ofc might be not your case but I ran bunch of stuff there.

GrapheneOS

AlexAbra It has a much better CPU. The GPU will likely end up being significantly better for graphics but the driver has a lot of issue. The driver was initially crippling performance quite a lot and has gotten a lot better but there are still a lot of bugs.

Dboy

GrapheneOS I have a Pixel 9a quite always in "flight mode" (do not know the correct term in English). When turning on the eSIM card, the phone gets quite hot. When doing a normal call, it gets hot (not from the beginning of the conversation).

The truth is that the mobile coverage is not really good where I am. I set LTE always instead of 5G but same results.

Play Store and Google services quite always disable... not too many apps installed. All from Obtainium (except a couple from Play Store: one in a private space and the other on Secondary profile. Disabled all the time too).

If I get a Pixel 10, will this hotness disappear? Hotness means possibly hacked to me. So I feel quite paranoid with it.

And regarding draining battery, 1% per minute (as I have read somewhere) sounds hacking to me too.

Thank you

de0u

Dboy Hotness means possibly hacked to me. So I feel quite paranoid with it.

And regarding draining battery, 1% per minute (as I have read somewhere) sounds hacking to me too.

Heating and battery drain (also battery charging) go together naturally.

If the device is exploited by a competent actor, it is not likely to heat (with approximately one exception). A competent attacker wants to exfiltrate a small amount of important data: passwords, crypto keys, etc. That does not involve heating. The plausible exception case is somebody trying to mine some cryptocurrency, which would cause heating, but that is not as common as it was when the idea first arose.

Meanwhile, heating and battery drain are very plausible if cellular coverage is poor (especially if watching video).

Dboy

de0u Will this overheat disappear with a Pixel10?

de0u

Dboy Will this overheat disappear with a Pixel10?

Without a clear picture of why the current device is warm, it's hard to say. So far the forum does not have a lot of reports about hot 9a devices. If the issue is due to a weak cellular connection, then a 10 device might be hot also. Does moving closer to a cell site help?

Dboy

de0u As AlexAbra said, Pixel 10 does not overheat. It seems that 9a does. To be honest, I can not tell you exactly in which situations the phone gets hot as It happens at home, in a train, on the streets and sometimes it does not... But using other OS before moving to Graphene, the same overheat only happened when my devices got hacked (Motorola and Samsung).

I have another question: Is Graphene (with eSIM) vulnerable towards IMSI catchers? And with SIM?

Thanks again

de0u

Dboy Is Graphene (with eSIM) vulnerable towards IMSI catchers? And with SIM?

Vulnerable in what way?

Dboy

de0u the way IMSI catchers attack in order to get IMSI, IMEI, TMSI of the device.

de0u

Dboy IMSI catchers don't "attack". They act as simulated cellular sites and, when a phone connects, collect information that the phone willingly shares with cellular sites. Cellular networks are not designed to be anonymous and in fact are designed to closely track cellular devices (in part, to comply with emergency-calling regulations).

Turning roaming off might cause a phone to be less willing to connect to unfamiliar fake cellular sites. Also, my general understanding is that 5G authentication is less blatantly eavesdroppable than 4G. But fundamentally this is not an easy problem to solve, because phones are designed to connect to cell sites and identify themselves.

Some projects in the area: SeaGlass, RayHunter. I don't believe the GrapheneOS project does anything in particular about IMSI catchers. At present I don't believe the GrapheneOS project has access to cellular-radio firmware source or the ability to sign cellular firmware images.

Dboy

de0u Thank you very much for your excellent answer.

Dboy

de0u Also, my general understanding is that 5G authentication is less blatantly eavesdroppable than 4G

Please, one question. Maybe because of my poor English, I am misunderstanding this sentence... Are you confirming that 5G is safer than 4G? I am asking because in GrapheneOS usage guide, it is mentioned that 4G is safer... So the Only-LTE mode.

Please, can you confirm?

Many thanks

de0u

Dboy Are you confirming that 5G is safer than 4G?

It's not clear that "safer" is a useful way to think about it.

I believe at the time the text on the GrapheneOS web page was written the overall 5G handset code base was less stable and potentially less secure (more exploitable). What I wrote, since the question was about IMSI catchers, is that 5G has better privacy (though perhaps not much). Those are not the same thing (and are sometimes in tension).

Honestly if tracking is the concern just having a carrier subscription / having the cellular modem turned on is a giant source of tracking. I am unaware of reports that the world is full of IMSI catchers, but for sure the world is full of regular cell sites, run by large companies with record-keeping requirements.

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