Afternoon, y’all! It’s been a week since I took the plunge into Graphene OS. I wanted to present my thoughts as a free flowing dialogue and hopefully encourage others to delve into the joy that is GOS.
So, I started using the web-based installer. I have Debian 13 and Chromium, so I didn’t need any extra steps. Unlocking the bootloader was a blast of nostalgia to me. Brought me right back to the days of bouncing between AOKP and CyanMod. The installation process was honestly easier than anything I could have imagined. I booted up into GOS and locked everything back up and I was ready to go.
Beforehand, I had backed up all my app settings, and since I was already using FOSS apps it was relatively painless. I spent the next couple hours installing everything and importing settings. I’m using the fossify apps in place of the standard AOSP apps GOS provides. I have no idea if this will fuck me over, but I’m willing to find out. I ended up losing some SMS messages as the backup file corrupted, but I’m not that brokenhearted about it. But I went to bed at about 02.00 happy with my new phone.
Throughout my daily use, I noticed something peculiar. I was using my phone less and less. Inherently, becoming less reliant over time. It forced me to use my computer increasingly for things such as banking and social media.
Quick side note: I had Instagram installed and sandboxed, but it was killing my battery, so now I just use the website, which is actually kinda nice.
But the thing that stood out to me most was, I was using the phone for it’s intended purpose; telecommunications. I chatted with people, answered some e-mails, did some daily games, browsed Lemmy a bit. But my screen time was significantly less. I read more, I’m more intentional about tasks and hobbies. It seems I had signicantly more damage to my brain from doomscrolling, than I had previously thought.
Overall, it made me feel like my phone, was my phone. I’ve not worried a bit about my privacy, I’ve been able to live in ease and a lot happier. I also use cash and interact with people more and more, because there’s more personal connection in transactions and interactions now. (Why do so many businesses have an app?) I highly recommend it. The joy, the freedom 🇺🇲🦅🍔🛣️🛢️🏈, and the comfort is something I’ll never give back. GOS for life, now.
Thank for reading my, probably, incongruent thoughts about GOS. I appreciate this community and the folks around Lemmy for helping and encouraging me. This place has been a nice reprieve from the waking nightmare of the current state of the world. I’m sorry if I didn’t get to your comment on my previous post. I didn’t expect it to blow up the way it did. I really appreciate it and I’m gonna hang around and see if I can also help and encourage folks.
Peace and cheers, with all my love.
I assume you did lose RCS and Wallet? Anything else?
Oh I was already degoogling long before I moved to GrapheneOS. I’ve never used RCS and gave up wallet years before moving to GrapheneOS. I only use SMS with specific people so not having RCS has never been an issue for me - but apparently it works on GrapheneOS if you don’t mind the whole google thing.
And apparently it’s only NFC payments that don’t work on GrapheneOS, you can use other wallet features according to the people in this thread.
I never stopped carrying a card anyway so NFC payments aren’t something I miss.
Most of my messaging is to family, and they are all on signal, but outside of family RCS of better than SMS.
I am not degoogled but I’m pretty careful. Google apps are only in chrome and that’s all that browser is used for. Ironfox is my main browser. I removed the advertiser Id on Android.
But the majority of my apps are open source and I’m concerned about where Google ID going with side loading. This will be what forces my hand.
I hope I can get my Dexcom working on gos.
RCS might be better than SMS but it seems to only be supported by the Google Messages app so I do without. You did ask about other things, I don’t recall giving anything up but then there are these two things you mentioned that I never would have thought of so maybe there are more.
It’s apparently a struggle, but see this thread. I can’t work out how to link a specific reply, but there is one on 11 August 2025 by whoiswes and then some info in the replies following it, that recommend something called xDrip. They say they recommend it over the Dexcom app and runs flawlessly once set up, but it seems there’s a bit of app crashing that happens while setting it up.