from guymontag@lemmy.ml to privacy@lemmy.ml on 07 Jun 10:11
https://lemmy.ml/post/48412245
Hey everyone! I’m making this post just to share my experience switching from iPhone to grapheneos. My experience may be a little different than others, because I was already using all open source apps if possible, so moving apps wasn’t horrible.(only took me like 2 days.) Moving my imsg contacts to signal fucking sucks though. Especially when they say no, and you gotta coax them ugh.
To be honest apple’s iOS 26 HORRENDOUS FUCKING DESIGN LANGUAGE in conjunction with a recent exploit that forced me to update or I would get malware was the primary reason for updating. I can’t even express how badly iOS 26 fucked up my phone. Along with that i was tired of dealing with issues from side loading. It felt so delicate, and it broke at any minor change. The amount of issues I had with sidestore were absurd.
The general iPhone to android switch wasn’t too bad. I prefer material ui over ios 26 and maybe a little more than iOS 18’s. Back on my iPhone I had icloud, so deleting apps wouldn’t wipe its data and it pissed me off so much sometimes. Being able to press clear data or cache was such insane peace of mind. The large app selection(even considering FOSS only) is also super nice.
The one thing that annoys me a lot about grapheme is alarms. All my profiles can’t run in background, so I have to switch to owner so I can set an alarm before sleeping. (I have auto restart, so it always goes to owner in the morning.) Oh wait actually I think of more. Lower battery life than my iphone, notifications being used for persistence, file transfer troubles over cable, and having to use 3 Mullvad VPN devices, 1 for each of my profiles. If anyone knows how to use one Mullvad device across all my profiles, please let me know. Also I’m not used to the keyboard at all.
As said earlier, me not being apple pilled or being anymore than one layer into their ecosystem made switching easy as pie. Man I remember the first time I saw that graphene boot screen on a fresh pixel I felt so cool; the first boot home screen is genuinely so clean. Just staring at that black wallpaper with 4 apps is just so calming i don’t know. Although I switched to kiss launcher(its fucking perfect), I still like going to that original homescreen to look sometimes.
I would say in general the greatest boon of switching was peace of mind. My phone did what was documented and what the apps I chose did. On my old phone I couldn’t trust anything. Gosh, its so nice! If anyone was interested in purchasing a device I hope my experience was interesting to you. Attached is a photo of my homescreen, if anyone is interested.
Sorry about messy grammar or ordering of information. I kinda rushed to make this post
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I’ve tried a second user a few times but found it annoying.
What I do is everything in one user. I disable any app that I need once in a while that doesn’t respect my privacy. For example, the Amazon app. I need this app (pin is not an option) to open their locker a few times per year. I leave it disabled until I’m standing in front of the locker.
Maybe you could try Orbot or the free tier of Protonvpn for some of your profiles instead of using three Mullvadvpn devices?
Protonvpn free tier could work, but Orbot download speeds are too slow.
Small question, but does GOS allow for an interface that’s more similar to the Apple and e/OS ones?
I know, to each their own, but personally I actually do like their interface.
That’s the launcher. There are a lot of launchers and some of them mimic iOS. You can choose which to use, as OP as chose Kiss launcher. /e/OS ships the Bliss Launcher.
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Can I ask why would you need Signal and Molly? I use only Molly at the moment.
What does the File Manager app do? Is it the same as Files from GoS?
I’m almost positive that it’s Fossify File Manager .
My question as well. I like Molly for the database lock. Don’t need signal, and don’t get that silly donation reminder either.
I’ll be taking this journey some time soon as well. Never had an android in my life but I very badly want Graphene. I already downloaded and have been trying out SimpleX as a messenger and have reached out to a few friends about using it when I ditch my iphone and they thankfully are open to it. Right now my only set back is saving up for a secondhand pixel while also trying to save for multiple other things that are a higher priority in the midst of things becoming more expensive. But thanks for this post. Glad to see another iphone user make the jump and hear what your experience has been.
Profiles are nice and all, but remember, that there are still ways to track you across profiles (serious determination required), like the network stack being mostly shared. Here’s the thread.
If you truly need isolated apps, consider getting multiple phones. I personally have three devices for this. For example, my main device (where I actually use the web browser and which is connected to my private network) runs only a limited set of foss apps. This will solve the alarms issue as well as this device has only one profile.