Comment by palata
12 hours ago
> supports Graphene but there are too many trade-offs there
What are the tradeoffs? I have been following GrapheneOS for a while, and it doesn't seem like there are many tradeoffs.
> OpenStreetMap is still really hard to use and gives bad directions.
OpenStreetMap is a database, and most commercial services that are not Google use it. E.g. Uber or Lyft.
You just need to find an app that you like. CoMaps is nice, OSMAnd has a lot of feature but the UX is harder. And of course you can contribute to OSM and make it even better than it is! You'll see it's a great community!
Can you use GrapheneOS with your bank app? With a digital wallet for NFC cards? With Uber or Lyft? (Asking seriously, not rhetorically.)
My understanding from looking into this two years ago is that it's hit or miss for banks (depending on if they opt into device attestation stuff), no for NFC / Google Wallet, and yes for Uber / Lyft.
Apparently the common workaround for the Google Wallet stuff is to pair a GrapheneOS phone with a stock Android smartwatch.
Edit: Here's some additional information on banking apps: https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compa...
Apparently the common recommendation these days is to use Curve Pay as a virtual card provider on GrapheneOS, which can then route to arbitrary underlying cards. And evidently Google Wallet does work for things that aren't payment cards (airline tickets, transit passes, etc.) on GrapheneOS.
My friend uses a pretty hardened (as per him; I didn't indulge him when he wanted to give me the gory details) Graphene setup on his few years old Pixel.
Bank apps - as per him none work. Uber (no Lyft here; other taxi apps) work flawless. Payment apps, he said is a coin toss. On his phone even WhatsApp doesn't work. He anyway prefers Signal (which prob. nobody else uses in his circle except maybe me who has it installed on a secondary phone) or plain SMS. Basically most of the "normal" apps that add integrity checks don't work but he is fine with that.
Re: the bank apps: that really depends on the bank and the country. I live in a eu-west country and there are afaik no apps that do not run on Graphene (which did suprise me I must admit).
Whatsapp can work if you use sandboxed Google Play (I still use a Google account, I just don't want gplay to have effectively root on my device).
Depending on the level of integrity check your app might just work. Gory details: https://grapheneos.org/articles/attestation-compatibility-gu...
And like others said: no contactless payment, but I dont use that personally anyway.
Yes, these would be my concerns as well. In the past, I would install custom ROMs. Then I stopped doing that and would only root my device. But of late, way, way too many apps refuse to work if rooted (apps that used to be fine with it before).
Now I just accept life as it is.
Contactless payments is the the big one that doesn't work and probably won't. You can do in app payments via Google pay though
Many banking apps work fine though not all.
Luckily my German bank (Volksbank) has its own NFC app on Android. Much maligned years ago when it was announced (why can't they just let me use Google Pay??), I at least have come to the conclusion that it has granted me a freedom that Google does not.
This is a question that I rarely see answered but would love to know as well.
Someone showed me OSMAnd recently while we were hiking. I installed it as soon as I got home. Great for hiking.
Then last week I used it for navigation (on a phone with no SIM card).
Absolutely. Terrible.
Worst navigation app I've seen. Told me to make a turn at an intersection that did not allow turns. Then at another intersection, it told me to "Turn left", but the display clearly showed it going straight. I'm guessing that the straight road probably is angled 1 degree or something at the intersection and the app was viewing that as a turn.
I get similar navigation issues with Google maps. I still use Google maps for driving because the live traffic is important to me, but other posts on here mention other apps with live traffic so I'll give them a try.
For an open source Android app for OpenStreetMap data, I like Organic Maps, and it normally works great with locally-cached maps. I've had better luck with it than with Google Maps or Apple Maps on phones.
(Though, I should mention that twice in the last year I've had Organic Maps become hopelessly confused about where I was, and where I should go. Both times, it had gotten a good GPS location, but then got confused while being out for an extended period of time, like maybe it was dead-reckoning only after that initial lock.)
+1 for organic maps. Have used it hiking and travelling all over the world. Never had any issues with it.
Not had any GPS problems other than that time I was in an area where it was being jammed. Bloody Russians.