Help with a simple and private phone
Hi everyone, I’m looking to possibly simply my smartphone setup. I would really love to keep it as a utility: phone, text, camera, GPS, web browser, notes, email, music player. Im think of switching to local NextCloud backup system as well. I currently have an iPhone but used to flash ROMs on Android phones, so I would be willing to do that again for more privacy options and less unnecessary changes to the OS.
I have looked a little into it, and I’m wondering about getting a couple year old Pixel and putting GrapheneOS on it. I also searched a little and came across the Purism Librem 5 that has physical kill switches and sounds neat; a little pricy but I’d be willing to pay if it lasts a while and has good privacy options.
What are your thoughts? Are there other hardware suggestions or setups that you like? The idea of FOSS is appealing because it seems like the money aspect seems to skew the priority of smartphones.
Great to see people care about their privacy, especially on their mobile devices, as these are often the worst in regards to privacy. GrapheneOS is definitely the best choice, other options are not worth considering. I absolutely recommend against the Librem 5 (or any Linux phone), as these are not really usable, lack essentially every important app and have far worse security than Android or GrapheneOS. There's a great article about Linux phones: https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/linux-phones.html
If you want to use GrapheneOS, get a Pixel 6 or newer, because the older models don't get security updates anymore. The Pixel 6 will be supported until 2026, the 6a until 2027, you can check out the full list out on this site: https://grapheneos.org/faq#device-lifetime
GrapheneOS doesn't ship any unnecessary bloatware by default, it only comes with stock AOSP applications and no Google services at all. You can install Sandboxed Google Play services from the GrapheneOS Apps repository. For all the other things you need, I recommend searching on F-Droid. It's a repository of FOSS Android apps that don't spy on you.
For your use cases I recommend the following apps:
Simple Dialer
Simple Messenger
GrapheneOS includes their own 'Secure Camera' app, but it can't make use of the post processing in the Google Pixel. You can install the normal Google Camera app from the Play Store through Aurora Store (an anonymous way to download apps from Google Play) and revoke it's network permission in the settings. The network toggle is a feature unique to GrapheneOS.
For maps and navigation I recommend the following solutions: OsmAnd, Organic Maps and Magic Earth. Magic Earth isn't open source, but they have a good privacy policy and at least in my experience it's better than the other solutions.
GrapheneOS ships with the Vanadium browser, which is a hardened version of Chromium. Vanadium is also used in the WebView API, which other apps use to display web content. If you don't like to a Chromium-based browser, I recommend Mull which is hardened Firefox.
For Notes, I really like Notesnook. It's open-source, available on F-Droid and if you use their cloud sync feature, it's end to end encrypted. You can also use it locally and revoke it's network access, so it never connects to the internet, if that's what you prefer. Standard Notes is another option. It also encrypts you notes database locally. There's also Simple Notes, which has less features and it's fully offline.
K-9 Mail is probably the best FOSS email client. There's also FairEmail, but the user interface isn't great.
Retro Music is an amazing, good looking open source music app. Simple Music is an alternative.
The Nextcloud app is also available on F-Droid.
If you're into self hosting, I recommend Immich for syncing photos.
If you find these apps useful, consider donating to their developers. They deserve a tip for making all of this great software available to everyone.
Hope you find this useful.
instead of the simple mobile tools, consider changing them out for fossify versions. Simple mobile tools recently got sold to a company that buys up apps to put ads and trackers in them, Fossify is a fork
I know, but if they add any weird shit to their apps, it won't be accepted on F-Droid anyway. Also, most of the Fossify apps aren't available on F-Droid right now. I can only find the gallery app at the moment. Once the Fossify forks of the Simple Mobile Apps I mentioned are available on F-Droid, I will edit my comment.
Just a sidenote, the Simple Mobile Apps suite was sold off to a company called ZipoApps which buys apps and stuffs them with ads and trackers. The versions currently on F-Droid should still be fine, but I've started using Koler and QUIK for call and text.
I thank you for your effort in this post, and I appreciate anyone who try to give real and complete answer to this kind of question, but I'd like to point out that madaidan "guides" aren't reliable, and shouldn't be linked as useful source of information, since he usually just spread FUD. Nothing he even wrote is actually useful to real users and common people, and even if I understand he know what he's talking about this doesn't mean his interpretation is correct. Security isn't absolute, and safety from any ideal danger that at this time no one even know how to exploit shouldn't be the ultimate goal for everyone. Sorry for my bad English, I hope I made myself clear