I have somewhat of a pendulum going on between iOS and GrapheneOS. But just like I switched from macOS to Linux some time ago, I want to run GrapheneOS as my daily driver as well.
Part of that is frustration with US Big Tech licking Trump’s butt. But it’s also part of a broader shift: with movements like “Digital Independence Day”, I want to take back control over my smartphone - and hopefully stick with that this time.
It’s been more than 10 years for me writing about self-hosted infrastructure and systems that care about privacy, yet I have kept using Apple Smartphones for this whole time. While I always liked the idea of Android being fundamentally open source (as the AOSP), neither the hardware that it ran on nor the inevitable dependency on proprietary services from Google, a company that reportedly does not care about your privacy, were appealing to me. And while it was always possible to run Android completely free of Google Services, in practice it’s way harder given that most of our surroundings in the tech space are proprietary products (that oftentimes don’t care about the few people that don’t want Google Play Services). Plus, from a security perspective, running dubious custom ROMs from the xda-developer forums is a nightmare to begin with, most Android apps look horrible etc. :) It’s hard to say I’m a real fan.