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Comment by mystified5016 | Hacker News Reader

Graphene is pretty cool in theory, but I found it to be a huge pain. The Play sandboxing is great, again in theory, but it leaves too much broken.

You should install Graphene if and only if you have zero need for steam, discord, or anything not in F-Droid AND you actively want to use your phone less. It makes your device drastically less desirable and useful.

If all you ever do on your phone is open a web browser and SMS AND you don't rely on voicemail, Graphene is pretty sweet.

I love the concept, I just found it incredibly impractical. I switched to lineage after six or eight months.

The real thing that made me switch was multiple OS updates per week. The incessant forced updates from Samsung is why I switched phones and installed Graphene. It got so bad that I had to block the persistent update notification and just went without for several months. Lineage is a little more respectful in this regard.

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Voicemail? I think I could figure out how(/why) to get a fax first..

I've not had any trouble with play apps from the sandbox, even finance ones and I let it reboot itself when idle for updates which to my surprise has never caused it to miss a wake up alarm. Now that Android One is dead I'm not sure I could use an Android Phone without Graphene. It is a shame another manufacturer isn't supported though.

I don't understand this, I use GrapheneOS and every app I've used before switching to it works just fine, including all of my financial/banking apps, Discord, etc.

The only apps that don't work (for policy reasons, not due to issues with GrapheneOS) are NFC payment apps. I use both F-Droid and Google Play extensively.

> The real thing that made me switch was multiple OS updates per week

You're complaining about timely security updates?

I am using Discord under GrapheneOS and it works fine. No idea about Steam.

Discord works, but you don't get push notifications. The steam app works, but the steam guard qr code scanner is just removed from the app if play services aren't running. If they are running, it will usually just crash when you open the qr scanner.

So yeah they "work" but not completely.

You also absolutely cannot sign into your work Google account due to device security. Fully unsupported. Voicemail doesn't work for some of the largest providers, so I have to call my own number and navigate the menu tree like it's the 1900s.

Graphene makes a lot of compromises for you and the attitude seems to be that Graphene knows better than you what's best for you and your device. That's why root access is explicitly forbidden.

I've been using GrapheneOS for a couple years now. I'm glad to see an Android fork that holds their ground as far as Play services are involved. You call them compromises but I see at more as providing visibility when apps are doing something I would otherwise object to but don't know about. It's opinionated, and therefore not for everyone.

FWIW, Discord notifications are working fine for me.

I also strongly discourage signing into work accounts on your personal phone. It's a privacy nightmare. Have them buy you one. Turn it off when you're not working.

I don't have any issues with Discord notifications[1] and I just installed the Steam app to check the QR scanner and I can confirm that it works for me.

edit: Now I see some intermittent notifications about crashes in "camera provider" when opening Steam QR scanner but it doesn't actually interfere with anything, it still captures the camera and decodes the QR code.

[1] https://i.imgur.com/tgTBgbZ.png

> That's why root access is explicitly forbidden.

Can't you root GrapheneOS with Magisk, just like you would the OEM version of Android?

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