Hi folks, Planning on moving back to android after five years due to wanting better privacy and foss apps. I’ve been curious about folks experiences with pixel phones and grapheneOS on them while maintaining a distance from google services. Has there been better experiences with the pixel 9 or have they been the same with the 8? Would the 8 be more worthwhile because both have the years support ahead of them with just the one year of difference?
I do have some apps I rely on that I know coming over will be a shift but I can get over. This includes signal, Lemmy, YouTube, Ente Auth, banking apps, plex. Those I think will be easy.
I went with the 9 ultimately - and recently - and am very happy so far. I was prepared for a buggy or difficult experience but grapheme is really smooth in my experience so far.
After months of trying to degoogle a Samsung running stock OS, finally having control and proper security is a relief.
I also went with the 256gb and would recommend spending on storage whatever model you go with. Personally i don’t see much in the 9;pro that i don’t already have in the 9.
Signal, Lemmy (Voyager), Mastodon, PipePipe etc all running smoothly.
Learning that many apps you can get on Aurora will work, but most apparently rely on Google Play services to send notifications. So it’s annoying to not receive those or need to set up workarounds, but honestly think about that. The app is telling google every single item it wants to notify you and relying on google to deliver it. That really sucks as a strategy.
Thankfully Signal has its own way of delivering notifications
Many appa that seem to “need” Google Play Services to run will work without it, especially with Exploit Compatibility turned on in that specific app settings. Even worked for banking for me, no play services needed in that profile etc.