still deciding to fully degoogle with GOS or muddling through with what I have (proprietary, data grabbing and bloated).
To understand the question, compare with my main hardware with debian on it: a regular notebook I bought in 2016 and I’ve used heavily for all kinds of stuff: working, writing papers, downloading and playing media including AV1, editing audio, torrenting…
One of the best investments I ever made, considering what I paid and how prices nowadays are. Debian offers regular upgrades and I don’t have to check if my hardware is going to support the software on a level comparable with android devices (GOS only runs on pixels, other open-source, privacy focused Android operating systems have similar hardware restrictions).
I want this kind of ROI for the device I buy and the software I use, but I don’t know if that’s possible:
GOS drops support for older pixels but I don’t know how many years any particular device is supported by GOS: 3 years? not enough. There’s no way I’m buying a new pixel every 3 years. I’d even consider 6 years restrictive.
Imho pixels fucking suck. Repairability is really bad, so as soon as anything has issues you need a need phone. I would say the answer to your question heavily depends on your daily battery life requirements. If you wanna stretch the phones life, set a 70-80% charging limit to damage the cells less. (If that is even possible with the new models idk, you didnt specify yours…) If you treat it well and turn off all the battery sucking toggles to extend the time before needing to charge, then 4-5 years might be doable.
I tried Graphene for a bit but ultimately couldnt put up with pixel devices anymore and went to calyxos on a fairphone. Not having a swappable battery or extendable storage is just not fun. If you want a 10 year phone get a fairphone. The 6 just came out and is very well priced in the EU.
https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/24134-devices-lacking-standard-privacysecurity-patches-and-protections-arent-private
Some of the mentioned things are real issues, but normal users dont care about physical security. If your physical security is threatened, then your failure point will be a pipe wrench.
I see the point, but there’s a certain dignity in being able to go out with your secrets instead of having some spill them for you without so much as a fight. Unless they whip out the truth serum, idk what I’d do then.
Counterpoint: Yeah, but if ICE kicks in your door would be comforting to know that powering your phone off prevents it from being cellebrighted. GrapheneOS with a supported Pixel device is one of the few smartphones that they can’t exploit from BFU.
The federal government isn’t using wrenches (yet)
No, not wrenches, they just stuff you in a camp, starve you and degrade you until you give up and then deport you to an even worse camp.
Yeah, but they won’t know which waifu is my favorite
This meme doesn’t really apply to Graphene OS when you can just give the duress password which permanently wipes the phone.
thats true, but also a great way to get pipewrenched.
You’d give the duress password before you get pipewrenched.
And once it’s wiped there’s no point in them pipewrenching you because its too late.
no need for one when you have a pipe wrench and the smartass you are interrogating just wiped their phone.
maybe you can make them squeak out something useful that was in there?
By then they’re just pipewrenching you for the sake of pipe wrenching you. It no longer has anything to do with the phone. Graphene OS did its job.
Also, there’s no reason they wouldn’t wrench you no matter what you gave them.
Yeah, this is so sad that most phones do not follow good security practices.