There’s a town in Russia with only one road to get there. Outside of town there’s a stoplight always on red. This is so the police can stop anyone in town for running a red light.
GrapheneOS with FOSS apps is a premium experience but not where non - technical users will go currently because of the setup. Once setup it's very premium.
Motorola really seems to be going for a luxury look [1] and there will be Motorola devices with GrapheneOS installed out of the box.
From what I've seen of GrapheneOS, it's not a luxury product, it's a product for tinkerers, who don't mind finicky granular configs. If I'm paying a premium, I expect sensible, privacy respecting, defaults that I can use out of the box. Not constant fumbles until everything is "setup".
I think you have a wrong idea about GrapheneOS. You install the sandboxed Play Store/Services through their app store and then it's pretty much the same as any other Android phone. Except that it doesn't get in your face with preinstalled crap (Google, Apple, or Samsung). On the GrapheneOS forums there are a lot of non-technical people that install GrapheneOS and don't have many issues. The primary annoyance is Google's abuse of their monopoly with Play Integrity.
I would say it often feels more like a luxury product than an iPhone or Google-certified Android phone because it's not full of cheesy stuff. It's what iPhone and Pixel would look like if Apple/Google didn't want to push you: subscriptions, AI, movie/music apps, etc.
I don't think there's any defaults you need to change out of the box besides installing the apps you want.
But yeah, besides the stock Android which looks good, GrapheneOS does not add UI features themselves. When they add features like the recent secure clipboard, it fits nicely in the settings.
As someone who has daily driven both side by side as much as I love GOS, AOSP / Android absolutely does not feel premium compared to iOS. Both the UI and UX are rough compared to the polish of iOS. And the FOSS apps on Android are extremely subpar in terms of feel compared to iOS (off the top of my head look at how bad the Fossify Contacts app is compared to Google Contacts) but that’s the trade-off.
I also don’t think there will be Motorola devices with GOS out of the box, they’re just meeting the requirements to be able install it.
Both the UI and UX are rough compared to the polish of iOS.
Sorry, but no.
I also have an iPhone for $REASONS. Both my prior iPhone Air and my new iPhone 18 Pro still frequently stutters. Even scrolling some settings screens (which are very simple), I can often see frames getting dropped. Apple apps like the App Store are one huge frame-dropfest (even if you let it preload all assets). Apple can't get a nearly 1500 Euro phone with the fastest single-core performance and probably the fastest GPU to render normal window chrome smoothly anymore.
My P10P with GrapheneOS, which only has a midrange SoC by modern standards (don't believe what Google tells you) and it is buttery smooth.
iOS got even more terrible with Liquid Glass, so many things are badly readable, even with the slider set to completely opaque in iOS 27.
iOS used to be premium compared to Android. But Apple enshittified iOS over the last few years. Even most Apple pundits agree.
Since people seem to disagree because they simply cannot see it, here are two recordings at 0.5x speed so that even people who are not sensitive to stutters can see it:
When I see "polish" they're usually referring to the opposite of things like this. They seem to like sluggish UI as long as it's "smooth" (not "fast") and has flashy animations.
Just about everybody with money uses contactless payment and it doesn't look like that works with graphene so I'm not sure I would call it premium except for privacy.
No android auto? What are you basing this on? I ask because I am responding from grapheneos while connected to android auto, and I am concerned I am in the wrong universe again.
It does. You do have to install it (GrapheneOS provides a Play Store Sandbox to install google apps to) intentionally, it is not installed by default. Perhaps that tripped up the author of the misinformation you came across?
In any case, it is a fantastic OS with many of the annoyances of Android removed. (Scoped file permissions are fantastic, for example) If you are on the fence, I'd suggest giving it a shot. Replacing a phone OS might seem scary, but it is really pretty similar to use.
There is Android Auto. There's contactless payments in Europe through Curve, Paypal, and some specific banks. Some companies are working on bringing them to the US.
Funny enough, the only part of Apple Pay I use with any frequency is the browser/app integration part, basically as a much more convenient alternative to PayPal sometimes.
IRL I do use it on occasion but everything I use it for, I could just fall back to the contactless chips in my physical plastic CCs - just like I did for all those years on a deGoogled Android phone with no Google Wallet support. The unique value add of Apple Pay in the physical world is nearly zero to me, other than acting as a market force that made US point of sale systems finally catch up to Canada years late and offer tap to pay.
I agree about cash, but we are talking about a luxury experience. In fact, GrapheneOS has talked about it [1].
> So the lack of contactless payment on GrapheneOS may be inconvenient, but is it consistent with a privacy stance
I doubt you're implying this, but GrapheneOS doesn't break contactless, Google does by blocking GrapheneOS. Contactless works with curve and paypal in Europe.
In general, no where yet. I do think the smart phone interface (iOS) could become at least somewhat obsolete soon. As we move more towards a primarily inference interface it will open up the field to more competitors (less moat). That's just my opinion though. Be interesting, as usual, to see what comes out of China in the next few years.
To remove the concept of lies and it's shadow, which is a whole lot of reality of humans. Hell, it's the reality of reality. Think of all the insects that developed eyes on their wings. Purging that concept in all it's form seems like a lot of work.
I’m interested in Lora for when They turn off the internet. I assume they will also jam the relevant bands? Does anyone else have this in their threat model?
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