I have been trying to escape Google’s Panopticon for a while now.
A few weeks ago I had mustered up the time, desire, and confidence to install GrapheneOS: a de-googled, android-based operating system.
I have been delaying this step for a while for a number of reasons:
- Fear of Bricking my device
- I bricked plenty of laptops circa 2010 trying to install ubuntu on them.
- Cost. Google Pixel devices aren’t cheap.
- Speaking of which, the irony isn’t lost on me that in order to install a de-googled operating system you have to buy a device manufactured by, erm, Google.
Lately, I found that Backmarket has quite cheap Pixel 6s and 7s, so #2 became moot, I decided to ignore #3 and #1 and took the plunge. I used these instructions and a second-hand Google Pixel 7. The whole process took me about 30 minutes. Perhaps I got lucky.
Here are some pictures of the process:
Everything worked out of the box. I had great battery life, the phone felt very snappy. Pictures were great. I was set up pretty quickly. out of the box. Except… erm… typing messages to friends?
Here are some Whatsapp messages I sent right after installing graphene:
“Tonigjt?”, “ticketd”? What is going on, Graphene? Can’t you correct this???
I don’t understand why the default keyboard does not come with autocorrect. I tried installing a few different open source keyboards, such as CleverKeys and LeanType
CleverKeys had an atrocious UI:
Eventually, with my tail between my legs, I installed the Play Store and downloaded Google’s Keyboard. I believe it sends every key stroke to google’s servers.
I am coming to the realization that trying to avoid Google, Apple, Amazon, and Meta is like trying to live in 1890 while avoiding the railroads, telegraph companies, and Edison. It basically cannot be done, so we need to shift the responsibility from individual privacy-focused initiatives to proper legislation holding these companies to account.
Spelling correction should be easy by the way!