For example:

Say anyone that downloaded IceBlock commited crime, Apple could give the govt everyone who downloaded its phone number, the govt could get the realtime location of everyone based on their phone number from the carrier.

And that's not even mentioning the other problem that nobody can download IceBlock anymore[1].

It's so refreshing for my phone not to ask for any identifying information when I set it up. GrapheneOS is a better software experience than iOS anyway[2].

Phones have great potential to be the most private and secure computers, cell services not withdrawing. And iPhones are one of the most private and secure devices. But, Apple uses that to restrict its users freedom and it makes Apple's users can easily be controlled by any government.

GrapheneOS delivers that dream.

[1] https://www.iceblock.app/

[2] once you install good apps. This is coming from a lifelong iOS user. Not prejudiced against Apple, I use a Mac (without an account) and their Advanced Data Protection is great (when I had an account).

Australia has a national test of it's phone alert system in 10 days at 27/07/26, 2PM AEST. (People in North America would know it as Cell Alerts/Presidential Alerts etc.)

There have been warnings that hidden phones will almost certainly sound, and their recommendation is to ether power off the phone or put it into airplane mode at least an hour before the test...

I have notifications turned ON for WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram. I never receive notifications from Telegram. I have to open that app to see if anyone said anything. WhatsApp and Signal notifications seem to vary between late or never? This is despite a constant notification reminder that Signal has Background connection enabled.

Also I can only send messages to some whatsapp contacts. My messages appear as pending for a while and eventually turn into 'could not send'.

Their phones are more than twice as expensive as equivalent models at JF HiFi too (and 5-10x the price of an older, but still perfectly useful degoogled phone from Marketplace).

Why is it on the front page of HN?

I remember Cyanogen ships without Google Play etc., right? (Because if you install Google Services and a bunch of crap from their store (theirs and otherwise) that spies on you, it defeats the purpose of a privacy preserving OS.

So I'm assuming Graphene is at least as strict as that? (Well Cyanogen at least give you the option of installing all that crap but that would seem to defeat the purpose in this case.)

But more broadly I'm not sure I understand the relevance in this particular context. The article mentions that an abuser could put spyware on your phone? Is that a realistic scenario? (Ok I suppose half the stuff on the Play store is spyware so maybe it's more realistic than I'm thinking...)

How did we get there?

It's not like Google is going to sell your tracking data to abuser.

There are many reasons to get rid of Google altogether, I just don't understand this one.

Let's not normalize this kind of profiteering out of OSS.

They also recommend at least 12 GB RAM. What about domestic abuse survivors requires that?

Why?

Here we're discussing a domestic abuse situation, where people are forcing victims to hand over their phone, and have apps installed to keep track of them. Against their will.

And the solution is to... what? Mysteriously have control of your own phone, and install an OS which prevents this? Seriously? I can just imagine it, when the unfamiliar OS is discovered, or the app not working. This is a domestic abuse situation, it's not about hidden sneakiness.

It's about in-your-face control. It's about forced compliance, or else. It's about the abuser becoming exceptionally upset about their tracking not working, or about a new, mysterious OS.

Installing GrapheneOS would not be tolerated. It would be an act which comes with reprisals. I can just imagine the reaction when the abuser can't get the phone to do as they wish, for the person to disclose what the OS is, or just to hand over their unlocked phone, and discover it's GrapheneOS, and Google it and see what it's for.

It's actually horrible advice to advocate the someone in this situation installs GrapheneOS. How could it possibly help?

GrapheneOS is great to protect from secret, unknown spying. Not some domestic abuse situation where spying isn't via secretness.

I wouldn’t recommend domestic violence victims to install graphene os on their phone by themselves

The basic premise, that a secured and private phone, is useful for domestic abuse victims is of course okay. It is true that protecting your privacy from abusive family members can be useful and GrapheneOS' features, which are accurately described on their own website (contrary to the linked blog post), certainly help remove threats in that regard. See : https://grapheneos.org/features . This is dependent on the specific situation, of course, (e.g. huge difference between ex-partner stalking you and a current partner you live with abusing you), because if you are forced to give your phone password at the threat of being hurt, a secure phone won't really help you a lot.

While the licenses that GrapheneOS uses permit companies to establishes businesses using GrapheneOS software, it's not recommended by the project to buy pre-installed phones, certainly not pre-configured phones, like PrivacyPros offers. The install process of GrapheneOS is simple if you are using the WebInstaller, and there is a lot of free support available in the community chat rooms and fora if you bump into issues. This saves you a lot of money because you can buy a new, used or refurbished Pixel with the stock OS installed at a much lower price. If you install GrapheneOS itself the guide also mentions you have to verify the integrity of your installation. That also holds true for preinstalled phones, you should check the verified boot hash and set up Auditor app. Preconfigured phones should actually be completely factory reset, not only from the OS but preferably also from recovery mode and then set up again, with a check of the boot hash and a set up of Auditor app before you install any apps or start changing settings. You don't know what PrivacyPros has changed to the settings, what they loaded on the device and Auditor should be set up by yourself and straight from the beginning, before you start using the device, because pinning-based security is an important part of its security model and you would want to be pinned to a clean state from the post install.

The blog post and also the PrivacyPros website where they promote and sell their phones is riddled with unnecessary misguided advice and also falsehoods about what GrapheneOS offers and what the dangers of the stock Pixel OS and Android in general are. Pixel OS and Android in general are portrayed way too negatively. I'll just give a few examples because it will cost me way too much time too debunk and correct all of it. These ones are verified easily by yourself and I hope it just makes clear you can discard everything PrivacyPros has written and makes clear you should just consult the official GrapheneOS website. So, they pretend as if Android and Pixels themselves don't have a permission model, multiple users and verified boot. This is untrue. GrapheneOS hardens the app sandbox and permissions model more and offers stuff like storage scopes to work around to broad permissions, but the sandbox and permissions model itself exists for Android in general. Verified boot is also a standard Android feature, and also exists on iPhones and even on MacOS and ChromeOS. Multiple users are part of Android, GrapheneOS just increases the available number of users and increases their usability. Also note that users don't improve sandboxing. Sandboxing and access control exist within profiles as well, profiles are mainly meant for increased isolation via separate user data, user settings and VPN slots. They also offer separate encryption keys allowing you to selectively put data at rest etc. The whole idea of a "ghost" profile and user profiles being at the centre to security and privacy is misguided. They also call about kill switches, Pixels don't have hardware kill switches and the software kill switches are just part of Android.