I have a google pixel, and I know I could install grapheneOS on it. But I’m very, very hesitant, since I depend so much on my phone.

This isn’t like distro hopping, where I feel more comfortable hot swapping ssds, or making partitions, or using my desktop while I tinker with my laptop. My phone has a SIM and the service I depend on can’t be emulated off this phone.

So what do you recommend I do? Should I move my SIM (my phone service, really) to a new phone while I tinker with this one? Can I just blow up the current OS and wing it? Or maybe theres another option that would allow me to bail back to stock android in case something goes wrong. What do you think?

  • Salamander@mander.xyzEnglish
    0·
    8 months ago

    I think that it works, but for it to work you need to enable Google Play services. From what I understand, this is done in a sandboxed manner simulating a fake identity, so it is possible to do this while isolating Google from your phone to an extent. But I think that WhatsApp is in itself problematic and one of the direct offenders that I want to avoid, regardless of its reliance on Google Play services, and so I have not gone through this effort myself.