Hi,
A friend wants to degoogle his phone, so I suggested the OS I’m currently using. The one we can’t talk about… He wants a small/compact phone, so I suggested pixel 4a (not buying second hand though), but I’m afraid that planned obsolescence may kill the phone rather soon. What’s your opinion?
Cheers and thank you for your help,
What’s the OS we can’t talk about?
Hannah Montana Android.
To be more helpful than the joke comments you’ve received so far, it’s graphene OS that’s causing a lot of controversy.
What’s the controversy?
I’m honestly not quite sure, I just know people are getting riled up when it’s mentioned.
It gets people going, (Daniel) 'Mkay?
I stole this from another lemmy comment, please don’t come after me
Who’s comment was that 😂
Can’t really remember right now. I think it was a thread on which phone to buy and people were talking about graphene os on pixels.
Someone commented something along the lines of “m’lady” but with Daniel Micay’s name as a pun
They claim their security measures are better then other custom ROMs.
Don’t they all make that claim?
Do they all really? I know GrapheneOS does, and I think DivestOS even says “use my OS to stay as up to date as possible, but if you have a current/supported Pixel, use GrapheneOS instead for superior security.” But I don’t recall other OSes really going “we’re more secure than GrapheneOS and here’s why.”
Hence the controversy! 🙂
Also, Graphene tend to act superior about it and it pisses people off.
The open-source one that’s so powerful it summons an online fight with at least 50 members if mentioned. It’s kinda anomalous so it is recommended not to mention it online until further research.
The OS-who-shall-not-be-named lest you summon it’s power.
I think it’s a bit too old, if you want to stay in the pixel ecosystem maybe try to grab a 6, 6a or 6 pro. They are around $250, and they are great!
I recently got a 6a to replace my iPhone SE for €160 and it’s been working great.
Great
The one we can’t talk about…
I don’t get it ? Why can’t we say it’s name ?
4a is end of life already, so no firmware updates from Google. GrapheneOS has legacy builds available for it but doesn’t recommend using them, and they might go away anytime soon
get a used device which is still properly supported, don’t buy brand new e-waste
I have a 4a running graphene and I love it but after 3+ years the battery life is shot. I really didn’t want to buy any of the new pixels because they are all too big and I hate big phones. I was thinking of just buying a new 4a and installing graphene again (because got forbid making a phone where you can just swap out the battery in this day and age) but are you saying this would be a bad idea at this point? Like even if they keep graphene up to date the phone will still be outdated (and therefore vulnerable) at the kernel/hardware level?
yes and P4a is already one major GOS/Android version behind, it’s only getting “extended legacy support” releases. i.e. security fixes are merged and backported where possible, but it’s overall not the best setup and they recommend to switch asap.
I’m pretty sure GOS will drop Android 13 (and therefore P4a) as soon as they release Android 15, since the team won’t be maintaining three major Android versions.
CalyxOS ported Android 14 to P4a, so you might squeeze an additional year or so out of it if you switch.
I’d either replace the battery in the old P4a, or get a newer model with 7y software support. But buying a new 4a is probably not your best possible move
You can install LineageOS or e/OS on it (instead of Graphene, if that’s too controversial), and then the 4a is a good phone to use.
Writing from a 3 years old 4a running CalyxOs: the phone is a perfect choice if you want a small sized phone with a 3.5mm jack and that gets constant updates. The camera might be a little better but I don’t take many pictures so I don’t mind.
the camera is amazing, but you need to use the Google Camera app for it to take advantage of all the Pixel magic. 3rd party camera apps will yield lousy shots comparatively.
I bought a used Pixel 5 in Feb for my daily driver. Replaced my Pixel 3 only because the power button was flaky. They both still run great. By my standards, getting two years out of a phone I paid $150 for is better than getting three years out of a $700 phone.
It is currently not being updated
Yes, it’s too old. Does not receive software updates anymore. The newer a-series of phones are still quite a bit larger than the 4a but also quite a bit smaller than the 8 or especially 8 “Pro” or whatever the fuck stupid name they’re giving phones these days.
I am far from unbiased as I just switched back to my pixel 4a from my new Sony Xperia. I think the Pixel 4a is a flat out GREAT phone, full stop. It is perfectly sized IMO, has been very reliable, good battery life (though at this point I should look into replacing the battery), and it has a headphone jack. That being said, picking it as a new phone now essentially means going with a custom rom and hoping it stays supported. That’s fine and all, but it’s not something most people want. Just to be clear, the xperia isn’t a bad option per se, I only switched back because the phone came carrier locked when it was supposed to be unlocked and the carrier it was locked to was uncooperative so I refunded it.
Used Pixel 6, 6 Pro, 7 and 7 Pro can be found for reasonable prices these days. One of those in good condition would be a better buy because you’ll still get security patches for a while. Last time I looked, the third party OSs for Pixel phones only supported them for as long as Google did.
Random hardware suggestions, using mobile Linux support as a litmus test
- Pinephone (Pro): Main downside is that OG Pinephone has extremely anemic hardware, and the charging circuit is not controlled through hardware for some insane reason; hope the kernel devs of whatever OS you put on it knows how to not turn your phone into a bomb. Also Pine64 as a company has gotten flak for their support of Manjaro. Can’t deny how good the price is though.
- Fairphone 4: Good hardware, but expensive. I don’t own it, but it works good on postmarketOS according to the wiki.
- Librem 5: Overpriced compared to the earlier members on this list, but you can guarantee the phosh interface will work well considering it was developed by Purism as well.
- OnePlus 6 and 6T: I don’t know much about these, but they’re very popular with the mobile Linux crowd.
As for the pixel, there’s work on it but it’s still broken at the moment. As for the hardware being too old, I haven’t used anything Android in a while, so I don’t know how much performance degrades each release, but a mobile Linux distribution should run just as good today as it will 20 years from now, assuming you use the same interface.
It goes for like $80-120 in my country. For the price it’s an interesting deal but it’s extremely old so GrapheneOS won’t support it. I think you can still find something like LineageOS or crDroid but tbh it’s too old for a new daily driver. Lack of firmware updates will kill custom ROMs due to incompatibility with new Android versions eventually (and most likely very soon).
Compact phones are dead now and the last ones don’t even seem to support degoogled custom ROMs. You’re out of lack with that.
Pixel 5 is end-of-life and shouldn’t be used anymore due to lack of security patches for firmware and drivers.
I understand if your friend is on a budget and simply can’t afford a non EOL phone but, they should really consider a 6th gen Pixel or better if they care at all about their data security.
Umm one question by the way , why use Google phone to degoogle? There are plenty of good Android phones out there right?
While it is ironic, the pixels are easy to unlock the bootloader and have good support across lineage, calyx, and graphene. Been using one to degoogle for awhile and would recommend them
