[O:02.28.25 / U:07.05.25] ## My Journey Two weeks ago I started watching videos on how bad Apple and Google phones were at tracking and recording your every move these days. It's much worse than I thought, but don't take my word for it... start doing your own homework. Some YouTube creators that drove the point home for me were [Side of Burritos](https://www.youtube.com/@sideofburritos) and [The Privacy Pro Shop](https://youtu.be/AJ5srBSmfW4?si=3PN0QqG2PV5HYzLG). ### Initial Thoughts So I've been an iPhone user since the iPhone 3 with the exception of the one year I went to a Samsung and used Android in hopes of running a few HAM Radio apps like DroidPSK, and others. Turns out, I never used my phone for HAM field work much after all and I soon went to a laptop for that use case instead. Now if "DroidJS8Call" had ever come out I would have made the switch in a heartbeat! If it does in the future I will be ready now. So the point is that while I haven't used Android in 10 years, switching to GrapheneOS was not a big deal to me as it's basically "protection layers" on top of Android 15 and the OS feels the same. If you are a current Android user, it will be seamless, as you are already use to the billion settings available on your phone that Apple has chosen to shield their users from. There are a few more options that G-OS gives you on top of A-OS 15 at the APP level, but they are fairly easy to get to as you just long-press click on the app and select INFO to make your setting changes for the individual APP. ### Learning To Minimize Things Probably the largest part of security is your mindset. You can install G-OS and then install Google Services and break all that security you just installed by letting Google have your information anyway. You have to work at it, but you can defeat G-OS if you try. A simple lifestyle is a more secure lifestyle as well as less stressful and that appeals to me very much these days. I work in a shop of 20+ Electricians and everyday at lunch, they are all absorbed in their phones wasting time scrolling Twitter, Instagram, Discord, Telegram, YouTube, Facebook and other apps at lunch and even during working hours, every spare minute of the day is taken up by this behavior. I have forgotten my phone a few times and lunch is like a timeout from talking to each other as we don't talk when it's "scroll time". You don't need to go "Full Amish" but maybe things will be a little less stressful if you are not constantly drawn to this behavior? I know I've been working on my "listening skills" with people and putting the phone down for a few hours really helps. It gives you that break that is much needed in this day and age of constant and immediate information flow. You can't really listen to someone when you are glancing at you phone all the time, and the younger generation sees nothing wrong with ignoring you over their phone these days. ### It's a Phone, Not a Pacifier! Do you really need Social Media so much that you are willing to hand over you location, your contacts list, your camera and microphone access to corporations that have proven many times they are not trustworthy. Just to feed this UNHEALTHY habit of self pacification? Same with playing mindless games on your phone that require logins, logins = tracking and they are getting much more from you then they are giving you in entertainment, trust me! Or trust the experts if you have done your research. ### Be Honest When it comes to what your needs are verses what you wants are concerning apps on your phone. Many apps can be replaced with a website and most items of business can wait until you get home anyway. I took this chance to evaluate ALL of the apps on my iPhone and if it didn't have a function that I could not live without away from home... it was removed. What I found was that most apps were conveniences, but even worse, they were "time sucks" that I didn't need. ### Significant Time Sucks Removed - Signal - I use this with a few HAMs but it can wait until I get home. I also used it as a SMS replacement with the wife but have since gone to Session. - Discord - Same, it can wait. - Telegram - Same, it can wait. - YouTube - If I need to look something up I can use the browser, not be distracted by new videos populating in my feed on the app. ### Install Notes This 3 year old video instruction worked perfectly for me.  Be sure to use a quality USB cable. I have done two identical installs on Pixel 6 phones and of the cables that came with them one worked and the other did not, not all usb cables are data rated. I used my DigRig cable to flash the second phone without incident. The bad cable showed up as a driver error. But it was not. # Progress Reports ## Week 1 After one week of using GrapheneOS I can say I'm very impressed with the ease of installing and running apps in it. I was expecting nothing to work outside of the default apps, but the option to build several profiles at different "threat levels" is an amazing feature of GrapheneOS. I will expand on it at another time here, but if you watch all the videos of those two YouTube channels I recommended at the beginning, you will understand pretty quickly. Be sure to check out [Side of Burritos website](https://sideofburritos.com/docs/setup-guides/mobile-privacy/) and not just the YT channel. --- ## Month 1 It's been about a month since switching mine and the wife's phones over to GrapheneOS and these are the things I've noticed about the new OS that one must become accustom to. - You need to get into the habit of restarting the phones every week. This forces OS updates and app optimization, you will see it on reboot if it's needed. - iOS works 20% smoother and while my wife has been a trooper about changing over (she was 50% on board) she still misses the ease of the iPhone and was using it for a while in parallel with the Pixel 6 GrapheneOS phone. Once I turned it off and put it away there was nothing when could not live without on it. - Notifications are a little slower even with Google Notifications enabled. - I recommend creating a Google account just for the phone and installing Google Play to download apps. They are more likely to work smoothly than alternate play stores. - Battery life of the Pixel 6 (older phone) is highly dependent on background app use and they last anywhere from 24-48hrs on average. Get use to charging every other night. The iPhone has great standby battery life if not used hard. I ran mine with video etc and got the same charge cycle as my Pixel 6, the wife used her iPhone a lot less and got better battery life than her new Pixel 6. The newer more expensive models probably do better but I'm not paying $1500+ for a phone ever again! APPS I USE: - Session - Secure SMS - WeWow - Weather - Vivaldi - Browser - Proton - Mail, Drive, Calendar, VPN - Aegis - 2A - YouTube - Video, Music - e-Sword - Bible - eufy - Home camera system - Audible - Books on tape - Gallery - Replacement for GrapheneOS Gallery - Dynalist - List keeper - Regrid - Free property zone program - PayPal, Venmo - YouCut - Video editor - Material Files - Better file management program - Time Calculator - EchoFlow - Solar generator app - Magic Earth - Offline TBT Maps (Google Maps is a tracker) --- ## Month 2 #### Check yourself before you wreck yourself! I found myself like an addict drifting back to to Google and using the phone as a pacifier checking Telegram, Discord, etc. whenever I had a spare moment. In the Month 1 update you can see that I took the easy button to getting all the apps I had before on my iPhone (for the most part) by allowing google services. Some like my camera system (Eufy) will not run without it. Google services on a privacy phone is an oxymoron IMO, and the equivalent of having a password of 123456 on it. You cannot have your cake and eat it to when it comes to protecting your privacy where google is concerned. I still have all the bells and whistles on a second profile (running google services) if I need them but on my day to day, I run the default "Admin" profile which is the most secure profile and uses only apps from F-Droid and Aurora Store when needed and rely on browser shortcuts for most items instead of apps. By using a privacy browser like Vivaldi through a paid VPN (ProtonVPN) another level of security is established. Proton Drive auto backs my selected image folders and not just all images captured (90% of which are work images) but only directories I designate for backup. Proton Calendar allows sharing my account calendars with my wife's Proton Calendars. Minimal distractions are the result of using a phone as a phone 90% of the time, but having the ability to do online banking, turn-by-turn navigation, check weather, and 2A authentication gives me all the tools I NEED to get through the day, but none of the distractions to reduce my productivity, especially at work. The result is I get more done at work because the little time sucks add up quicker than you think. APPS USING: - Vivaldi - OpenWeather - Magic Earth - Fossy Gallery - Signal - Aegis - Proton Password - Proton Drive - Proton VPN (kill switch enabled) - Proton Calendar --- ## 7 Months Later I found myself drifting to entertainment again and did a factory reset on the phone and went with the following apps recommended by [Mark37.com](https://mark37.com/ghost-phone-apps/) in addition to my Proton Suite and cross platform browser choice Vivaldi. Side note: Only the default profile has "on board visual access" it doesn't voice to text like an iPhone, but you can see who called and listen to it without dialing out. I'm only using the default profile now. - Aegis (2Step Auth App) - Magic Earth (Offline Map, turn by turn) - FUTO (a better system keyboard) - QUIK (better SMS app) - Open Camera (better camera app) - Maps.me (offline maps) - KDE Connect (Linux sync program for phone, I have been using Zorin for months now and it's awesome!)