Bought a Pixel 8 Pro for a steal, should I use GOS or Android?

It has nothing to do with views. Battery and thermals are more or less the same, if not better, because of all the bloat that is missing compared to the stock OS.

One thing that could affect battery life and thermals is Vanadium, I spend most of my time in it, and it really likes to eat battery.

I also tested Pixel Camera processing on a Pixel 6a and Pixel 7 Pro, and everything was fine.

Banking apps are a particularly problematic class of apps for compatibility with alternate operating systems. Some of these work fine with any GrapheneOS configuration but most of them have extensive dependencies on Play services. For many of these apps, it’s enough to set up the GrapheneOS sandboxed Google Play feature in the same profile. Unfortunately, there are further complications not generally encountered with non-financial apps.

Many of these apps have their own crude anti-tampering mechanisms trying to prevent inspecting or modifying the app in a weak attempt to hide their code and API from security researchers. GrapheneOS allows users to disable Native code debugging via a toggle in Settings > Security to improve the app sandbox and this can interfere with apps debugging their own code to add a barrier to analyzing the app. You should try enabling this again if you’ve disabled it and are encountering compatibility issues with these kinds of apps.

Banking apps are increasingly using Google’s SafetyNet attestation service to check the integrity and certification status of the operating system. GrapheneOS passes the basicIntegrity check but isn’t certified by Google so it fails the ctsProfileMatch check. Most apps currently only enforce weak software-based attestation which can be bypassed by spoofing what it checks. GrapheneOS doesn’t attempt to bypass the checks since it would be very fragile and would repeatedly break as the checks are improved. Devices launched with Android 8 or later have hardware attestation support which cannot be bypassed without leaked keys or serious vulnerabilities so the era of being able to bypass these checks by spoofing results is coming to an end regardless.

The hardware attestation feature is part of the Android Open Source Project and is fully supported by GrapheneOS. SafetyNet attestation chooses to use it to enforce using Google certified operating systems. However, app developers can use it directly and permit other properly signed operating systems upholding the security model. GrapheneOS has a detailed guide for app developers on how to support GrapheneOS with the hardware attestation API. Direct use of the hardware attestation API provides much higher assurance than using SafetyNet so these apps have nothing to lose by using a more meaningful API and supporting a more secure OS.

A 3rd party community-sourced effort containing banking app compatibility information is maintained by PrivSec.dev. GrapheneOS does not make any guarantees regarding the list’s validity.

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Alright my bad. it is mentioned in usage guide, but I only read that after installing. So that was quite the reveal.

Just wanted to give OP a heads-up so they know what to expect.

Exactly what I was afraid of, and the differences people won’t notice, the subtle differences. I am very on the fence ATM.

I don’t want to be mean or anything, but if you care about these subtle differences and little things more than you care about privacy, security, and the freedom of your OS, then why ask on a forum that focuses exactly on those three things?

At least for now, you can’t have your cake and eat it too. It would be a lot faster and more productive if you would just try GrapheneOS and ask us for help if you can’t seem to get something working, etc. That way, you will actually know if you want to use the OS or not, right now, it’s just useless talk and guessing.

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You have no idea what you’re talking about. The included Camera App misses HDR, P3 and so many more features. While using the same sensor, both apps produce drastically different results because of how postprocessing works.

If you want GCam, just use it? it works just fine if you install it without Play Services and revoke network permission.

I use it myself for the cool night and star mode features

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You don’t have to run Google Services in order to use Pixel Camera. You can install it without granting Network Permissions & setup a scoped storage access to it. Bear in mind that Google apps communicate with each other within one profile via IPC, so, if one google app has network permissions, every other google app also has it. The included EXIF metadata of the images might harm your privacy to some extent, but you shouldn’t simply remove everything since it also includes Ultra HDR metadata and so much more.

The test you linked uses incorrect methodology, and relies on browsers, that butcher the images. Both Chromium and Firefox oversaturate images because of how they map color gamut, for example. This test is a complete joke and shouldn’t be trusted.

Where do I say that GrapheneOS Camera and Google Camera have the same quality?

I also clearly explained everything here, lol:

Edit: changed my wording a bit because someone got highly upset over it, lol.

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kek.

He is clearly saying that he heard that the camera is worse on GrapheneOS and he isn’t willing to compromise on it. Which is not true, Google Camera works the same on both stock OS and GrapheneOS. If he knew that, he wouldn’t even write such a thing.

I whole wholeheartedly agree, but what I was trying to highlight is my concern about the differences I will not be able to pickup, some of which may be really import, that is why I was encouraging discussion.

The YouTuber’s camera test appears to be worthless (though I could be wrong, because I do not want to watch it). In photography only resolution, colour accuracy, distortion, low light capabilities matter, all of these seem to be a function of the sensor specifications and the quality of the lens glass, and some post-processing, these are the only things I care about. I really do not care about artificial post-processing, so long as it automatically makes the scene as natural as it were in reality. Basically, I am more interested in the hardware, than the software.

Some cool quality of life features using on device AI such as Playing now (which detects the song playing nearby you), Live Translate etc aren’t present on GrapheneOS, I believe. Some of these are more of nice to haves rather than essential requirements however. And, for my threat model, a lack of nice to haves is fine if I get better independence from Google Play Services and their insane data collection.

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@Sprout3425 FWIW this isn’t even a GrapheneOS fault - pretty much all third party camera apps on Android don’t have proper “AI enhancing” to their images. There seems to be some work with CameraX APIs or whatever, but GCam still is supreme. Just make sure to manually erase exif before sharing photos taken with the Google Camera.

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I have no idea about GOS, but SeedVault backups work very well on CalyxOS. I can uninstall NewPipe, plugin my USB, and have my stuff back when I reinstall the app.