According to the GrapheneOS devs:
>An iPhone is the next best choice for a private and secure smartphone.
What do you think about this statement?
They’re correct an iPhone isn’t a bad choice at all. It all depends on your threat model, iPhones don’t allow you to install another operating system and require you to install apps from the App Store so it requires trust in Apple. If you don’t mind that then you could do a lot worse than an iPhone.
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- Can’t install apps outside of the app store (depending on country)
- Can’t install custom ROM
- Apple account and payment method required to download even free apps
- App Store policies aren’t compatible with the GPL and other open source licenses meaning iOS apps cannot be open source
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But iPhones are completely proprietary. Nobody knows what their hardware and software is actually doing.
Beside that, how can you call something “private” or privacy respecting, when you are forced to use an Apple account?
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Security does make something more private. Consider going to a public place and using a bathroom stall. You shut the door for privacy and then you lock it. If you don’t lock the door your privacy can be compromised at any time by someone pushing open the door, or the door swinging open. The absence of a lock would make the door privacy theater.
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The kernel is open source and security researchers analyze iPhones all the time. Proprietary doesn’t mean no one knows what it’s doing it just means we don’t have the source code. There’s a great article you can read about this:
I wouldn’t say that something needing an account instantly makes it not private, I don’t think privacy is binary like that. For example, apps having carte Blanche access to your camera is a privacy issue, but not all operating systems restrict access to the camera behind a permission. iOS has a robust permission system that prevents apps from doing a lot, and Apple offers E2EE for most of its services. Yes Apple will see what apps you download form the App Store and you need to give them a credit card, that’s something you need to figure out if you’re on with. They offer a lot of other benefits than just that, I think the GOS account covers it well.
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But since I am forced to use an Apple ID, Apple can track everything I do and profile me.
I don’t see how this is supposed to be better, than using a stock android phone WITHOUT a Google account.
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Just because there’s an Apple Account involved doesn’t mean they can see everything you do. They’re not watching your screen in real time or anything it’s just things like being able to see what apps you download or what tv shows you purchased.
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Make an anonymous Apple account with a VCC. There’s no reason why you need to give them your real info. Let them make a profile on Jim from Nebraska when you’re really John from Maine.
I’m just not convinced that Apple products are good for privacy.
archive.is/2024.10.10-000653/ Exclusive: Inside Apple’s Secretive Global Police Summit
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you really dont have to give apple any real information on your Apple ID, In fact I make apple convinced I’m a US Citizen who bought a european iPhone in a different ID and an alias like iCloud email
ive also disabled every iCloud feature as it is not useful for my usage of the iPhone.
And no sign in with apple association.
even if Apple does make a unique profile based on what I install, they don’t know it’s truly me at this point and they have no iCloud data to go off of [This is a similar maneuver I executed on WhatsApp too, I enabled advanced chat privacy first thing, set disappearing messages to 90 days and dont use a real phone number and name]
[If you do however enable iCloud for others, I do highly suggest to everyone to turn on ADP]
While Apple isn’t perfect, I think they are decent middle ground for normies.
If you read apple’s privacy webpage and papers, they really do some interesting stuff that they wouldn’t bother to do if they didn’t cared about privacy. Like homomorphic encryption, rotating identifiers not linked to Apple ID, multi party relay(iCloud relay), aliasing temporary emails, protections from trackers in email, frameworks designed with privacy in mind (like Network Extension framework), etc.
They are one the only big tech company that offers E2E encryption in wide range of their cloud services, and they at least try to fight back blatant backdoor request from governments.
Also, macOS does not require account, unlike Windows.
I personally think that they at least consider privacy as one of their major marketing points, which means they have some financial incentive to be more privacy-friendly.
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I think, the Graphene devs are making some very weird/concerning statements in recent time. They make me question, if they actually know what they are talking about. In regard to iPhones, it is a fact that Apple collects data linked to the Apple ID, like device usage, app interactions, location history, purchase records, iCloud content, Siri requests, screen time, browsing activity (via Safari), health data, and media consumption. How can this be good for privacy? And this is supposed to be the next best alternative to a GrapheneOS phone according to Graphene devs??
Perhaps it is true and iPhones are very secure. But they are not private. This is something I have noticed with Graphene devs: They are constantly throwing together privacy and security. I wish they would define their understanding of “privacy”.
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What would you say is better than an iPhone (in terms of privacy, of course, and excluding GrapheneOS)?
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If Google’s Android is what comes next, that might hold true. Although maybe there are other alternatives that could be better… I’m not sure.
This was the context of the answer in the first post:
If someone had a light use phone as a backup, without needing Google Services, is it better to stay on stock Android or use which of the other OS that claim privacy?
An iPhone is the next best choice for a private and secure smartphone. Most Android devices have atrocious security and so do most aftermarket operating systems. If you need a fallback device for apps banning using anything other than iOS or Google Mobile Services Android, then your best choice is iOS.
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I think a stock android phone WITHOUT a Google account is better, than an iPhone WITH apple ID from a privacy perspective.
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I believe those statements from the Graphene Foundation stem from the following principle: there can be no privacy without security. The most secure phones, due to their SoC, are the Pixels and iPhones. Android is still quite secure (for example, a Pixel with stock Android); however, it still has the Play Services with superadmin permissions. Suppose they could be removed through custom ROMs (which in reality is not possible), you would still have to use third-party app stores that are not secure (F-Droid, Obtainium). The only option seems to be Accrescent, but it has few applications. I think that’s more or less the reasoning they follow.
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It’s sort of complicated. The wording in section 7 of GPLv2 would make it incompatible, which was the argument one VLC developer used when asking Apple to remove the iOS version of VLC from the App Store in 2011, only for VLC to return under the Apple-compatible MPL 2.0 license. To my knowledge, this was the only time Apple removed an app presumably for this reason. Apple never confirmed why VLC was removed, only stating the dispute between Rémi Denis-Courmont and Applidium couldn’t be amicably resolved. There are still a few GPLv2 apps like WordPress currently on the app store in 2025, so it’s clear that this isn’t actually enforced all that much.
The L/A/GPLv3 is a different license and it’s used by many iOS apps (including popular apps like Signal), none of which have ever been removed. Still, the safe answer for developers is to avoid GPL-family licenses because while it isn’t really enforced, they’re all likely to be incompatible. Most people could just do what VLC did and use the weak copyleft MPL 2.0 instead. Or you can do what Nextcloud did and use the GPLv3 with an Apple app store exception.
This is totally false and I’m curious as to why you thought this? I haven’t seen any other OSI-approved licenses (besides the GPL-family) which are potentially incompatible with the Apple app store. As I explained, GPL incompatibility isn’t properly enforced. But beyond that, every other open source license should be compatible. This is especially true for permissive licenses but it’s also true for some copyleft licenses like the MPL 2.0. As I listed above, there are countless open source apps available on the Apple app store under various open source licenses.
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It’s a lot more complicated than that, but if you’re just using a smartphone the way the average person would, I’d agree. iPhones are known to be relatively secure against malware and some studies indicate that Apple collects less data compared to stock Android. (Though Google disputes that.)
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But majority of people do use either Google or Apple account when using their phone, they are almost necessity.
As I mentioned, Apple does not blatantly track and link all of your activities when you are singed into Apple ID, for example, as far as I know when reading news in apple news app, the app generates rotating identifier not linked to your Apple ID to preserve privacy. Also, you mentioned health data, IIRC health data does not leave device in any way if you disabled it on icloud, and even when you enable icloud, health data is e2e encrypted by default.
While stock Android without account could be great as you mentioned, but I think there are lot’s of extraordinary/false claims about Apple in your comment, without any extraordinary evidence.