You can screen mirror your Graphene OS phone using scrcpy already.
iPhone 17 is the most secure iPhone because it’s the first one with MIE. I think it’s the best choice for non-technical “regular” users. I used to have the iPhone mini which I personally think is the best iPhone ever made due to its form factor.
GOS is the arch linux of phone OSes. It’s extremely bare bones for privacy and security reasons and it’s the user’s responsibility to setup the phone based on their threat model. To me GOS offers significantly better security, privacy and usability, but you have to be an advanced user to get there. GOS gives you freedom over your phone that an iPhone will never match. Cellebrite phone reports from last year are the best endorsement of GOS’s security.
So what is better? If you want something that just easily “works”, super convenient and you’re a non-technical user then iPhone 17 is clearly the best option. If you want the ultimate privacy, security, flexibility and are willing to put in the work, GOS is currently unmatched.
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I think it is more accesible/easier to use than what you say. Especially if you use the Sandboxed Google Play Services.
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There’s definitely some friction for the user as they’d have to use the GOS App Store to download it and then know to set the correct permissions (ex. the Phone permission is now required for RCS to work).
I’ve been using GOS for over two years with the sandboxed play services running until two weeks ago where I got around to remove them. It’s absolutely much more work for you to match some of the pre-installed iPhone/Android behavior.
Example: Ever lose your phone? With GOS you’ll be completely SOL unless you know to setup something like fmd-foss / FMD Android · GitLab in advance which is definitely not “easy” for non-techies. You’ll be asked to configure UnifiedPush, FMD’s custom server, a ton of custom permissions, etc… I would not expect someone like my grandma to know to do this. 1000% easier to just get her an iPhone 17 instead and not worry about it.
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They are not. Its just a matter of the correct USB-A to USB-C cable and using the most modern browsers. There is some difficulty but no where near where Arch is. Also the Arch update meme isn’t applicable to GOS.
Installing Lineage was harder. You can still go more difficult with other Linux phone OSes.
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You might be misunderstanding my point there. Arch no longer has the reputation of being hard to install. That was years ago. Arch is super easy to install now as users are expected (should?) to just use archinstall which is basically the same guided flow as any other distro. I wrote that GOS is Arch linux of phones because they both give you a very lean set of pre-installed apps and you’re expected to install what you want. GOS does come with some core AOSP apps which I think are too ugly for daily use. This is unlike things like Ubuntu or Lineage which pre-install a ton of crap you likely won’t ever need.
So you’re telling me to watch out for “I use Graphene, btw” the next time I’m using a public restroom?
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Was talking about iOS there to have all of the devices working well within the ecosystem.
But that is indeed a very cool use case for my Pixel (if I’ll need to use it this way), thanks! 
It’s a good reason to avoid their services altogether, even if the hardware is quite nice, because it makes for a more amicable breakup.
I also found you’ll have a great time with iOS if you don’t resist it. I enjoy using a Mac, but I really can’t bring myself to enjoy an iPhone. I clock maybe half an hour a day on it, which is half an hour too many.
iPhones are great until you remember it’s iOS on them.
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Of course it is easier if you give up on privacy, most things in life are it turns out. I do think that is not the goal for most people here though 
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Can you please explain why do you say that using Sandboxed GPS means giving up on privacy? I don’t want to argue, it is a genuine question.
Anyway, privacy is not a choice between a) I turn it on, like a switch, I go all in privacy, or b) I give up on privacy. Privacy is a dial, it’s not black and white. It doesn’t mean you gave up because you use ONE service that is not privacy respecting. For instance, there are people that are really serious about privacy that use Google Maps, or have a Twitter, Gmail or LinkedIn account. And this doesn’t mean they “gave up on privacy". Or I. I use the Google Play Store and Sandboxed Google Play Services and I didn’t give up on privacy at all.
It is very detrimental to the privacy cause to make people think that if they don’t do everything right, they gave up on privacy… like, “oh, you use GrapheneOS but also Sandboxed Google Play Services? That’s so useless! “
Lastly, I would never take someone’s privacy at a given specific moment and judge it based on this…
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Based on your response, it seems you’re implying that the App Store would be more respectful of its users’ privacy than the Sandboxed Google Play Services, when it seems to me that they would be at quite a similar level. Perhaps I’m wrong.
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I apologize in advance for I am about to wax lyrical on philosophy of choice a bit here. I firmly believe most people do not know what they want. They might think they know what they want, but in effect they actually want some first/second/third order effect of it. So they turn to other people they presume are in the same spot and refer to their opinion. Now if they already hold a strong preference, they will agree with the people who affirm it, and disagree with the people who do not, and the entire discussion will be useless almost each time. If the beliefs are weak, the opinion of the crowd can influence the choice, but the choice will lack conviction from being a product of persuasion and hence superficial, turning this discussion futile too.
This is exactly what spawns these threads, the user is looking to either borrow the thoughts of others and offshore effort, and will lose that advice when they encounter that the least effort required exceeds what they expected to devote, or looking for validation of what they have already chosen. But neither is helpful in the end. The best way to choose is to lead yourself to the correct choice by understanding the underlying needs that drive your want. So try to not think of iOS or GrapehenOS, but instead of what do I want and then select the appropriate tool. There is not matrix anyone can give you which will evaluate any tool effectively, you need to develop it yourself. To keep asking a car mechanic how to fix your Yamaha is to ensure he cannot advise anything more than “check the fuel line”. So you will get the same canned response - “Use GrapheneOS”, “Use iOS”, “Do your threat model” and then you can pick your bias.
More to the question on hand, I can help you by showing how I chose my operating system: GrapheneOS.
I started by thinking of why do I need a phone and to what quality/level I was going to use it. Then I saw what the options were, and lo and behold it was a duopoly: Android or iOS. Now I checked what did I value more. I have always been more of a “Do not go gentle into that good night” person and a “Get out of my way” person, so I daily drove both for a few months each. On iOS, I disliked the lack of personality the UI had, how often apple apps were miles better than other app options but were set in their ways, and how every action of mine was attached to an account someone else held (this to me is the biggest issue). I liked their work on anonymizing the data, but ultimately I dare not trust what I cannot see. Android was similarly bad, albeit in different areas. The UI seemed colorful and full of life, but the app selection from google was full of things I disliked. So I moved to grapheneOS, and I liked it (mostly because the “do not go gentle into that good night” side kept me from fatiguing out. The thing I really liked was the wide selection of applications. I could, instead of modifying my behavior for the apps, could simply switch to ones that made sense. I could limit whatever permissions they asked for however I wished to, and it all got out of my way once done. I was able to find tools that I could use without anyone overseeing me. I could just build everything from the code, and use it offline, and donate to people making them without rent seekers hogging time and resources, or the next cloud service that will “solve it all”.
So I chose it as the final option. Funnily enough, you will notice privacy was not even a criteria, yet a good hammer is a good hammer regardless of the type of nail it’s used on. People sometimes see my device as ask if it is good, and I am always happy to oblige them with “It is good enough that I do not spend too much times thinking if it is good enough.” Of course, some people will value other things, and they should choose what they value (life is too short to not to).
As a final note, I would also discourage from listening to anyone saying “Option A is the best option when evaluated on Criteria XYZ, but Option B is similar enough and better because Criteria PQR, so both are good options.” because this forgets the original criteria was XYZ, and the optimum choice is one that maximizes that criteria, anything else is a nice to have, not a need. If you dislike the choice you land on due to the original criteria, then maybe it is time to evaluate if that is actually the correct criteria for you or not. So if someone values privacy, and the presumed best option is GrapheneOS (not that I am saying it is, since that would be a tall claim to make without more first hand testing of the wide variety of mobile OS available), then anyone recommending iOS is being misleading irrespective of whether statements like “it has better UI” or “it has ecosystem” are true or not.
But if someone like iOS because of the UI, and that is enough for them to choose it, then their primary criteria is not the original criteria, but “UI looks a certain way”, which is perfectly fine, but they should not delude themselves into thinking it is the best choice vi-a-vis the original criteria.
I advise against evaluating an aircraft on its decals for similar reasons. Sorry if this sounds long winded.
(^_^)
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This seems false intuitively, because iOS ships with many more applications and services than GrapheneOS, and hence the chances for an attack are larger just on raw numbers. iOS mitigations are apparently easily bypassed (including blastdoor), and intuition again guides me that the GrapheneOS counterparts (SMS app with MMS disabled, granular toggles instead of one big button of Lockdown) are much better at resisting specialized attacks (text only SMS cannot have parsing attacks, while granular toggles ensure people actually keep mitigation on instead of having to disable them all to get one webpage working, as can be seen on apple forums and subreddits).
iOS also being tied to your account at OS level makes it easier to target with zero days, as seen here, since you can now be tracked across devices and they just need the weakest link: HomeKit exploit used for spyware attacks on iPhones, says Amnesty International
So I do believe it is easier for me to take an educated guess that GrapheneOS is better placed against these due to its Spartan nature and lack of tied up identity.
You seem to have missed the part of my statement in your quoted text that specified an iPhone in Lockdown Mode which removes all the attack surface area you mention.
It also provides real world tested protection from the exploits you cite. Lockdown mode is available on all currently supported Apple devices so your Mac, watch, and phone can all share the same level of robust defense from remote attack.
I’d lean to agree that the App Store would be more respectful of the users’ privacy as Apple is not primarily an advertising company whose business model is to data mine as much as possible from their users to create better personalized advertisement profiles. However, at the end of the day both both App Store and Google Play Services/Store are black boxes and there’s little reason to trust either one.
This is changing. Slowly but surely. Thought I’m sure it still won’t be the primary revenue stream even in the future.
Well, they’d argue its the corporate reputation to keep users safeguarded from using malicious apps. Though, I do agree with you.
I agree 100% with everything you wrote. People that are not using GOS or are new to it have probably not read: Usage guide | GrapheneOS
GOS distributes sandboxed Google apps through their own App Store to allow them to function without some super invasive “special” permissions that they would have on regular Android installs. As such, those apps can’t collect as much data, but they’re still black boxes that are likely able to data harvest some stuff for Google.
I got rid of those sandboxed Google apps on my personal phone and honestly I would never recommend it to anyone unless they’re already hardcore techies that want ultimate privacy:
- google maps won’t work as a native app so I had to switch to waze (ugghh), as I really need traffic info for driving navigation
- have to use molly-foss with UnifiedPush as regular signal and most other messengers won’t get push notifications
- have to use GitHub - LeanderBB/you-have-mail: Application to notify you if an email has arrived in your email Account for protonmail polling (ugggh, it’s not as efficient as push) otherwise you won’t know when someone emails you. Tuta does support UnifiedPush, but I think proton is a strictly superior service and I can’t imagine switching to them now.
So I took some time out to think, I asked my provider to send me the bag to send it back.
iOS 26.1 is stupidly buggy for me, 26.2 fixes it, but honestly, I just miss GOS weirdly.
As some mentioned, given the current UK govt seem to be using 1984 as a guide book, GOS is likely the best placed for this environment.
There are things I love about the iPhone however, its very nice to hold, the screen is excellent, and the camera’s honestly could potentially beat my Pixels, its taken some great shots.
CarPlay still beats Android Auto, its stupidly smooth, iOS 26.1 had a lot of crashes for me however, and it was nice to be able to shout Siri at it, and then ring someone, yes I can do this on GOS, but it needs the Google app, my car can also trigger an assistant via a button, but its very hit or miss.
Speaking of Siri, she’s useless, I tried the Apple Intelligence thing, 50% it goes to web searches, other 50% it asks if it can use chatGPT, but the integration is great, if we could get this on GOS with say Lumo, it would be pretty sweet.
However, another thing is some apps, I have a lidarr server, nothing on iOS beats NZB360, I tried one or two, but I ended up using the web interface.
I can only hope the GOS phone is good quality, but I really think that if its via some OEM like Motorola, the quality will be awful, its a shame Fairphone and GOS can’t work things out, that would be the ultimate privacy phone, but I feel whatever GOS releases maybe my next phone.
Plus, GOS desktop is slowly becoming a thing, super secure and private desktop? count me in!
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The first phone with the MTE (or MIE) is the Pixel 8, GOS was the first to properly push it and expose it to the end user without dev options, but yes, iPhone is the best for “None tech”
GOS to me isnt Arch, its more fedora, it gives you an extremely solid base to build what you want with whatever apps you want, and honestly, I don’t think you need to be super advanced for it, most people in our circles could handle GOS.
I think however, which leads into your points is iPhone can do maybe 80% when configured right (which is how I had it configured), but at that point its kind of pointless having an iPhone, you disable iCloud, Siri and some other things.
Lockdown mode iOS and GrapheneOS are very evenly matched, although GOS can easily pull away.
I think iOS is that good middle step, your getting into privacy, you don’t want to jump in super deep to the nuts and bolts, but your cautious about privacy, so you make a few simple tweaks on iOS, maybe install proton suite etc.
My problem is I’ve been on GOS for a while, I know it well, I expect things to work in a specific way, iOS can’t work like that, Apple say no.
I’ve enjoyed my time with the iPhone, the 17 is an amazing bit of hardware, but given I live in the UK (likely being a bit paranoid here), and I want things to work in a specific way that is not Apple, I think its best to send it back, otherwise I’d be paying for a device I won’t use.
But, for someone who is getting started, the iPhone 17 would be my recommendation!