Can any of you nerds tell me what it would take to realistically run this in the US?
Not much. It only needs to have support for our screwball 4G LTE/5G frequency bands, which are different from the rest of the world Because Reasons (well, some of the bands are, anyway, especially for 4G).
From their specs, it looks pretty comprehensive:
4G supported bands B1/2/3/4/5/7/8/12/13/17/18/19/20/25/26/28AB/66/71
5G supported bands N1/2/3/5/7/8/20/25/28AB/38/41/66/77/78
This should work pretty well with Verizon or AT&T. It’ll work with T-Mobile, too, but it’s missing support for just one of their 5G bands (71).
The lack of support for band n71 will mean no service in a lot of rural areas on T-Mobile.
So, what else is new in other words.
That being said, ATT has a whitelist for phones on its network, so that should be noted.
That’s interesting, because my phone is definitely not from ATT and my cell service is US Mobile (which is a reseller of ATT). I connect to ATT towers all the time.
I wonder how that works today.
Not entirely sure, but if you are on ATT prepaid there is a bs list of phones that are supported, and while I’ve heard of ways of bypassing it they can revoke your phone randomly. I’m pretty sure it applies to most ATT stuff, but I suspect the main idea is that priority traffic is gatekeeped.
Double plus good comrade, thank you
Currently using GrapheneOS on a Pixel in the US. After a bit of “finagle-ing” some app permissions settings, (banking app didn’t like running without additional permissions that GrapheneOS blocked by default, everything works great.
The additional security settings are welcome and very much worth it. Feels like using a proper phone, not limited by what Google thinks I should be able to do, nor is it trackable the way Google thinks it should be.
Flashing Graphene on to the new Pixel was effortless. Simple as change 2 settings, plug in, follow a guide and click buttons on a website to wipe Google’s installed OS and install GrapheneOS. If you can read this comment, you can do it too.
Still have access to Google Play, but it’s “sandboxxed” and unable to view/interact with the rest of the operating system. Can’t recommend enough.
Even ignoring all the added security and privacy, it’s easily the fastest, smoothest running phone I’ve ever held, including others’ “top end” devices. It’s not even a comparison.
Turn it on.
does anyone know if /e/OS will allow you launch standard banking apps? i’ve read some of these degoogled operating systems can sometimes not pass the security checks and your apps wont run. Outside of that concern it seems very attractive.
In my experience everything worked so far. If you encounter problems on any app because of blocked cookies and privacy unfriendly services you are free to whitelist the app and their services to make it work again.
It depends on the bank, but it works for both my current account banking app and my savings account in the UK with no issues. Only difference has been no contactless and there are solutions for it on /e/os but then you compromise some privacy for it.
I had forgotten that Android is open source
So has Google.
Noob question ahoy!
I don’t understand what “de-Googled Android” means, or how it’s possible. Can someone explain?
Android is open source software that is primarily developed by Google but is free for anyone to use. However the play store and associated apps are Google proprietary software. Usually manufacturers that want to run Android also want to have the play store as that’s where a good portion of the apps are. So the Google is in the phone from the time you purchase it.
However you can run Android without Google proprietary software and there are many different ROMs (like how Linux has many distros) that are created without using any Google software. This can be limiting if you rely on Google services or sometimes apps (banking etc) verify themselves via the play store and won’t work otherwise.
It means that Google software and services have been removed and/or replaced with non-Google alternatives.
Not removed, simply not even included at compile time.
