Link: https://veronicaexplains.net/grapheneos-faq/

Over the last three years I've had a lot of folks ask me questions about using GrapheneOS. Let's answer them!

I guess I am not a defeatist either, good to know.

Non starter until tap to pay works consistently.

Tap to pay works perfectly fine on my plastic cards that don't run out of battery or need to be unlocked before I tap them. I genuinely don't see what the big deal is about having it work on a phone.

I personally agree, but (some) people stop carrying their wallets, when they can pay with their phones.

Exactly. A physical card is simply better in every single way. Imagine the stress when your phone inevitably dies, if you are out traveling and suddenly you have no access to money or communication. Screw that.

That's a weird hill to die on, I should know I die on weird hills every day

For me it's that 75%+ of my contactless payments trigger an "insert card and enter PIN" check, which defeats its purpose. Presumably because my bank has become super cautious or their fraud detection is managed by a clanker.

I never have a problem with the same transactions using my phone.

Honestly, I'd prefer to use my card, rather than gift transaction data to my phone manufacturer.

👌

It's easier.

Oh God, it's an edge case I'll never run into!!!!?!!!

Optimize the median, not this hog wash.

I use Graphene. There is some banks that do tap-to-pay independent of Google Pay, but not mine. There is one legit good thing about modern tap-to-pay - it cycles card numbers, making it harder for retailers to track you.

I watch the British "Coronation Street" and see them just swiping their phones at a little gadget when buying a coffee at the local diner. Swipe and go, no other steps.

Haha, I hope the code you write isn't running anything important.

Gotme

I really wanna switch to e/os or graphene (especially on Motorola), but in Denmark you need MitID to live in society and it only works on Android and iOS 😭

I didn't know that. That's a handy feature.

If a phone is lost or stolen, at least that security of unlocking to tap-to-oay will prevent purchases from being made. A plastic card, not so much.

I'm glad to have found the banking app compatibility list from her FAQ and see that a few of the big banks in my country is proven working. This gives me hope of jumping ship from my S24U.

I couldn't have predicted how much shittier Samsung was going to be when I weighed the S24U vs the Pixel 9/10 (the 10 was newer at the time of research thus expensive), as I put a lot of weight on the stylus the S24U have. And Samsung good lock. Had I known that samsung were to

1. Disallow bootloader unlock
2. And soon in their android 17 update, close off fastboot functions IIRC (please correct me)

I would have bit the bullet getting the pixel 9 and installed graphene. I also got spooked off by overheating issues in hot climate countries and network issues. And in hindsight I think I would have been fine with the theoretical lower performance of the tensor chip vs the snapdragon in my S24U.

I also wished this FAQ existed sooner / researched more properly regarding app compatibility on graphene, so this is wholly my mistake

Cest la vie

I'll do better next chance I get.

A draft of a draft of a plan that I just thought of right now.

I might just have to carry two phones lol. One is a small cheap phone just for all those pesky financial and governmental apps, and one main phone with graphene.

It is admittedly more secure.

A stolen card can be used for tap to pay, with not all transactions requiring a PIN with a card. A stolen phone cannot if they don't have your phone's PIN or biometrics.

And most phone tap-to-pay apps will also randomize your card data in the transaction to prevent your information from being tracked or compromised in the event of a large-scale data breach, like what happened with Target in 2013 and hundreds of retailers since.

It rubs me the wrong way to have to resort to a burner like trash device with less scope/(security) features to handle the most sensitive things.

How about we force everyone to do all that only on Linux instead of Windows when on a desktop? Fuck this infra.

I have GOS on a pixel8a and my solution to the banking apps was to make a browser bookmark on my homescreen that goes straight to the bank mobile login site . it feels just like the app...except I can't deposit checks via the camera.

Not in my case. Been happening for a year or more, and for as little as £3 (bus ride, etc).

Honestly, the US (where we live) does this surprisingly well, considering how backwards of a country it is in a lot of other ways.

Credit cards, and even debit cards (like the one from our bank), generally have NFC these days, just like phones do. But you don't need to faff about with your phone. Just pull out your card, tap it, done.

No app compatibility to deal with, just as easy as phone NFC, I don't know why that's not the standard over there. (Plenty of people do use phone payments here too though. I don't get why.)

-- Frost

This may just be a me thing, but GrapheneOS works fine on my pixel 6a. Biggest problem is a few other privacy apps I keep installing and sometimes doing abnormal more private niche things only graphene can do anyway.

Sadly NFC doesn't work on graphene though

Same same. No Company Portal, but oh well

Your country has sold you to american companies

Does Android Auto still not work?

It's been working fine for me for months.

That's great to hear, I think I'm jumping back to graphene

To you know if wechat or alipay work? I need these while traveling. They use QR codes for payment and other services. I wish this took off everywhere as nfc payments are locked into only a few apps.

Use a separate phone for them. The Chinese state can not be trusted.

I have a "kodeviser" device, works for all MitID purposes.

I do not always carry my wallet, but i have a credit card in a compartment in the back of my phone case. Works just as well as google pay for me.

It does if you just slip a tap-to-pay enabled bank card in the back of your phone case.

I started with graphene a few months ago and it worked from the beginning just following the instructions on the phone to enable it. That said I do recall aention of extra permissions for Bluetooth android auto, which I didn't want. My car doesn't support it over Bluetooth anyway so didn't matter to me, but you may be interested in looking that up (I don't recall the specifics).

Some of those might be less prevalent depending on where you are. But yes, there's a lot of things to keep in mind.

Also, the plastic card thing is neat, I did not know that.

I'm especially annoyed about how easy it is to traci Bluetooth devices. I seem to remember that newer devices can rotate macs, but all my headphones are too old for that. And I kinda don't want to throw away good hardware.

Well graphene is Android, could give it a try. Or maybe have a separate phone

considering how backwards of a country it is in a lot of other ways.

Are magnetic strips and signatures still a thing there? And do people still get actual 'pay cheques'?

Blows my mind that you have to do your own taxes there.

Honestly? You can't just carry around a card or some cash? You're not willing to sacrifice that one convenience to get rid of Google?

That was the default in the UK for quite a while and a lot of (typically older, I think) people still use a physical card for contactless payment. Most people have moved to mobile contactless payment because it’s just as quick as fishing a card out of a wallet, most people always carry their phone and it has a degree of biometric security that the physical card doesn’t.
I don’t generally carry a wallet or cash and haven’t for years. I have all my cards in my e-wallet, including my default credit, bank, loyalty and even my work door access cards on there. If I do forget my phone, I can do all their same from my watch and never have to carry a wallet with a dozen pieces of plastic in. A win for pocket space, if nothing else!

there are comments in the link that seem to address this

Neither can the US. It would be nigh impossible to avoid all apps from both countries. Luckily Graphene solves this problem through OS hardening and sandboxed profiles. The Chinese don't have some kind of special magic to defeat those measures. This is why Graphene exists IMO

Magnetic strips, technically all cards still have them as a backup, but 99.9% of readers accept all three and NFC tap or chip is usually the go-to!

The train station ticket machines where we reload our transit card only take swipes, though. So it is still a thing in very rare places.

When we first got our "food stamps" card (it apparently used to be physical stamps?? but that was long before our time. now you get basically a debit card that can only be used on food), it was also swipe-only. But then a year or two ago they replaced it with one that has a chip and can even do NFC! Nifty.

Cheques, nah, I think you still CAN get a physical paycheck, maybe?, if for some reason you wanted to?, but basically everyone does direct deposit these days

...at least, people who have bank accounts

that's one reason to get a check. So yeah, those are still a thing, but not common. There are probably-sketchy "check cashing" places in low-income areas that you can take checks to instead of a bank if you don't have a bank, I don't know how that works.

Taxes – YEP. 100% still a thing. Fuck TurboTax & co., they pretty much bribed the government to keep this system because it makes them lots of money (because they can sell you "tax prep software" that does your taxes for you and is absurdly expensive and oh! you gotta buy a new one every year because of minor changes to the tax codes!).

-- Frost

No. Certainly not cash.

My opinion doesn't matter though. For most people, it's a non starter. Convince wins every time.

IIRC AA leverages Bluetooth to avoid audio conflicts and to further verify you're connected to the correct vehicle. Some setups use it to know when to power up/power down the vehicle's AA hardware. (At least, I have a dongle that does this, because the car is stupid and allows power to be drawn over its USB port when everything else is off.)

It's optional and not really needed.

Sounds awesome, thank you. I tried it years ago and I'm pretty sure at that point they just said there's no support for it. It was the main holdout for me, never cared about the nfc payments really, so I'm excited to try it out again