lemmysmash

Unless they completely ditch (or be forced to ditch) the developer notarization crap they’re pushing for, all these talks and “registered appstores” will stay just pure bullshit to distract you from what’s important: https://keepandroidopen.org/

No worries @sbeak, I just wanted to add a bit more to your comment for the people who don’t have experience with GrapheneOS or other FOSS ROMs. Also, now CalyxOS is back which it great :)

The problem with regulators is that they a) gladly suck corporate dicks, b) gladly opt-in for the same authoritarian methods of population control, and c) gladly ignore common sense altogether.

The only important question is: will it support GrapheneOS? Which we don’t yet have answer for.

Great overview! One thing to add here is this amazing comparison of the afrorementioned options: https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm

Regarding GrapheneOS, there are a few things that distinguish it from the rest:

• the devs are really paranoid in the good way: it’s to receive security updates even before official pixel OS, a lot of OS level security hardening, a lot of features developed specifically to reduce attack surface (e.g. ability to completely disable USB, periodical reboots etc)
• it supports some exclusive privacy features (e.g. full per-app network kill-switch, contacts & storage scopes, location rerouting for play services etc) aimed to protect your data from crapware you might be forced to install
• it supports official play store and play services but in the most restricted way possible — they’ve developed a shim that allows to run it without any privileges and any permissions; you can also install it only under a completely separate user to fully separate it from your data
• in terms of being barebones, it is like this out of the box but you can install absolutely anything on it (unless it depends on “strict” play integrity protection)

Even if you can’t have a GrapheneOS-powered phone, you still can have GrapheneOS camera: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.grapheneos.camera.play

It isn’t as feature-rich as OpenCamera or even native camera, but it does the job and it doesn’t spy on you.