Unfortunately a lot of "budget" items are being subsidized by your personal information, and the smaller market for privacy-forward goods and services makes economies of scale harder.

Unless governments start passing robust privacy laws, it will just continue to get more and more expensive to live privately with modern conveniences.

Yeah, it would be great if they would support a range of devices from whichever OEM this is, at different price points.

Second hand pixels are not that expensive. Or the a series. Though it would be cool if it could run on a cheaper burner phone.

I don't really know how this works, but if they have the cooperation of an OEM they should have the same access to AOSP security updates the OEM has, and access to hardware drivers from a company that's not trying to thwart them. I can see how this would be preferable to a basically antagonistic relationship with Google, who are making things difficult because they want all Pixel phones to run their stock OS. The thing I wonder is what motivates the OEM to continue a cooperative relationship with Graphene OS.

They're extremely talented in the security/mobile/os arena, why not contribute to one of the Linux mobile projects and kill two birds?

Except that they mention Snapdragon, which Apple does not use.

… but Apple doesn’t use snapdragon SoCs?

Google has made it harder (it may kill AOSP in the long run but not yet) by delaying public release of source trees later than before. To counter that, they partnered with OEM, who in turn are partnered with Google, who are likely to get sources faster.

Nothing isn't a "major OEM" but I think they'd be interested in it. Maybe they'll be next.

I hope so, I love samsung's hardware and having a secure OS option to get out from under their godawful UI / OS stuff would be amazing.

Samsung is the largest Android manufacturer by a wide margin, and make a bunch of their money using spyware. Seems unlikely they would give GOS the time of day.

If you use the web installer provided on GrapheneOS website, you can't fuck it up. Just make sure you use a chromium browser when you do it, for some reason it crashes on Firefox (but it didn't brick my phone, so don't worry)

No root needed, just follow the instructions on the website (read before doing it). You probably could brick it like anything else, but I didn't and I barely knew what I was doing (and like I said, it crashed on me when trying it via FF).

Neat things they do that Google doesn't (afaik):

• Auto turning Wifi and Bluetooth off if it's not connected (security and saves battery)
• Being able to deny wifi permission to an app just through regular settings (Stock androids need root to do that). Like, I use Gboard, but it had no wifi, so it can't send telemetry to Google.

Notable things that don't work:

• Some banking apps, really depends on luck. My debit card bank doesn't work, but my credit card bank does. Check this list to see if your banking app is tested. The reason is out of GOS hands, Google changed from SafetyNet to Play API or smth. If you can, just do web banking.
• RCS is finicky enough on stock devices, but GOS ramps it up to a new level. There's workarounds, but don't be surprised if it breaks a few months later. Highly recommend getting your friends/family to communicate with you through a different E2EE app, like Signal, XMPP/Jabber, etc. or else you'll be stuck with insecure SMS
• Some people have Android Auto issues? Idk, I've never used it

1. Follow the instructions as they're presented and you'll be fine

2. Installing it will make rooting easier, but afik root is not required (though you will be accessing the device at the recovery/bootloader level, something with far more control than root)

3. Yes, pay attention, follow the instructions and you'll be fine though

4. Respect your privacy, allow you to sandbox apps which want to spy

5. Everything should work because of the sandbox function, the same cannot be said for most other custom ROMs unless the Google apps have been installed.

Samsung phones blow e-fuses when you unlock their bootloaders, so there's no going back. I think this would prevent a proper GrapheneOS installation.

Perhaps Samsung could start shipping phones with GrapheneOS natively installed, but since the phone's owner would not have control of the OS, that would arguably not be GrapheneOS as we know it today. Or maybe Samsung could change their chain of trust implementation to be more like Google's, allowing the bootloader to be re-locked.