Laughs in Graphene
Not a day goes by that I don’t regret installing that on my phone.
This… Except for contactless payment.
I used graphene for a month. It was lovely. Even things like banking apps worked.
I don’t care about absolute privacy, but I do care about controlling my privacy. Grapheme gave me that.I had only 1 issue.
Contactless payment.
It’s extremely convenient to me, from public transport to groceries. I just bop my phone.The fact that Google has that locked down surely violates some EU laws. But I’m sure they wave away the laws because of “financial security” or some other bullshit.
As if bank card NFC/contactless doesn’t suffer exactly the same issues.
I looked into some “graphene contactless payment” type systems or workarounds, and I couldn’t find anything that would fill the gap.This may seem like a silly solution but maybe pop your debit card inside your phone case. It should bop through it.
Yup, true.
But contactless via a phone can have no limit.
Adding a debit card to phone case means the upper limit is £100. Which is actually fine, and is the limit I have normally set for phone contactless. But I can instantly remove that limit via my banking app.And the phone needs to be unlocked to make a payment.
Do if I lose my phone anyone can charge £100 to the debit card.Yeah, all fair points. I do love the convenience of using my phone to pay too in fairness.
That is literally the only thing keeping me from installing Graphene on my phone.
It’s not necessarily a solution, but my Garmin watch can still hold some of my cards, so I don’t need the NFC payment on my phone to duplicate that functionality. Do you wear or carry any other devices that can stand-in?
No.
I tried a smart watch for a week or so, and hated wearing it.
Hadn’t worn a watch in 20 years, and it felt very strangeFair enough. I was in that camp for a decade or more myself. I hope you find a solution!
I was hesitating due to this as well, until I realized that my payments are something I want google to have data on least of all. So I got a debit card and turns out it is no inconvenience at all.
I use a smart watch for contact less payments ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
i just use a debit card lol
So you regret it every day? GOS is amazing in my opinion. What’s your gripe with it?
Double negatives are hard. I love Graphene.
I mean, the way I read it is “not a day goes by on which I am not regretting doing this”. So, every day you are regretting it 🤔
For real, I was puzzled. Like damn, this dude absolutely hates Graphene! I wonder why…
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Why? Curious.
What I’m curious is what kind of ball are you shaped like?
A golf ball? With divots all over your skin? A basketball? Just round? A baseball? With stitches all over your skin like later years Chucky? A football? Are you Stewie Griffen? Testicles? Wait, are you saying your whole body is one big testicle? Oh my god, the Iron Shiek wasn’t speaking broken english! He was just talking about you!!! “I hit him right in the ball this big!”
Lol! ❤️ run on rants.
And I used to be quite overweight with a large gut. My kids used to say I was 19 months pregnant. The weight is gone but I kept the name.
I installed GrapheneOS for the security and lack of Google. I didn’t know it was a very nice stock Android without any crap. I love it.
Main things holding me back are the apps I already paid for on Google Play, and tap to pay.
Tap to pay is not there. But you can install the Play Store and install all your paid applications, that’s what I did.
I guess I’ll need to get one of those little holsters that can hold a credit card.
I’m not trying to convince you but I was paying for everything with my phone, it was the most important feature. After installing GrapheneOS, i got control back and piece of mind, and I dont miss tap to pay.
Is it just me or does it seem slightly sus that GrapheneOS is only available for Google hardware…
There are many technical reasons why: https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices
Every Android phone (besides Pixel) fails to meet the high technical requirements of the project.
Sounds like they’re intentionally setting the barriers to entry too high for anyone other than Google…
Ok. Which ones, and why?
Edit: I can see the 5 and 7 year support, but what about the rest of the list?
Mainly just that one mean it will never be available on any other hardware…
All the others seem like nice to haves rather than requirements to me(the first one is half required , half nice to have “…including full hardware security functionality”), but I guess I might change my mind when I get around to building a Linux phone when I have time to do that when I’m dead… 😅
Building a linux phone: do you mean from scratch, or just installing one of the Linux phone OS’s that already exist?
I’ve been following Ubuntu Touch for several years now and, while they have made a lot of progress, its main hurdles have the same thing in common: mobile hardware is incredibly locked down. For example, Ubuntu Touch uses proprietary Android drivers for many low level functions. Even then, there’s some features that aren’t stable across all devices, like VOLTE.
It sucks, I really want to use Ubuntu Touch (or any of the Linux alternatives) but I can’t make phone calls or text in the US without VOLTE support. There are a few phones that support VOLTE, but the feature is either in beta, the phone is expensive, or the phone is not sold in the US.
Anyways bringing that back to Graphene: In my case, I’m using this as a stopgap until Linux phones take off (assuming they ever do). For now I guess the best thing is to just be skeptic, keep things minimal, and bloat-free.
My experience with Gemini:
Hey Google, set a timer for 5 minutes.
Gemini: I’m sorry, I don’t understand.
WTF is the point of it then?
Imagine taking away the only useful feature of a voice assistant 💀
My recent experience with my phone is I tell it to set a 5 minute timer and it sets one in the fucking Google search browser, and if I page away I lose the timer.
I just use the timer on my microwave, I suppose the kitchen is the most likely place you’d want a timer. Unless you were using 5 minute epoxy.
Your chats are saved in your account for up to 72 hours, whether Gemini Apps Activity is on or off.
https://myactivity.google.com/product/gemini
I wonder how long before AI services are added to ad blockers and VPN privacy controls.
up to 72 hours
(then we permanently add them to our private fingerprint folder based on any google-related link or api you’ve ever interacted with)
The time limits on their spyware might as well be ignored.
Bwahahahah
I locked that shit out fucking day one. Fuck Gemini.
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I’m still praying for TempleOS mobile version.
You really think that the holy OS can even fit in such a small, restrictive device as a cellphone? Of course not! It needs room to truly achieve transcendence.
God does not wish HolyC to compile to lowly ARM architectures
LineageOS
Doesnt Apple also do this with Siri and basically every app unless the user untoggles it?
Yes, for the amount of hate Google gets… Which I think it is fair to be critical of any product that compromises privacy… I recently tried helping my mom clean up her iPhone, and seriously like 100x worse. Almost everything you do on Apple demands you have another Apple device. One of the worst experiences I’ve ever dealt with.
Isn’t there some form of sampling bias here though? The kind of people who generally would care about these things likely also care about interoperability and would be on Android. I wouldn’t be surprised if iPhone users simply don’t care if Apple demands them to do anything.
Kinda sounds like you just don’t know how to use an iPhone.
Absolutely not the case… I sense a bad case of Stockholm syndrome.
Because i think cleaning up an iPhone is easy?
Except Apple has better marketing, and is primarily marketed for those who’re excited for every tech “innovation”.
Anyone know if this is happening outside the US and if it is whether it’s happening inside the EU?
I’m in the UK and today I got asked whether I wanted to leave this on or not - it just notified me and asked me to confirm my consent.
So I think this article’s headline is slightly misleading - Google is actively informing users and asking them to confirm their consent.
That’s good. I haven’t had anything though, hopefully saved by the EU.
I live in Finland using Android on a Nokia and I can switch Gemini off completely and choose to use the old Google Assistant instead. It did initially appear out of nowhere when they patched it in, but I could immediately turn it off with the same prompt that the other guy also got.
If it’s unavoidable it seems to be an US only thing atm.
I just removed gemini from my phone.
me too and then it somehow popped up in messages which I had to “turn off” separately. removing AI from an Android phone is an illusion.
Make your next phone a Pixel and load GrapheneOS onto it. Problem solved.
I would already do it now if not for banking apps
Pixel stopped publishing device trees since a few weeks ago, it will be significantly more difficult for the devs now to continue maintaining it.
I’m not signed into a Google account on my phone, am I safe?
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Gemini: okay! i’m disabled 🤞😉🤞
Mine apparently didn’t, but it’s an older Samsung. Like, micro-USB era. I’d be surprised if Google ever autoinstalls Gemini because of the age.
ADB tools —> remove google services and other spyware apps —> oops, you bricked your phone
I just went into my settings after reading this article (and getting a bit frustrated that it was a wall of text with no clear instructions right up front).
I did a search in settings for “gemini” and found the Gemini settings. There’s no clear ‘off’ switch. But there’s is an option to switch back to Google Assistant. So I did that. And not when I search for Gemini in settings it urges me to enable Gemini.
I’m taking that as a good sign that I’ve disabled it permanently. Thought I’d post this info in case it helps someone else. Or so if I’m incorrect somebody else can correct me.
While I wouldn’t assume anything is permanent these days, I’d agree for the moment. I had already uninstalled Gemini on my phone (2ish months ago) and just verified I still see Google listed as the default assistant.
AICore under all apps. Disable and delete files. Done.
I swear, whenever I try to use it, it just makes me wish I could delete it. I ask the answer to a simple question and it gives me a whole essay on how this one aspect of what I said is more nuanced than one would imagine, and I’m left there waiting 5 minutes to get it to say anything of substance, but it doesn’t when I explicitly tell it to “just give me the fucking answer”, which I have to say every time for it to say anything useful.
It also doesn’t work with timers or anything actually useful and I doubt it’ll get any better with third party app access.
Google assistant was so much better, it even still works with its servers being down (for me at least) because it’s a better assistant than whatever Gemini is supposed to be.
Hey Folks, we have “AI” for you and you will use it, whether you want it or not…
Remember when iPhone was the bad guy amongst these kids? But I guess as long as it has more options, surely it’s better!
What? Apple is the bad guy, Google is the bad guy. They are both bad guys!
I never said Apple was great, did I?
You kinda did though. I am unsure what your comment is actually truing to convey. Users only have 2 options of mobile OSs that are average consumer ready.
Naah. I kinda didn’t. I was simply calling out all the kids that smugly looked down on anyone using anything that wasn’t android.
Now it seems they’re very quiet. Some gifts just wrap themselves, don’t they?
I mean, Google Assistant is getting replaced with Gemini and so far that was the biggest pain point of mine: No I don’t want to turn on Gemini activity history, yes I still want to be able to make calls with it…
This is nicer, imo. You can just not have Gemini app to not let this happen. 72 hour retention is pretty standard, if not better than most of free LLM providers. I hate Google with passion and I try to avoid them as much as possible but Gemini is just so darn easy to use. I also use Kagi and their assistant does most of the heavy lifting & privacy concerning.
edit: Clearly there are some misunderstandings? They have been basically putting pretty much essential features behind the wall of opting in for App history for no reason. I compromise and use them for trivial stuff.
You can always delete Gemini app or turn of integrations manually(sucks that its opt out and not opt in). This is better since it’s giving privacy aware who wish to disable history but still want to use integrations, a choice.
