this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2026
40 points (88.5% liked)
Linux Phones
2912 readers
185 users here now
The Discussion on Linux-based Phones.
Benefits:
- Hardware freedom.
- Perfect operating-system competition.
- Full utilization of specs.
- Phone lifespan raises to 10+ years.
- Less e-waste.
Linux Mobile Distros:
- Ubuntu Touch
- Sailfish
- FuriOS
- Postmarket OS
- Mobian
- Pure OS
- Plasma Mobile
- LuneOS
- openSUSE Mobile
- Nemomobile
- Droidian
- Mobile NixOS
- ExpidusOS
- Maemo Leste
- Manjaro Arm
- Tizen
- WebOS
Linux Mobile Hardware:
- Fairphone 5
- Volla Phone
- PinePhone
- FLX1
- Librem 5
⚙️Contribute
🧼Go Clean From the Duopoly:
💻Related Communities:
📰News:
💬Messager:
⌚️Watch:
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
How comfortable is it to use graphene on a day to day basis? Considering getting a spare pixel. But that seems a hell of a lot more practical than a linux phone.
It feels just like a regular phone to me. If I handed someone my phone they wouldn't know it was GrapheneOS. The only thing they would fund weird is my launcher (KISS, which is certainly not for everyone) but that was something I installed myself.
One pain point is that my banking apps didn't work out of the box. That was solved by checking an unassuming box in the individual app settings. For some banks it might still not work (mostly for countries that have security key devices, I believe).
I don't have the adaptive battery charge feature that Pixels normally have, where it slows charging in certain conditions, to improve battery longevity. GrapheneOS's version of this is just a simple option to stop charging at 80%.
Probably my camera is less good that stock Pixel, but I can't tell. It seems fine to me
Motorola announced today a partnership with GrapehenOS. Soon, we will no longer need Google Pixel.
I'm not a heavy phone user, but I have GrapheneOS installed. I think it requires a bit of tech knowledge, but it's cool.
I don’t mind the technical set up, I just wanna know if it’s a neutered experience or not
Will some Motorola phones come with Graphene preinstalled?
Generally there are no real problems. If you're fine with mostly stock AOSP, you should be fine with GrapheneOS.
If you use Google Pay, you're out of luck. There are alternatives for that depending on where you live though (mostly in Europe, in the US there's no other option AFAIK). Rarely an app won't work, but usually fiddling with some security settings for the app will fix it. Very rarely an app won't work at all because (like Google Wallet) it uses Play Integrity and requires a level that requires Google to certify the OS.
Pretty much the only thing I miss is the ability to do NFC payments.
Is NFC gone entirely? Would yubikeys with nfc work?
They'd work. You might need to install play services for those, not totally sure (Google has shoved an annoying amount of functionality into play services). NFC itself is functional, but various apps that support NFC may not work because of Play Integrity.
I logged into my credit card app by holding the card to the NFC reader on graphene
I can't say for GrapheneOS, but NFC still works on my Fairphone 6 with /e/OS without play services.
I can't use NFC for payments, but I also can't log in to my bank's app without play services.
Keep in Mind that Ubuntu Touch isn't the only Linux OS for the fairphone, via postmarketOS you can also use plasma mobile (kde), gnome mobile (GNOME duh) and others...
I've used the PinePhone, it was a fun geeky object to have. Most of my issues where related to the screen-size/format which most apps don't handle well. Yes, apt/yay install does work... but you end up struggling to use it.
PostmarketOS with sxmo was the most usable.
Compared to GrapheneOS or /e/os, it's day and night. You can't compare apples and VHS tapes.
And to reply to your actual question.
GrapheneOS works perfectly fine for a daily driver.