WEBVTT

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Every time I so much as mention a phone, the comment section is filled with folks

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insisting that I should have used graphine OS. Don't want any

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pre-installed bloat on your Pixel? Graphine OS. Don't want anybody keeping

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an eye on whatever it is you're doing? Graphine OS. Stop your toe running from

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the cops. Graphine OS. It doesn't seem to matter

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what the problem is. Ow.

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or if there even is a problem. The answer always seems to be get graphine

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OS. So I did and it turns out that the

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things that make Graphine OS a great choice for narr also make it a pretty

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great choice for anyone who cares deeply about [music] their privacy and their

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security. If you're not already in the know, Graphine OS is based on the

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Android open source project and it has Android app compatibility, but it comes

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without [music] the corporate spyware and the bloat that's baked into

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mainstream Android thanks to its dedicated nonprofit open-source team.

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And the best part is you don't need any weird hardware to run it. It can be

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installed with minimal hassle on any recent generation Pixel. So, let's see

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if Graphine OS can fit my admittedly [music] rather unique needs. Right after this

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>> [music]

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>> Graphine OS boasts a truly massive list of enhancements that help ensure that

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you are the one who's in control of your device and you stay in control [music]

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regardless of your carrier. Unlike other mobile operating systems, and yes,

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[music] that means even iOS, uncompromising privacy and security are

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baked right into its fabric to the point where Graphine literally won't even ask

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a third party server for the time of day unless you change a setting to

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explicitly allow it to. Some of our highlights include pin scrambling, which

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makes it harder to guess your PIN from looking over your shoulder or checking

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for grease spots on your screen. The ability to use a second factor on top of

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your fingerprint in order to unlock your phone. support for longer passwords, the

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ability to schedule reboots to keep any unused data out of memory where it could

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possibly be retrieved, and this last one's really cool. If you're ever in a

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situation where the [music] data or the accounts on your phone could be used

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against you, you can set it up with a duress pin or password that when entered

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[music] will irreversibly wipe both your device and any installed eims. Just uh

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be careful with that last one, though. The OS assumes that if you enter a

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duress code, [music] you really mean it. And that wipe cannot be stopped. Now, I

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could probably spend the rest of this video talking about more privacy and security innovations in graph OS. But if

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that's your jam, you'd actually probably be better off checking out their website, which we'll have linked down

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below. It's a fascinating read, even if you have no intention of installing it.

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And [music] I'm not the only one who thinks so. There are a ton of features

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that they don't mention there anymore because while they may have originated

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in graphine OS, they've since been adopted by mainline Android or AOSP.

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Now, let's talk about using it. Beyond just being more secure and more private,

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or maybe because of those priorities, Graphin OS starts up with a lot less

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software running or even installed versus what shipped on this Pixel 9a.

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I'm talking 14 apps in the app drawer.

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14. All directly from the good folks at Graphine OS themselves. These

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pre-installed apps are meant to cover your basic smartphone functions. And

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through this experiment, I've learned that many security and privacy conscious

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users prefer to use progressive web apps or PWAs or even just plain old websites

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rather than the permissionhungry native apps that [music] get pushed on us. So

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that's where Venadium comes in. It's Graphine's hardened version of Chromium.

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But that's not to say that you can't run native apps. Graphine does come with an

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app store and that app store includes two additional app stores. Yes, that's

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right. A full quarter of the apps in the graphine OS app store are themselves app

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stores. [music] The first one is a Crescent, a privacy

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and security focused app store that is currently in [music] alpha. It's only

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got a few dozen apps so far and it could probably use a little UX love, but

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clearly Graphine thinks it's got legs if they're including it as the only non-

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Googlele non-graph OS app in the built-in app store. And it was through a

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Crescent that I found two of the coolest apps of this [music] whole experiment.

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Transcribe Bro is an ondevice speechtoext keyboard that works

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remarkably well, at least in English, completely offline. It uses the OpenAI

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whisper family of [music] models and Cero VAD for voice activity detection. I

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do [music] wish the record button would go red when it's listening, but I mean,

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hey, it's open source, so that'll probably be fixed by the time you watch

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this video. I also want to highlight organic maps, a no ad, no tracking, no

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data collection map app that works offline using open [music] street map

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data. It comes with a basic map for the world. And then as you zoom in further,

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I think it was around 10 km to 1 cm scale, you'll be prompted to download

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additional details for that region. Once I figured out how to give it the right

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location permissions to get GPS working, it was almost the perfect mapping app.

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The only thing I missed was traffic overlay. And yes, I fully get why it

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doesn't have real-time traffic. You don't need to privacy split it to me. I

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just like avoiding traffic. The second

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included app store is good old-fashioned Google Play. Oh, thank goodness. Where

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else would I get all the apps I need? Okay, I know there are other places to

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get them, but we'll get to those later because first, Google Play Store gives

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me a chance to talk about Graphine OS's compatibility layer that lets you

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install official releases of Google Play

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into the standard app sandbox. This

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forces Google Play and all of its supporting services to actually respect

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your permission settings rather than getting special unfettered access to

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your device. [music] It also expands on the typical Android

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permission system, adding controls for network and sensor access. And Graphine

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even lets you set limited scope access to storage and contacts, so you can keep

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apps from snooping around where you don't want them to. And if that's not

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enough, you can install your app stores and your apps into different user

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profiles, which allows you to restrict their access to only what's in that

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profile. Meaning that any apps in your Google profile can't talk to apps in

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your Facebook profile. and vice versa. We found one example of someone using

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eight separate profiles to segregate their various apps and data. Wow. But

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I'm just a simple small time tech tuber. So if [music] the graphine OS usage

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guide says it's simplest to run a single profile,

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that's what I'm going to do. Sorry to disappoint the graphine OS hardcores,

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but I'm three app stores deep and a dozen paragraphs into this video and I

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can't even check my email yet. Okay, I could through my browser, but you guys

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know what I mean. So, my next step then was to install all my typical apps. And

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not going to lie, it was kind of a hassle, but [music] with good

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intentions. Let me explain. See, I

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switch phones a lot, and normally when I massinstall my app loadout, the store

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just kind of gives me a couple catch-all permission prompts and then downloads

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all my junk in the name of expediency. Graphine OS, not so much. It asked me

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about everything, which really made me conscious of how much permission I'm

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giving away, even if it did make the process drag on for so long that I ended

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up reaching out to the development team behind Graphine OS to make sure that I

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hadn't broken something. They were a massive help, by the way, for the entire

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month of my experiment. So, uh, shout out Spring Onion, if that is your real

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name. On the subject of apps, most of them

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just plain worked. And I was pleasantly surprised to find that even my beloved

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Pixel exclusive call screening worked immediately once I installed the Google

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dialer. And this should hold true for other exclusive Pixel apps and [music]

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features like the camera. Pretty cool.

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But nothing's perfect, and that includes graphine OS. Check out this issue that I

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had with Facebook while I was live on the WAN Show. And my new BFF, Spring

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Onion, had to jump in and save me from some other, let's call them, unintuitive

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experiences as well. See, it turns out that some apps really need play services

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running in the background all the time. I hadn't enabled that, so I found some

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pretty weird behavior. Oh, Swift Key. This one had me totally stumped. I

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couldn't use dictation, and it kept telling me I needed this dependency app,

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but then it wasn't the right one. No, see, I had to go get a separate speech

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recognition app, and then I had to give that app microphone access before I

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could dictate. Oh, okay. Also, some apps

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that use the Play Integrity API, it's mostly banking apps, just plain didn't

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work. Maybe that's the issue we had with eBay. I'm not sure. That app just tells

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me it's not available for my device. And as for screenshot editing, that required

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a separate install of markup from the graphine OS app store. See, it's not in

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Google Play for some reason and is also not part of the default install.

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Finally, there's Android Auto. That was a special experience. See, there is a

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sandbox version in the graphine store, which is great. [music] But even after

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enabling all the permissions I could find, it was still struggling to

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connect. I then discovered that, oh, of

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course, the default behavior when you connect [music] a USB cable is charge

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only and there is no prompt to enable data transfer. Well, that is very

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secure. It just means that in order to get around it, you need to know to go

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find the menu to enable data transfer, and you have to know that [music] that

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includes Android Auto. So, then I was all set, right? Wrong. Android Auto

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continued to be a problem for a little while yet. It was mostly just dumb

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little hiccups like slow navigation and [music] GPS position updates, uh, not

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having access to my contacts, etc., etc. and I would dutifully go digging through

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the permissions to figure out what I'd missed, but it was enough to be

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annoying. Now, to address the herd of

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elephants in the room, some folks will insist that installing Google Anything

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on this means that I'm doing Graphion OS wrong. And if I'm honest, putting Google

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Play on here did feel a little dirty. But the fact is, guys, I use products

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and services from companies like Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Apple every day to

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do my job. And in most cases, they really do need most of the permissions

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that they're asking for in order to function properly, which kind of bummed

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me out. But my new pal, Pummer Alien,

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had a really great perspective on this, pointing out that Graphine OS is

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designed to improve the privacy and security of everyone, not just the

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hardcores and the obsessives. And their team totally understands that we're not

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all able to ditch the apps that we need for work or for communicating with our

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kids. and they work hard to ensure that you'll still be much better off running

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those things in graphin OS than you are in a Google flavored version of Android

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or a Xiai flavored version of Android. [music] With that said, if you're lucky enough

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that you don't need to rely on things from our corporate overlords, maybe

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[music] you could get away without the official Play Store. Aurora is an option

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that I saw mentioned a lot on the graph OS forums and on the [music] subreddit.

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There are some disagreements as to whether it is technically an app store,

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but its main purpose is to search for apps and download apps from the Play

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Store anonymously, which seems close enough in my books. And it's pretty

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awesome for any apps that you don't need to log into. Foid would be another

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option, and there's many other app stores with rabid fans that I'm sure I'm

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angering right now by not providing an exhaustive list. So, um, sorry for that

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in advance. Another option is to just download the APK files you need and

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sideloadad your apps. [music] However, if you're going to take that approach,

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please do your due diligence. Make sure you can trust the source and always

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check the hashes of anything you download before you install it on your phone. If what I said was confusing just

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now, just use an app store until you get up to speed. Anyway, that was a lot and

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I still haven't given a bottom line. Graphin OS reminded me a lot of my past

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experiments daily driving Linux. And like the Linux crowd, many Graphine OS

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users probably don't even notice the little side quests that crop up during

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regular use. But for others, these this

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should just work moments can be very frustrating. And if you're wondering

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which bucket you fall into, we came across a really great perspective on

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this question on the graphine forums that I'm going to have to paraphrase

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because we lost a link. It all comes down to trade-offs. Are you willing to

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give up a little bit of convenience for more security and privacy? Or do you

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prefer to give up a little bit of privacy for, say, live traffic data in

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your mapping app? Do you prefer to tinker and tweak and have control over

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your phone? Or do you want your OS to just fade into the background of your

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life and just work? So, is Graphine OS

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for you? Well, based on the questions that I just asked, you probably already

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have the answer in your mind. [music] If you're the sort of person that would try

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a different OS on your phone, Graphine OS gives a ton of control in a package

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that I would call polished enough for the kind of person that doesn't mind a

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little bit of tinkering to keep things running smoothly. And if you're trying

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to deleg your life, it seems like a major piece of that puzzle. As for me,

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at the moment with companies, kids, wife, not to mention other hobbies that

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I just plain enjoy more than tinkering with OSS, Final Fantasy Tactics remaster

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just came out. I am loving it already. Maybe not today, [music] maybe not

00:13:57.920 --> 00:14:04.320
tomorrow, but soon. And for the rest of my life. You know what else I'll do for

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devices. If you like this video, maybe check out the time that I had three

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Android users switch to [music] Apple for a month. It's a two-parter and

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provides a lot of interesting insights on what it's like for a regular [music]

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but techsavvy user to make the