I've been a happy Pixel 9 Pro user over the last year, and while I enjoy stock android, and some Google features are certainly convenient, with the raising concern about privacy and control, I wanted to take a look at my options. And that rather sooner than later, as Samsung, for example, no longer allows unlocking of the bootloader on their devices. Well luckily I got a Pixel, but doing that on my main phone with all my data, uh na thanks. So shoutout to the guy on Kleinanzeigen (people outside of germany might know it as ebay) who sold me a Pixel 6 Pro with a brand new original battery in decent condition (expect for a few dead pixels I don't care about anyway) for only 50€, couldn't have a better testing device. So let's dive right in.
What is Graphene OS?
I don't wanna say anything wrong, so I encourage you to just checkout their website, if you wanna know all the details. In short: It's an alternative OS you can flash on your Google Pixel device instead of the default Android it ships per default. Graphene OS brings you more control, privacy and security.
Flashing Graphene OS
Flashing is ridiculously easy, and I got through it in about 10 minutes. There is not a lot to say about it in general since the web installer guides you through everything, explaining what you have to do and why. Make sure you're using one of the supported browsers, I had to leave FireFox for Chrome, but well. Accessibility wise, I used Envisions or Seeing AI's instant text recognition features whenever it was required to interact with the boot loader. You navigate through the options using the up and down volume keys. Just point another phone running one of the mentioned apps at the device's screen showing the bootloader (preferably in the middle to upper right display corner). Whenever you navigate through the options and the text changes, you should hear the new option spoken out. Confirm it by pressing the power button.
Setup
Since initial setup is not yet accessible, as there is no default TTS voice installed, you'll need to ask a sighted person for assistance. Unless you have a bit remaining vision like me and want to fiddle around with zoom, well I certainly didn't. Over all you'll want someone to go through the setup dialogs with you and then install a TTS of your choice, such as eSpeak or RH Voice. There are different ways to do this such as preparing the APK on an USB Stick, or downloading it from F-Droid or similar platforms. I initially wanted to just download E-Speak from F-Droid, but as the person who helped me had issues selecting a download location with the default Graphene OS browser, I quickly put the APK on an USB Stick, and we got it installed through the files app. According to a response to a post of mine by Graphene OS on Mastodon this behaviour is intended, or to phrase it differently, the issues my assistance faced were probably just a misunderstanding, so feel free to give it a try anyway. Note though that at least for E-Speak, you gotta be a bit patient after installation, as the thing takes a bunch of time loading or doing god knows what before deciding to actually speak to you. Right, so now that this is out of the way, let's start exploring.
Getting started / Apps
From this point on you can basically explore anything on your own, do whatever you want and go crazy, I figured I still include a small list of things I did to get started. The same way I installed the TTS, using an USB Stick for convenience, I installed Obtainium. This is an app that lets you install and update APKs from different sources such as GitHub releases. I added Bitwarden there in order to have access to my passwords, for example to sign into the Google Play Store. Before going on with the apps, let me just very quickly say that of course, I did a few tweaks in the settings which were mainly personal preference such as enabling dark mode, changing to 3 button navigation bar etc, everything is accessible and generally as you'd expect it, so no need to go really in-depth here. If you wanna know about any features or stuff that is not covered here, check their website or hit me up on Mastodon and I'll try my best to answer it. So, on we go. I signed in to my Bitwarden. For some reason my Yubi Key would not trigger any reaction, though to be fair I'm not experienced with this thing so maybe I just need to have the Yubiko authenticator app installed as well, haven't tried, so just used a TOTP and moved on. I signed into the Google Play Store as well, and you can guess which app I first installed. Yup, of course. The beloved eloquence TTS. Well what can I say, works great, and in the process I recognised that Play Store is really not getting any exceptions here as it is the case on stock Android. You explicitly have to grant it the install apps permission as well as confirm every installation with the package installer again. Next App was my german banking app Sparkasse. Sadly I wasn't successful with this one, as it blocked TalkBack from seeing any content, I guess the open source variant Graphene OS is bundling is not accepted by this and perhaps other banking apps. Might be worth a try getting Google's official TalkBack on there, but this would be for a blog post on it's own, lmk if you want me to try it. Right, that's actually it for this part. I could go on about which privacy apps I like and want to eventually put on this device because I want a cool privacy respecting phone and such, but this is as well content for a post or page on it's own. Again, letting me know you want this will probably motivate me to do it faster.
Conclusion
Graphene OS is definitely something interesting to tinker around with, especially if you care about privacy and want to be in control. Personally, I do, but I'm also quite happy with the stock Android and the new/up to date AI features such as Gemini image descriptions in TalkBack. Once Graphene OS has bundled their own TTS implementation (read more about it in this Mastodon response to a post of mine), I would look into eventually switching to it on my main phone as well. You do have to be aware of the disadvantages though, such as banking apps likely not accepting the bundled TalkBack, needing sighted assistance for initial setup etc.
Request for feedback
Hey, thanks for reading this post, and reading on to this point. This was in fact my first very own blog post, no AI, no translator, just me, a german teenager blindie wanting to share their interests and discoveries. I'd seriously appreciate if you could leave me some feedback on Mastodon (@jonathan859@someplace.social) or in the comments. I'd love to do this more often, so please let me know what I could improve.