I have a google pixel, and I know I could install grapheneOS on it. But I’m very, very hesitant, since I depend so much on my phone.
This isn’t like distro hopping, where I feel more comfortable hot swapping ssds, or making partitions, or using my desktop while I tinker with my laptop. My phone has a SIM and the service I depend on can’t be emulated off this phone.
So what do you recommend I do? Should I move my SIM (my phone service, really) to a new phone while I tinker with this one? Can I just blow up the current OS and wing it? Or maybe theres another option that would allow me to bail back to stock android in case something goes wrong. What do you think?
EDIT: how I use my phone: about everything I use is from fdroid, with the occassional app from aurora. I do use my banking app to cash checks, but I don’t use whatsapp, google pay, which I know arent compatible. So as far as app compatibility I dont think it’ll be a problem, Im mostly worried about my phone number not working. I dont know how SIMs work like I should, I just know Ive had the strangest issues in the past with it, so Im hesitant. Thanks for the replies so far.
Graphene has nothing to do with your sim or phone number, your sim card is possibly tied to your IMEI but that never changes so it should be just fine. If for some reason it won’t work after you flash graphene your phone provider should be able to swap you to a new sim card and port your number over no problem, but even that would surprise me, it should “just work.”
Btw Whatsapp and Gpay can run on graphene but it sort of defeats the entire purpose. Some people will create an alternate user profile for all that type of shit and install google play services on it, and put all their spyware apps over there. Just something to think about, it’s easy to set up once you have graphene installed.