You can still use Google pay on a smartwatch even if it's paired with a grapheneOS phone if that interests you. I use an oura ring for biometrics so I don't have a smart watch, but that's one factor that tempted me to ditch the ring for a watch.

I also just don't think it's legit practically speaking. Plenty of shops, gas stations, etc do not support apple pay or Google pay, so what then?

I suppose it's just a matter of perspective. "Needs to" is a bit strong imo. Do you carry a license? Those are generally not available digitally. Also what about a worst case scenario where your phone is dead, broken, stolen, or payments are not working?

Did not see your other comments, glad it worked for you!

2 quirks I found that were easily fixed, not sure if you will find them handy:

• Weather app automatic locations doesn't work --> enable geocoder in settings > location > location services
• Google maps location lock doesn't work until leaving parking garages --> settings > location > location services > network location

Not sure what you mean by "if I don't have a device"? Also I meant malicious apps moreso than malicious devices. If you have root access then if a malicious app gets control there's basically no restrictions on what it can do given root access.

Also as far as plain hacking the phone, not through a bad app but through an external device. Pegasus (although probably an unlikely scenario for the average person) can basically hack any smartphone, with the exception of grapheneOS (there were some leaked slides from a meeting a while back that essentially confirmed this).

You say "make things stronger", well sandboxing and improved permissions access do make for stronger, more contained systems, and grapheneOS improves on both of those. Root access basically provides a sledgehammer to all of that

Interesting, but I don't think there's anything in that article that actually mentions credit card companies did not cover the loss? Did I miss that somehow?

I am on T-Mobile and up until this weekend it was definitely broken. People had temporary workarounds but nothing seemed to stick. This weekend a new build was released with a specific setting that provides the ability to use RCS on T-Mobile (and I think At&t is fixed too)

https://grapheneos.org/usage#rcs

Can you elaborate on how it's security through obscurity? I'm just saying what the devs have said. It does make sense though that if you provide root access that it could be easier for malicious devices to gain root access and therefore take more harmful actions

For me this is nonnegotiable, I have plenty of family and friends that I'm in group RCS chats and it's unreasonable to expect other people to confirm to your privacy expectations. I limit non-Signal chats when possible, but in many cases it's either RCS or miss important conversations with family and friends

I've gladly given up Google pay, can you really rely on your phone and completely go without a card anyways? I always carried my cards as a backup just in case so it's hardly a convenience IMO

Rooting is not possible because of the security risks posed by doing so. You could technically build your own GOS with root enabled, but that's not recommended

That's alright, thanks

You may find syncthing-fork on fdroid to be useful. The nextcloud app was crippled with sync charges due to the play store but the fdroid variant doesn't have such restrictions. The same may be true for syncthing-fork

Remember when paranoid Android released this feature in their custom ROM 12 years ago? Pepperidge farms remembers 👴🏽

https://www.droid-life.com/2013/05/06/video-hands-on-with-paranoid-androids-halo-feature/