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A lot of the benefits of using a privacy OS is lost if you use many cloud apps. You must start with a goal in mind. What do you want to keep private from who? I've used iOS, Graphene, and CalyxOS. In my exp Graphene is the most private. iOS is very secure by default but you are sharing a lot of info with Apple about yourself. You are in their walled garden. Its a nice garden but you don't have freedom and maximum privacy.
I think one could use iOS in a more private way than most people do but this would mean only using open source app and avoiding many of Apple's services. If you want freedom from the cloud overlords avoid stock android. Lineageos is better than stock but Calyxos and Graphene have no Google services and have many hardening improvements.
The main difference between CalyxOS and Graphene is that CalyxOS is managed and backed by a non-profit org and Graphene is not. It is more of a grass roots open source project. Both projects are open source. Both are good. The other difference is in how they handle Google srevices. Graphene uses sandboxed Google services and CalyxOS uses MicroG which emulates these services(Services meaning the services required by many apps in the app stores). There are tradeoffs for both. I recommend Graphene to most people. Go to their site and look at their support for Pixel phones and pick a phone up. Its not hard to set up these ROMs.
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I'm using GrapheneOS on a Pixel with all Google apps removed. All apps are installed from Github directly with Obtainium.
Internet connection on the phone is with silent.link and paid with Bitcoin. The phone has no phone number, but you can call with private chat apps like Threema and Simplex.
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Sadly, a phone number is mandatory for me, most people in my country still use SMS and phone calls.
What's your experience with silent.link? How does it work exactly?
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GrapheneOS. But before a privacy OS, one should focus on privacy software, and think about cloud usage.
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My next phone will probably be a Pixel, with GrapheneOS. But CalyxOS seems nice too. I hope I will never need to have an Apple device.
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Graphene OS with some apps from fdroid/aurora store/apk. Sandboxed google play running. Try to keep non open source apps to a minimum. It's all about picking your tradeoffs
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Pixel with Graphene. Start with self hosting your basics services first though (contacts, caldendars, documents, media) otherwise you'll be reliant on a big tech provider still.
Any Google Play apps you can't do without should be run in a separate user account on the phone.
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I have found that the Nextcloud contacts, calendar, and media apps are still extremely raw and lacking many features. Additionally, the outdated designs and UI/UX can be quite frustrating. I tried hosting them myself for a few months, but eventually switched to the Proton ecosystem. Altough i'm still relient on Proton, they offer E2E encryption. I also do regular backups, which gives me peace of mind. Currently, I only use Nextcloud for backups and notes/tasks.
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Yeah Nextcloud is pretty garbage. I ended up using Baikal for calendars and contacts, Syncthing for documents, Jellyfin for music / film, Calibre for ebooks, Photoprism for photos.
Sounds complicated which is why I tried Nextcloud first. But it's actually really easy to spin up some docker containers vs the hideously buggy and unpolished nightmare that is Nextcloud.
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For the calendar you can also use caldav with nextcloud to sync, an try the calendar app from fdroid. Never really used contacts but it should work with davx5 too if you are interested.
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