Google Pixel Tablet and GrapheneOS
Privacy By Default
In my quest to explore consumer technology outside of Apple’s exceedingly comfortable, but increasing restrictive, ecosystem, I have been looking for a tablet to replace my iPad. I have no desire to give away my data to Google, so I started to look at Android-based alternatives. Enter GrapheneOS.
GrapheneOS is an Android-based project that is unaffiliated with Google. The developers of the operating system have stripped out all of the bits of Android that call back to the Google mothership, but allow you to use apps from third-party stores such as Aurora Store and F-Droid. GrapheneOS has a small but vocal crowd of supporters online who champion the privacy-first focus. Due to the level of security required, GrapheneOS will only run on a select number of devices: the only tablet I could find that would run it is, perhaps ironically, the Google Pixel Tablet. In this article, I want to give a non-technical user’s perspective on using GrapheneOS daily on this device for the last three months.
My tablet is a luxury device. I am no iPad power user: I use it to watch YouTube, surf the internet, check emails, view photos and occasionally read library e-books. I don’t have a TV so any video content ends up on a tablet screen. Ditto for my partner: she uses an iPad each evening to unwind.
