Hi. I know the most privacy-oriented (and best-working) phone OS is GrapheneOS, but I was wondering about other, less well-known ones, such as VollaOS (modified Android), Sailfish OS or Ubuntu Touch. Are they private? Do they work? Can I run Android applications on them (VollaOS and SailfishOS) without too much effort? I like using Linux, but I rely on many Android apps, such as navigation, mobile banking, the Garmin app, and many others. Do you have any experience with these operating systems?
GrapheneOS is much better at updates than 90% of OEMs. They released Android 16 within a few weeks of Google’s release despite Google making a bunch of changes to deliberately make custom Android OS development harder (both with the AOSP in general and the pixel device trees). During that time period they also backported some of the security fixes from Android 16 to the current Android 15 QPR2 release. Unfortunately Google are still trying their best to fuck things up, they still haven’t published Android 16 QPR1 to the AOSP yet despite saying they’d do that on the 3rd September. So currently GrapheneOS is great for updates, and will continue to be for as long as Google allows. Also anything preventing GrapheneOS from updating in a timely manner would affect all custom Android OS’s
Edit:
They have also fixed a security flaw that Google themselves are yet to release a fix for (and this is probably not the first time that’s happened)
https://grapheneos.org/releases#2025070700
https://taptrap.click/