Some thoughts on de-Googling Google Pixel phones
In this article I outline my experiences running LineageOS, /e/OS, and GrapheneOS on a refurbished Google Pixel 7 (but I have no reason to expect radically different behaviour from any of the Pixel range). I’ve compared these custom ROMs in another article, and I don’t want to repeat those observations here; this article is more about the handset.
TL;DR – all the custom firmwares worked almost flawlessly without much need for tinkering – bearing in mind my modest requirements.
Why Google Pixel?
It’s ironic that the Google Pixel phones are so popular for de-Googling, but it’s no accident: these are great handsets on which to install a custom ROM.
First, most of the popular custom ROMs support some or all of the Pixel range. Lineage and /e/OS offer the widest range of support: all devices from the earliest Pixel 1 (2016) to the Pixel 9 remain fully supported, providing Android 15 or 16. Graphene doesn’t support models earlier than the Pixel 6, but it does have some experimental support for the new Pixel 10 (which I haven’t tried, as I can’t afford one). Calyx also supports Pixels 6-9, although Calyx is currently unavailable, because of internal restructuring in the project. Most custom ROMs support the ‘-a’, ‘Pro’, and ‘fold’ variants of the Pixel, as well as the more mainstream offerings.
Second, custom ROMS can support voice-over-LTE (voLTE) in Pixel handsets. Samsung handsets, although previously popular for de-Googling, are no longer viable because of the lack of an open-source VoLTE implementation. In many regions, including mine, there’s no longer any carrier of voice calls except VoLTE. Given the comparative scarcity of Motorola and LG handsets in the UK, the only real alternatives to Google Pixel devices are now those from Sony – and Sony’s handsets are comparatively expensive.
Third, it’s unusual to find a Pixel handset that can’t have its bootloader unlocked. This process is a prerequisite to installing any alternative firmware, so it’s irritating that some handsets are not unlockable, often for obscure reasons. Since you’ll likely not find out whether the bootloader can be unlocked until you’ve bought the handset, it’s reassuring to know that the Pixels are likely to work.
Fourth, I understand that the Pixels (at least the recent ones) have specific security hardware which is relevant to tamper detection. I can’t claim to understand how this works, but it’s something that some custom firmware will use.
Fifth, the Pixels offer impressive hardware features for their price, particularly if you’re willing to buy a refurbished unit.
Taking all these factors into account, it isn’t surprising that so many privacy-conscious Android users turn to Google for their handsets, despite that company’s terrible reputation for slurping up personal data.
Why not Google Pixel?
None of the recent models in the Pixel range has a headphone jack or an SD card slot. If you’re de-Googling, you’re probably trying to get away from storing data in Google’s cloud, and the lack of SD storage might be a problem. The de-Googled Pixels do work with USB-C memory sticks (I tried), but these dongles are ungainly, and interfere with charging.
Installation
I was able to install Lineage, Graphene, and /e/OS easily on the
Pixel – more easily than on Samsung handsets, anyway. The procedures for
each handset are different, but all are well-documented. You’ll need the
fastboot and adb tools, or you could try the
web-based installer for Graphene.
All the documented installation procedures are designed to be applied to the vendor’s stock Android, not to a different custom ROM. That’s only an issue if you’re going from one custom firmware to another, as I am for these tests. While it’s probably possible to go directly from, say, Graphene to Lineage if you have the expertise, I encountered some weird misbehaviour when I tried this, which reverting to the stock firmware as an intermediate step fixed.
Although none of the installations took more than about half an hour, you still have all the post-installation set-up to do, which can take a lot longer. Because I do this kind of thing so often, I now have scripts that do all the set-up that I need.
Both Lineage and /e/OS are easy to root on the Pixel 7, if you need this, both following the same procedure using Magisk. So far as I know, this hacky method of rooting doesn’t work on Graphene, and you’d probably need to build it from source with the additional root components in place. Trying this is on my to-do-list but, so far, it hasn’t even reached the top half.
If you don’t want the hassle of installing a custom ROM yourself, you can buy a Pixel with /e/OS pre-installed from Murena. When I last looked, Murena was offering a refurbished Pixel 7 with /e/OS for €414. It’s hard to compare this price with the cost of buying the handset and doing your own installation, because the exact degree of refurbishment is unclear, whatever the supplier. Moreover, the prices of this sort of thing vary almost on an hourly basis. When I checked last, I could get a Pixel 7 in what was described as ‘excellent’ condition from BackMarket for £250 (about €285). If you’ve never de-Googled a phone yourself, €129 to save yourself a couple of days of frustration might be money well spent.
In use
I have to point out that I don’t use any Google services, nor any apps that can only be installed from the Google Play Store, or that require Google services internally. Each of Lineage, /e/OS/, and Graphene have their own ways of attempting to provide or simulate Google services in a privacy-sparing way. If you need banking and payment apps, there probably are differences between these platforms that you might need to investigate. Since I use primarily open-source apps, these things don’t bother me, and all the custom ROMs I tried behaved similarly, with all the apps I use.
I found one oddity with Graphene (which I’ve seen elsewhere): I couldn’t get the playback control buttons to work on a USB-C headset, or on a headphone dongle. Audio itself worked fine. Graphene has security restrictions around the USB-C port that the other platforms don’t have but, even with these relaxed as far as possible, I never could get the buttons to work. It’s a small thing, but annoying.
I found the LineageOS camera app to be a little unreliable on the Pixel 7: sometimes it would start up with a blank screen, and occasionally it crashed. I didn’t see this behaviour with the stock Google camera, or with the camera supplied with Graphene. I’ve not had a problem with the Lineage camera on Samsung handsets, so I’m guessing this is a quirk of the Pixel/Lineage combination.
I didn’t notice any significant difference in general performance between any of the custom ROMs and the stock Google firmware but, to be fair, I didn’t run benchmarks. With both stock and custom firmware, my Pixel 7 gets about two days’ battery life with my modest usage.
All the usual telephony features worked fine with all the custom ROMs. In particular, I was able to use VoLTE for calls, and this needed no particular fiddling.
Given that installing any custom ROM on a Google Pixel doesn’t take more than an hour (once you know how to do it), installing one is almost a no-brainer if you care about privacy.
Closing remarks
All the custom firmwares I tried were easy to install on the Pixel 7, and I wouldn’t expect the process to be any more difficult with any other Pixel. All worked well enough for my purposes but, if your needs are more stringent than mine, you’ll need to think about which specific custom ROM you want, that will best balance privacy and convenience.
Although I’ve been using the Pixel 7 for about a month, I find its lack of a headphone jack and memory expansion slot deeply irritating. Most likely I won’t continue with it much longer, if I can find a reasonably-affordable alternative that does have the features that Pixel lacks.
