Apologies if this isn't appropriate for this subreddit.

I'll have some money soon and I want an in box/sealed Pixel 10a or Pixel 10 Pro XL if I can find a deal.

I know you can get really good deals when you get your phone from a cellular provider but those phones typically have locked boot loaders. are there carrier's in the US that sell unlocked phones?

If I purchase a phone and it comes with an Esim already installed, what happens to the Esim if you install GOS?

Now it's time to set it up a little...

Do you know what device listed in my device when I try sign in on my google using vanadium on graphene os?

I like writing stories on my phone and I'm looking for the perfect app. I tried markleaf, but it has very frustrating quirks like when I go to fix a typo it deletes the whole word or inserts my fix 3 paragraph away. I tried pocket prose as well but when I opened it tonight, everything I wrote yesterday got deleted.

I tried installing google docs but that crashes on start up.

Any recommendations?

I finally got my phone set up in a correct way...I was disgust by Google account for years. The really break through is today. Because grapheneo. It respects my privacies.Makes me feel clean about the INTERNET. OMG.I love it.Words can't express my happiness. I hope China someday will create something like this.

Hey,

I don't think it shows quite as well on video but since the latest update my how launcher is very jittery, it's not very pleasant! No big deal, if it annoys me too much I'll change to lawnchair or smtg, but I just wanted to know if someone else has this?

I'm on Pixel 10.

Thanks!

I build a handful of privacy apps for GrapheneOS in my spare time, and this week the main one got some real security work, so I figured I'd share.

Parakeet is my fork of Molly. Molly hasn't had a release since July and is still on Signal 8.19.2, so I started pulling Signal's security fixes in myself. The big one was the RingRTC hot mic bug (CVE-2026-113380), where someone on a call could keep your mic on after you hang up. Molly still ships the vulnerable version, so I rebuilt their RingRTC with Signal's fix. I also backported 19 of Signal's other hardening commits from 8.19.2 to 8.33.1, mostly stricter checks on images, attachments, mentions and call messages. On top of that it has no Google push, screen security always on, and disappearing messages by default. It's still 8.19.2 underneath, so no new Signal features, just the fixes. It syncs with Molly every 6 hours and drops each patch once Molly catches up.

The other stuff, if any of it's useful to you:

Holevad VPN is my fork of the open-source Mullvad app with on-device tracker and SDK domain blocking added. DAITA still works.

Dodo Bird identifies birds by their songs and calls, fully offline with no internet permission, around 10,000 species with pictures. Built on BirdNET Live.

HawkEye logs every plane that flies over you, pings you as it passes, and ranks the regulars. Built on the airplanes.live app.

Everything's free and open source, and you can keep it updated with Obtainium or ObtainX: https://gitlab.com/LionNest

None of it is affiliated with Signal, Molly, Mullvad or the original projects. Happy to answer questions or hear if something breaks.

I have been experiencing a persistent delay in connectivity after manually restarting the device. Currently, I use Rethink to ensure greater visibility and control. I can see that applications are making requests. However, I am unable to make web requests using Vanadium.

Can someone please help me with the settings to - turn Wi-Fi on and connect automatically to my home network - only update system and apps when on Wi-Fi

This is the second month where the Wi-Fi doesn't automatically connect to my home network and I'm gonna run out of data with 2 weeks left. I use my owner profile just to download and distribute apps to the secondary profiles. Data saver is on.

I got tired of Aurora Store telling me apps were "not available in your country" when I'm sitting in the country they're made for, so I dug into why and made a fork that deals with it.

The short version: when you use Aurora anonymously, Google decides your country from the shared anonymous account Aurora hands you, not from your IP or VPN. Aurora picks one of those accounts and if it happens to be from the wrong country, region-locked apps (banking apps, some betting apps like Kalshi or Novig, etc.) just fail. Changing your VPN doesn't help.

What Aurora Light does differently:

- When an app says "not available in your country", it keeps pulling fresh anonymous sessions (up to 10, spaced out so the token server doesn't throw "server busy") until it gets one from the right country

- It remembers the session that worked for that app and uses it first for installs and updates, so next time it just works on the first tap. If that session expires it forgets it and hunts again on its own

- Upstream picks one token dispenser at random and gives up on the first error. This tries the others before failing

- It sends your phone's real time zone and carrier code to Google. Upstream sends a fixed Hawaii time zone and a broken carrier code, which doesn't help with country checks

- Anonymous only. No Google sign-in at all, so there's no account to get banned

- One tap to route it through Orbot on the default SOCKS port

- Updates come from GitLab releases through Obtainium/ObtainX, not Aurora's own update feed

It's not magic: it can only find a right-country session if one exists in the anonymous pool, so some apps might still need a few tries. But for me it went from "never works" to "works on the first tap after the first time."

It's built on Aurora Store 4.8.4 and I check for new Aurora releases every week to merge their fixes in. Big credit to the Aurora team, this is their app with some changes on top, and it's not affiliated with them.

https://gitlab.com/LionNest/aurora-light

Happy to answer questions, and let me know if a region-locked app still won't install for you.