GrapheneOS on the Pixel 7

Not too long ago, my iPhone 11 died. I took it to the Apple store to get it diagnosed, and I found that I would have to replace the logic board. I was hoping a fourth generation of the iPhone SE would be released, but to my disappointment, the iPhone 16e was released as the successor.

All my phone has to do is call, text, email, track my workouts, password manager, authenticate, play music, browse the internet, GPS, and interface with my car. I thought it would be a shorter list, but still—I don’t need a good camera nor the best processing power. So I picked up a secondhand Google Pixel 7.

For fun, I wanted to install GrapheneOS. My goal was not privacy, so this “guide” is perhaps not the one to follow if that is your goal. All of my roadblocks and side notes will be written here as the installation instructions are quite clear.

The coolest part was being able to customize my own ringtone and alarm. I have this clip of Lewis Hamilton as my morning alarm. It’s awesome.

Oh, and I can actually see the file tree of my phone on my PC. Apple always gave me a pain with file transfers.

RCS

Getting RCS to work on Google Messages was a pain. This Reddit post and this GrapheneOS Forum post were helpful. Also note that you need to register your phone number with Google to get RCS, which can take awhile.

After my number was approved, I was still had trouble with RCS. I switched to the stock messenger as my default, and then gave Google Messages more permissions. Then, I restarted my device and changed Google Messages as my default messenger. It felt like I randomly got RCS to work.

But Signal works just fine.