A GrapheneOS phone is on its way: Should you wait or just buy a Google Pixel today?

I’ve introduced GrapheneOS to a lot of friends and acquaintances, and I often see a mix of excitement and hesitation. Not because GrapheneOS doesn’t deliver on its promises, but because it practically requires you to buy Google’s Pixel line of smartphones to use it. For an open-source project so laser-focused on delivering a private Android experience, the dependency on Google feels paradoxical.

There are good reasons for this, of course — Google is the only major phone maker that’s generous enough to let you install alternative operating systems. But luckily, that might not be the case for much longer. After years of being limited to just one hardware platform, the team behind GrapheneOS has confirmed they’re working with a “major Android OEM” to bake in official support for the operating system.

While we don’t have many details yet, we’re clearly on the cusp of the ultimate GrapheneOS phone. So with that in mind, should you buy a Google Pixel 10 series phone now, or wait for what might be the first device to list GrapheneOS support on the spec sheet? Here’s what I think as a long-time GrapheneOS proponent and user.

If you’ve never heard of GrapheneOS, you might be wondering what’s so special about it and why so many people base their smartphone buying decision based on its compatibility. Simply put, it’s a security and privacy-hardened fork of Android. You can replace the stock Pixel OS on modern Google phones with GrapheneOS with surprisingly little effort, and the list of benefits are plenty.

You see, Android phone makers need to bundle Google’s entire Play Services suite as part of an agreement with the search giant if they wish to include the Play Store. This is why we see apps like Chrome and Google Photos pre-installed on a Motorola or Xiaomi phone, but it doesn’t stop at those apps. The Google Play Services framework has deep, system-level access to your device, giving it unfettered access to sensitive data like location, network activity, and app usage.

The solution might seem simple: just get rid of it. But unlike other privacy-oriented Android forks, GrapheneOS doesn’t make your phone any less usable or convenient by stripping away features. Instead, it isolates and restricts Google’s system-level components while granting you greater control over various Android permissions. This means you can still access the Play Store and even banking apps, while limiting them from phoning home with your data in the background.

You don’t just gain intangible privacy benefits. My favorite GrapheneOS feature is storage scopes, which let you grant apps access only to specific folders or files. It helped me realize just how excessive and broad Android’s default permissions really are. Other features include per-app network toggles, the ability to block sensor access, and an optional duress PIN. You can configure GrapheneOS to be as private as you’d like, but even the baseline experience is a step above what most Android phones ship with by default.

As I mentioned earlier, GrapheneOS’ compatibility list has been limited to Google’s Pixel line so far. And even though the latest Pixel 10 series isn’t supported yet, that will change within the next few months. However, it may also be the last Google device to get GrapheneOS, as the development team has stated that support for Pixel 11 and later hasn’t been decided yet.

Clearly then, the team’s focus is on the brand new vendor partnership that has now come to light. And based on what we’ve heard so far, it doesn’t seem to be a boutique or low-volume device either. The team says that they’re working with a major Android OEM on a future version of an existing smartphone and that it would be powered by a Snapdragon chip. GrapheneOS has a pretty long list of security requirements, so it rules out all but the flagship chip: the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5.

This is a very interesting point because Google’s latest Pixel 10 famously isn’t the fastest phone on the market — the Tensor G5 chip loses handily in benchmarks to flagship equivalents from Qualcomm and MediaTek. Many Pixel users are willing to overlook this in exchange for the software experiences built on the Tensor platform, but the latter doesn’t apply to GrapheneOS. In other words, GrapheneOS’ upcoming phone could unlock higher performance levels than what we’ll get from a Pixel in the near future.

Apart from that, we can make some educated guesses about GrapheneOS’ upcoming phone and how it might stack up to Google’s phones. It will likely cost at least as much as the base Pixel 10, given the flagship Snapdragon chip, and include similar internal specs. The partner brand in question might also be a smaller player in the space, given that Samsung hasn’t ever endorsed running alternative operating systems.

Having said that, the silver lining is that most Android brands have wider hardware distribution channels than Google. Since the Pixel is not available worldwide, those needing privacy the most (such as in oppressive regimes) are forced to import Pixel devices for GrapheneOS. Even smaller Android brands like Nothing have expanded rapidly, on the other hand, which could translate to greater accessibility.

But hardware is only half the story. While there are certainly benefits to leaving the Pixel platform behind, GrapheneOS users might lose out in some areas too. For one, the team has stated that the phone in question will likely only receive five years of software updates. Without the size and resources that Google and Samsung have at their disposal, competing Android phone makers haven’t made a seven-year update pledge yet.

Moreover, I’m personally concerned about camera quality. While SoC-level image processing has improved over the years, the Pixel relies heavily on Google’s computational photography to deliver its excellent results. This is currently easily achieved on GrapheneOS by installing the Google Camera app, but it remains to be seen if the stock camera app will be supported on the upcoming phone. Whenever I replaced Xiaomi’s Android skin with a custom ROM, I always had to contend with reduced image quality as a consequence of the stock camera app being unsupported.

You shouldn’t wait if you’re expecting GrapheneOS to be an out-of-the-box experience. The team has clearly stated that they aren’t building a privacy phone from the ground up. Instead, it’s simply working with a manufacturer to meet GrapheneOS’ strict security requirements on a mass market phone. This means you’ll still have to manually install the operating system like you would on a Pixel today.

The good news is that installing GrapheneOS on a Pixel takes just a few clicks today. More importantly, the project supports all Pixel devices for as long as Google still releases security updates. This means support going back to the Pixel 6 but also continued support for the Pixel 10 until it reaches Google’s end of support period, ending in 2032. Of course, things could change but the GrapheneOS team said that it intends to maintain support for all existing models.

So if you buy a Pixel 10 now, you’re guaranteed years of official GrapheneOS support, and the installation process is about as painless as it will ever get. On the other hand, the upcoming GrapheneOS phone is still at least a year away with the team estimating a launch window of late 2026 or early 2027. In light of that, I think it’s hard to argue against the kind of stability that the Pixel 10 offers when the alternative is still so unknown.