Fastmail was never a recommended privacy specific provider if that is the big concern. Does not mean they do not have value.

Personally livng in the US I prefer a US provider. Geopolitics is one driver. Also US gov is not allowed to spy on their own citizens. If on the other hand they cross the border things are different. Not really many good US choices. EU has a lot of good choices.

Server no. But hosted domain email is probably what I will do in the next year. Probably at Fastmail or at Namecheap. I have the domain just waiting.

In a way, I already have a mail server on my VPS, just never installed IMAP. Not what I want for every day though.

For privacy specifically take a look at https://www.privacyguides.org/en/email/ .

For just a paid provider where you are the customer not the product, consider FastMail or a hosting offering such as NameCheap. By hosting I mean the one that is part of their hosting plans not their email specific offering though that is interesting also but quite expensive.

Be the way, I tried NativeAlpha. Really like it. One strange thing, F-Droid does not have it, IzzyOnDroid does but says not compatible. Finally grabbed it directly from Github with Obtainium.

Thanks.

Presumably one could install regular Google Play Services. One could just use a separate user if they allow that too. Separate phone is really cleaner.

Do they have their own app? If so try that. I know my city bus system has their own app. I think it will work with GrapheneOS, but I guess I’ll have to try someday.

Probably every App/Device is different, but I think you should be able to just install the app on the new device and re-pair. I know the Oxygen monitor I have was fine with that. A counter example, not sure about things like Chomecast… do thay need to be unpaired first if you move them to a new ‘Home’?

The bigger question is do you loose the data? If the data is all in the cloud and you have a user ID and pass, you probably don’t have to move the data yourself. If it’s on your device, then look for a backup/restore option in the App and move the data that way. Some apps have a special transfer procedure too (Signal, Libby, etc). If none of these, you may loose the data if you cannot find another way. For example “Hearing Test” an App I use explicitly prevents moving data unless you pay for the Pro version.

The other way to move apps (which I have no experience with) is App backup/restore as done by Google or through GrapheneOS with Seedvault but these tend to be limited to only same or similar OS/Device. That is App specific too in what the author allows as they have some choices of how they implement it.

By the way. Just curious. What were your issues with GrapheneOS or their team?

One thing I saw that I was not crazy about was moving away from Linux as a major goal. Micro Kernel… sounds like GNU Hurd like idea. Not that against it but why do it?

Regarding DivestOS. Yes, I looked at that. It is the #2 item on the list at privacyguides.org. There is also /e/ which I guess FairPhone uses. Then CaylxOS, LineageOS, and a few others. There was a nice comparison: https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm .

Thanks for the App suggestion.

Regarding Google Play Services. Lot seem to have dependencies but may not require them. Some complain they need it and then go on to work just fine. Some like Signal say they will affect how they work – i.e. without Google Play Services, Signal has to run all the time in the background. Some say nothing and just work.

Interesting Lyft and Uber at the only two apps I know for certain require Google Play Services in my case. There are a few more I installed that may but those I wanted in the Private Space together with Google Play Services for other reasons. Otherwise I pulled more Apps (about 16 apps) from Google Play via the Aurora Store and they did not seem to need Play Services. Probably depends on the kind of apps your looking at.

Regarding folding phone, I admit I’m a little scared of that tech for now. Not saying bad, I have no experience to say either way. I’ll be interested in how that works out. In another life I use to work with some people that were trying to develop this sort of tech a decade or two ago. Never heard where their work went, and no idea if same.

The deboating was a huge reason I decided to go the GrapheneOS. I had like 17 apps on my old G6 that were taking up space but were not removable in the normal way since they came baked in.

Yes. The actual move of apps and data takes a long time. Number of Apps on a phone tend to multiply over the years. Then there is the moving of app data if you don’t do App backup/restore. My old phone probably had about 130 apps on it which was nuts. I dropped about 50 apps on the transition though half of those will probably seep back in over time. I had to switch apps in about 20 cases, either app discontinued, deprecated, or just preferred to find a FOSS alternative. I also want to see if I can use the web and/or PWAs more rather then always installing an app for everything.

By the way, to move data, I found it helpful to setup syncthing-fork between the two phones.

The only issue I had with flashing was on the first go around I forgot to confirm the boot loader unlock on the actual phone. I used the CLI method and the CLI script that GrapheneOS provides just crashes in this rather then actually checking for it. Other then my own stupidity, there were no issues. Really easy and educational to do this the first time.

We’ll I guess the other issue is that I had to look around in my cable collection to find the best cable for the flashing. I needed a USB-A to USB-C cable in my case, not the USB-C cable that Google provides.