Not only that, but they apparently also get large amounts of donations in crypto currencies. They also allow donating via PayPal or bank transfer. They set up a whole Canadian non-profit foundation in 2023. GrapheneOS isn't a small niche project anymore, it's actually a sizable organization with paid staff (see https://grapheneos.org/hiring). @Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
Archive.org has it all saved
taken from multiple versions of android
They're the newest releases of Google's own AOSP apps. If you don't like the apps and the fact that they aren't maintained anymore, complain to Google. They are the ones who fail to provide up-to-date apps in AOSP, because they want to promote they proprietary, spyware-infested garbage. It's not like you have to use them, you can easily disable all the pre-installed apps, and either replace them with the proprietary Google apps (and disable network access to maintain privacy), or get open source alternatives, for example from Fossify.
There’s no preinstalled apps store
There is a pre-installed app store, which lets you install Graphene's own apps, Google Play Store and services, as well as the Accrescent app store. For everything else, you can grab an APK from the web. My recommendation is to use Obtainium, it easily lets you download, install and update APKs from various sources on the web. There's also an extensive list with presets for apps to download via Obtainium: https://apps.obtainium.imranr.dev/
The security is remarkable but I feel they could give other areas more care.
They don't want to include any unnecessary bloat, so they leave the OS very minimalistic on purpose. You can install whatever you like, and you don't have to deal with removing bloat you don't need.
No contactless payment is really tough too
Some banks offer their own NFC payment system that doesn't require Google Pay and just uses the bank's app. Again, complain to your bank if they only offer mobile payments via Google Pay.
I recommend getting a 6a or 7a instead, maybe even the 8a if you're ready to pay the higher price. But at least get the 6a, it's cheaper than the normal Pixel 6, and gets updates for 10 more months than the Pixel 6. The Pixel 6 has less than 2 years of life time left, I don't think it's a good option nowadays. You can always check on this site: https://pixel-pricing.netlify.app/ (it's in German, but you can either use the website translation in Firefox or on Google Translate)
Common GrapheneOS W:
Oh that sucks. I haven't used it personally in quite a while, since I switched to the Grafana stack
No, it's not a special "FOSS" version, it's just the official binary distributed through the Guardian Project repo (as I have proven: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/16230276). If you want a FOSS variant, check out Signal-FOSS or Molly, they also offer a FOSS variant. You can either download it from their custom F-Droid repo, pull the APK from GitHub using Obtainium or get it from Accrescent.
Just make sure to set up UnifiedPush if you want to receive notifications while your Molly database is locked. I recommend the new Sunup UP distributor. I wanted to make a post about it in !unifiedpush@lemmy.dbzer0.com, but never got around to do it.
For Mollysocket, there are a few public instances. molly.adminforge.de is one of them. You can also set up your own on Fly.io, check out this repo: https://github.com/pcrockett/mollysocket-fly
Or you can obviously self-host it on any VPS or hardware that you own
The Ntfy Android app hasn't been updated in almost a year, and in my experience it consumes more battery than Sunup.