My 10-day experiment comparing Google Fi vs GrapheneOS

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https://nbtv.substack.com/p/your-battery-life-reveals-more-than?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=email-restack-comment&r=iw8dv&triedRedirect=true

I’ve been running a little experiment the past 10 days.
I carried two phones everywhere: my Google Fi device and my GrapheneOS device.

Every night, here’s how the batteries compared:
• Google Fi: about 5% left
• GrapheneOS: about 50–75% left

What’s going on here? Am I really using the Google Fi phone 2–4x more?

Actually it’s the opposite.
My GrapheneOS phone is my daily driver. That’s where I use Signal, Brave, podcasts, audiobooks, email, camera, notes, calendar, my language app, and other things.

Meanwhile, on my Google Fi phone, I’ve installed exactly two apps: Signal and Google Maps, and I also use it as an internet hotspot. I deleted as many preinstalled apps as I could without breaking the phone, but there are countless ones I can’t remove.

At first glance you might think the hotspot is what’s draining the battery. That’s certainly a factor, but for context I turn the device to airplane mode (and shutting off the hotspot) whenever I’m not using it.

Even with “aggressive battery saver” enabled and hours in airplane mode, the Google phone churned through its battery like crazy.

The fact that the Google phone’s battery still dies so quickly is revealing. Battery drain can actually be a useful indicator of how private your device is. Some of this comes down to deliberate privacy choices, and some of it comes from the inherent design of each operating system.

Why Battery Drain Is a Privacy Clue

Battery life is a rough but useful proxy for what’s happening under the hood.
If your phone is dead by dinnertime even when you barely use it, something else is doing the work. And “something else” usually means:
• Background services constantly phoning home
• Analytics trackers collecting usage data
• System-level apps pinging servers even when you think they’re off
• Push notification frameworks that keep connections alive 24/7

That invisible activity not only kills your battery, it shows how much your phone is reporting back without your consent.

Your Privacy Choices Also Matter

See the rest here

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