I wanted to share an interesting statistic with you. Approximately 1 out of every 25 people with a Google Pixel phone is running GrapheneOS right now. While it’s difficult to get an exact number, we can make educated guesses to get an approximate number.
How many GrapheneOS users are there? According to an estimate released by GrapheneOS today, the number of GrapheneOS devices is approaching 400,000. This estimate is based on the number of devices that downloaded recent GrapheneOS updates. Some users may have multiple devices, such as organizations, and some users may download and flash updates externally, but it’s the best estimate we have.
How many Google Pixel users are there? Despite Google’s extensive data collection, this one is surprisingly harder to estimate, since Google hasn’t released an exact number. There’s a number floating around that Google has 4-5% of the smartphone market, which is between 10 million and 13.2 million users in the United States. I can’t find the source of where this information came from. That number is problematic, too, because Japan supposedly uses more Google Pixel phones than the United States. The Pixel 9 series was also a big jump in market share for Google. I couldn’t find any numbers smaller than 10 million, and it made the math nice, so that is what I went with.
Putting the numbers together, it means that 4% of Google Pixel users are running GrapheneOS. That means in a room of 25 Google Pixel users, 1 of them will be a GrapheneOS user. If you include all custom Android operating systems, that number would certainly be much, much higher.
To put it into perspective, each pixel in this image represents ~5 Google Pixel users. Each white pixel represents that those ~5 people use GrapheneOS:
Even with generous estimates to Google’s market share, GrapheneOS still makes up a large portion of their users.
A lot of it is “on paper” as you say.
For example, iPhone uses NVMe SSD storage. The best Android phones use UFS, which is cheaper, and, “on paper,” slower. But there are other bottlenecks to consider, and in real world performance, UFS is at least as good.
I can only speculate as to why Apple uses the part that costs more and is only better in theory, but my best guess is that the iPhone is intended to be used for far longer than they’re marketed. Like Apple marketing would have you believe you need to upgrade every year or two, but Apple engineering would allow you to easily use an iPhone for five years, if you could resist the temptation of marketing. And it’s honestly not really that much different with Android. I have a 2019 Galaxy S10 that still runs relatively well. Could use a new battery, it doesn’t last long when it’s powered on, but it still runs well in the time it has.
Yeah I think a lot of Apple users get really attached to their gadgets and want to use them forever. Also, there’s the resale value that helps the kind of customer that wants to buy the new thing every year. So making sure that the products hold up for a long time is probably a really solid strategy for them.
Kinda/sorta. The resale value is better than on the Android side, but it’s still pretty damn insulting. Mainly because storage doesn’t matter. So you pay more for the extra storage, but you don’t see any of that returned in the resale. If you’re playing the resale game, either stick with base storage, or sell privately (in which case you can’t really say Apple resale is higher, it’s whatever people will pay). But better than either way? Buy a phone that’s a couple years old. Take advantage of the resale situation, but then of course you risk inheriting someone else’s problem. And always always always buy an iPhone in person, and ensure the person has properly signed out of it (and turned off “Find My”). Too many people sell without doing that, and move the money, and you can’t get your money back, and you can’t use the phone either. Don’t let it happen to you. But if you deal with honest people (or ensure their honesty) it removes one issue.