Really just curious about how it stands up spec-wise. The price point leads me to believe it’s gotta be low-end on the spectrum but he’s got a habit of pricing much lower than expected for products and services. I’m currently using a Pixel 9 running Graphene, for comparison’s sake.
https://store.braxtech.net/products/brax3?variant=45587022446636
For this price get a pixel with Gos
The dim 400nit 720p lcd screen is the biggest no-go for me. Especially on a 6,6" device. I had a budget 5" 720p phone many years ago and it just sucked even back then. The brightness wars got a bit silly recently with screens with claimed peaks up to 3000nits. But having ~1000nits is pretty neat under direct bright sun light.
The SOC is pretty mid. I’m sure it will do normal phone stuff adequately but a phone i had seven years ago had better and higher clocked prime cores and it was 50 bucks cheaper back then. Mediatek devices tend to have practically no custom rom support which also isnt great. But tbh the custom rom scene isnt in a great spot atm either way. It isnt a negative in my book but also doesnt tip the scale to the positive.
8GB of ram is okay at that price and the current market conditions. 256gb of storage is pretty good. But no mention at all what kind of storage? So in the best case UFS 2.1 which would be okay or at worst EMMC which would just suck.
Idgf about selfies. But if you do that front camera will look like ass. That secondary 2mp macro at the back is just utterly useless and a waste of space and ressources. 50mp on the mainshooter doesnt sound to bad but look at that tiny lens. With that the sensor must be tiny too. Combined with a shitty camera app of a tiny manufacturer i predict the pictures will look like they were taken in the last decade.
Most people dont give a shit but i do: USB 2.0 in 2026 should be illegal.
Headphone jack: exists, which is good.
In regards to the software: idk, man. Over the years i’ve seen a lot of big privacy claims by niche companies. The privacy focus was IMHO almost always just a marketing device. The actual implementation was either lackluster or straight up misleading. Yeah, and just reading the usual marketing blurbs doesnt give me any confidence its different this time. Especially if they claim their rom is completly degoogled but Aurora Store is preinstalled. Technically correct but you wont believe which service owned by google Aurora accesses. :D
For 350 bucks i rather buy yet another used Pixel and put Graphene/Lineage(if its older and unsupported by Graphene). The hardware on Pixel devices isnt even that great considering their flagship pricing on new phones. But even a Pixel 6 runs circles around that Brax3.
This is incredibly helpful, thanks for the insight. I think I’ll just stick with my 2 version back pixel plan that I’ve followed for a while.
Brax is a grifter spreading misinformation to sell you his insecure devices and services. https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114825638504244405
Glad more people are seeing this. Also the sheer amount of disinformation and FUD he spreads to make people feel hopeless and terrified.
He’s a loser and grifter fs
He pretends to be a privacy expert, but his explanations lack substance as he spreads half-truths and prioritizes narrative over clarity.
Middling hardware aside, I’ve heard lots of online reports on unfulfilled orders and generally bad customer service. Something to keep note of.
Personally, I would stick with the GrapheneOS Pixel. If it works fine for your usecase, then I don’t think you should change it out. GrapheneOS is excellent and I believe has some of the best security features of all the ungoogled Android ROMs. Its developer is pretty paranoid and they haven’t been very nice to other projects though, which some might say is against the open-source ethos.
If you do end up disliking GrapheneOS for how it works and/or the attitude of their developers, I would rather install iodeOS (or e/OS if you like their iOS-kike interface + the Murena services) on another device, not the Brax3 phone. Possibly the Pixel 9 you already have (ideal scenario), but Fairphone is another option (I believe the 6 is supported by both iodeOS and e/OS). You might also like Shiftphone (which is a competitor to Fairphone in terms of their goal of making repairable phones)
If you want to use Linux on a phone, I would rather you go with an older device w/ postmarketOS rather than any dedicated “Linux phones” (e.g. Purism) since those tend to not be great values for the money. The OnePlus 6 / 6T are very well supported, but you also have devices like the Pixel 3a series and the Fairphones (which are newer, if you want their repairability. They come with an Android base OOTB) as well.
pmOS + Phosh on the OnePlus 6, from my own testing, has been pretty good. However, the camera drivers are very new (no AF, fixed zoom, grainy, poor dynamic range, etc. Photos look kind of cool, like film-style photography almost), GPS is inaccurate, and battery life isn’t the best OOTB (it’s an 8 year old device, so super degraded). It’s still pretty neat though, and although it’s not a daily driver phone for most people (including myself), it’s fun to mess around with. I particularly enjoy the ecosystem of mobile games that, although small, is excellent as there is no microtransactions, advertisements, predatory marketing, etc.!
Wait, the OP 6 is well supported but the camera and GPS aren’t working? Is pmOS + phosh different from postmarketOS and not supported as well?
It sounds interesting though, but I’d want at least all hardware working as it did on android.
Right now, my main issue with it is instability, since things are still being actively developed. I’ve had a few crashes here and there, and sometimes you do get annoying bugs. There’s also app support, you can do most things (and indeed, there’s a lot of weird niche apps too) but there’s some that are curiously missing (thougu you can get away with web apps or Waydroid for most of them, on my device I never used Waydroid!)
Everything else is okay at best, the cameras are fun to shoot with, but won’t be what you want to capture your important memories.
GPS via WiFi does work but puts me in a nearby city (making it useless for navigation). Note I didn’t use it much with a SIM card, so maybe GPS works better with that. Mobile data does work, 4G LTE and all.
Cameras do work but early stages right now, here are some sample images:
very bright conditions (very sunny, direct lights)
very dark conditions (nighttime)
ideal conditions (in the shade)
I personally think the cameras are objectively not great, but they do work and some of the images look pretty cool and almost film-like with glare, graininess, colour shift, etc. It’s different from modern smartphones where every photo is automagically good through lots of algorithms, while with this guy you need to find good lighting and such
I notice that for photos, there seems to be a green shift that seems to change depending on how bright the scene is (becomes very green when it is too dark or too bright)
It has super budget spec hardware so probably not great, mediatek SOCs are often pretty bad, and the screen being only 400 nits means it’ll be completely unusable in sunlight…
For the price I’d say get a used Pixel and throw Graphene on it, would be much nicer hardware.
Brax is spreading misinformation about the GraphenOS project. https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114824444524603470
These people think literally everyone is spreading misinformation and harassing them. Can’t take them seriously anymore.
It seems like lots of people do spread false info about graphene, either intentionally or just through ignorance.
Especially important to look out for false info with someone like brax who is trying to compete with them and make financial gain from doing so.
Open & private — by design.
BraxOS is a privacy-focused, open-source operating system. It combines powerful protections with full transparency, letting you reclaim control over your phone, apps, and data.
Fully de-Googled Android
Boots without a single Google service running. Aurora Store handles your apps.
Open-sourced
Every line of OS is on GitHub. Read, audit, compile, verify.
Am I just blind, or does that GitHub profile not contain a repo for the OS? I see a repo for their app store and a repo for probably their website or something, and that is it. Searching GitHub for
BraxOS, I can only see a project that seems entirely unrelated.Well it runs Ubuntu touch apparently. I wouldn’t trust their OS
I’m more concerned about the hardware specs on it TBH, as it’s a trivial process to install another ROM on it.
It doesn’t run GrapheneOS 🤷♂️
Loos pretty good to me. Maybe not a flagship but at that price with updates and spare parts guaranteed until 2030/2032? Unlockable bootloader with no string attached and a lean no frills degoogled Android? That can also install Linux?
I already own a Nothing Phone. Or this would be my next phone indeed.
Note: my nothing 3a was cheaper and with better specs, so no regrets
Brax is a grifter spreading misinformation to sell you his insecure devices and services. https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114825638504244405
