Like I don’t have space in my life right now to do a whole lot of actual tinkering but google is pissing me off and I just remember in middle school just being able to change the boot order in the bios and plug in a usb stick and a few hours later having mint installed. What’s the easiest way to get a clean de-googled os on my phone?
Since it keeps coming up, I have a unihertz atom, a moto g 2022 and one of these monstrosities
Extra bonus question, if I do wind up buying a new phone in the future what brands should I look out for? (But I’d like to keep using what I have until the hardware breaks if possible).
I think the answer to your question is Graphene?
What model is your phone? Definitely GrapheneOS if you use a Pixel.
going back to a nokia 3310
If you list your phone model I can research your options for you. I know overall that Samsung phones are the worst offenders for restricting your options though, along with iPhones OFC.
A unihertz atom, a 2022 moto g, and one of these monstrosities.
The real answer is PostmarketOS. Look at all the phones supported. They add new phones every 2 weeks/month as more people volunteer to help get phones they own supported. The Fairphones are an amazing option with PostmarketOS. Can switch to different distros too (Not the same as it is for laptops yet for switching distros but the overall function works as daily driver. Just pick phones that have full support)
Depends strongly, what phone do you have?
A unihertz atom, a 2022 moto g, and one of these monstrosities.
You are absolutely and completely out of luck, all three of the devices mentioned use Mediatek processors. Mediatek is widely known as having the absolute worst support for custom roms due to no open source drivers being available and generally no support for developers.
As a rule of thumb if it runs android and it doesn’t use Snapdragon or Tensor it doesn’t support custom roms. If it uses Snapdragon and specifically has an unlockable bootloader than it might support custom roms. Finally if it runs a Tensor processor (with the exception of Pixel 10 due to being too new) than it is guaranteed to either run custom roms or eventually run custom roms (no guarantee for future tensor devices).
You can have microG and use something like Aurora store for most applications (What I’m using on my setup right now)
Yeah but its a less secure way of using GraphineOS, the fact is the sandboxed Google play services is the most secure way to use it (what im using on my GOS setup)
I wonder if using sandboxed google play services without actual google account login (like in my case, using aurora) is a possible option, since I didn’t really check. It’s probably worth a look on the graphene forums at least.
Nope, you can quickly set up an alt acc tho
Well, just experimented (removed MicroG and purged the components, reinstalled the Graphene sandboxed play services), and it seems like it just works. Even Aurora seems to work okay, managed to download and install Signal.
So I guess if you’re willing, you can just use Aurora with an Anon acc if you just need base apps without google login.
I always had garbage luck with MTK devices in the past with performance.
Right out of the box, all blazing fast, but just a month later they’re down to 1/3 of their original speed. It could’ve just been me, but I went through a “buy cheap devices to dick around with” phase in college and this happened with all of them (8-10 devices maybe?).
May not be an issue now, but definitely was then.
It depends on what phone you have. Some phones have bootloaders you can’t unlock, and you can’t do much at all with that. If you can unlock the bootloader, your options are determined by which third-party Android builds support your hardware.
LineageOS is a popular option with pretty broad device support; GrapheneOS is a privacy/security focused option that only runs on Pixels.
Two problems:
- Locked bootloaders: if you’re not given the option to unlock it, you can’t boot anything other than the stock ROM
- Proprietary drivers: even if you can boot a custom OS, many Android phones have very unique and obscure hardware and the drivers for them are only distributed through their stock ROM.
The closest thing is LineageOS. If your phone doesn’t support it, there’s Generic System Images (GSI), but there’s no guarantee of getting cellular service after installing a GSI due to proprietary drivers.
If you want something that just works, GrapheneOS is great, but you’ll need an unlocked Google Pixel.
i can’t unlock bootloader of my phone, and can’t install custom rom, im cooked asf
knowing that the android’s ability to sideload/install apks is going be removed next year I feel like there’s no way out from the corporate greed
It’s why I’m watching out for plans where you can build your own phone with off the shelf parts.
If it helps it looks like that they’re backtracking on that but I’ll believe it when I see it
They said the same thing about ad blockers. There was a massive uproar that they were removing ad blockers and they said they’d allow them, then quietly blocked them anyway. I’ll believe that they’ll allow side loading when I see it
First thing out of hubs mouth when I mentioned hearing about it: “That was their only advantage over apple!”
Actually what finally spurred me to ask this question.
Everyone has their own use case, needs and preferences My thought is that you have the following options - not in any order as you will have your preferences
- Buy a Pixel and install Graphene
- See if you can install Linage OS, or buy another phone that can
- Universal android debloater / ADB (not as tricky as it seems) https://github.com/0x192/universal-android-debloater
- Search and disable apps you don’t want (limited at best)
- Install RethinkDNS & Firewall.
What did I do? On my Samsung tablet, I used Universal Android Debloater AND run RethinkDNS & Firewall. Not as good as Graphene, but cheap / free and 90% of the same.
lineage and its siblings like graphene. degoogled or with microg if you can. i think you can bypass some banks and stuff for detecting root, but it is annoying and impractical afaik.
postmarket if you are feeling adventurous, it’s full gnu/linux and an alpha quality experience.
that’s if your phone supports any of it at all. they don’t make it too easy for you to own your own phone.
Getting annoyed with the attention economy and swapping to this (I love it)
edit: it’s a uniherz jelly star green edition
Hells-bells! I never even knew these things existed. I am very tempted. If I hadn’t already got used to an excellent camera and size of a slightly larger screen.
8210 form-factor is here again. Honestly thought it would never be back!
One of my devices is the atom already. I’m more wondering what I can do with my other devices I already have
😁Yes I’d like to buy 2 please.
👋hi phone twin!
In my opinion, the worst Android flavor among the popular ones is the Samsung’s One UI. Notoriously bad in terms of tracking and telemetry. Yeah these Chinese ROMs are certainly bad, but where I am from, these are few and far between.
The worst thing about Samsung is the inability to install any Custom ROM despite it being a Snapdragon chip. Other manufactures like Xiaomi or OnePlus sometimes let’s users do that (albeit the process might be a little difficult).
But to answer your question, look into LineageOS’s supported device list. Pick a device from there and install LineageOS. Or better still by a Pixel (there are talks about a partnership with an unknown OEM and GOS, but no clear news on that as of yet) and install GrapheneOS.
