Here’s my dilema: last night I dropped my OnePlus 3t at the theater, it got stuck in the electric seat mechanism and broke the screen. Still usable, but definitely get-shit-ton-of-glass-in-your-hand prone. Looked up replacement screen costs, and damn things cost $100-150 it seems! I’ve gone from absolutely loving phones to absolutely hating them due to the invasive nature of Google’s ecosystem and such, so the idea on spending money on something I hate bothers me.
In the meantime, I had my old Nexus 5 sitting in my closet. It has a brand new battery in it and in mint condition, but the camera just straight up doesn’t work, and the mic is a hit and miss. Also NFC and Qi charging no longer work, but that is no a non-issue.
Here’s my issue…I want to get myself away from being so dependent on Google. I was thinking about getting a Note 4 (removable battery + expandable memory), rooting it, and getting a custom ROM on it without Google Play services to toy around with on the side, though not use it as a daily driver. How is the ROM support with this sort of thing, and also how well is the S-Pen supported? The idea of being able to use the S-Pen intrigues me.
Also on my mind is the thought of jailbreaking an iPhone (5s?), and using that instead since I do love the hardware and size. Again, I’m coming from the thought of I want to be in control of my own data, but is such a thing even possible with the iPhone? I WILL NOT install iTunes on my computer; I love how Android can plug directly into any computer and be read as a normal flash drive.
in all honesty, privacy in smart phones is just a myth, be it the google ecosystem or apple’s, or for that matter any other company. Personally i don’t think that even using a modified ROM is enough to keep them of your back as god knows what going on in the underlying system. At this point i only see 3 options:
1_ Stop using phones of any kind, that way you can keep your privacy (for most this is not a viable option)
2_ USE old school phones (and make them burners too),they can fulfill the basic need of calling and sending SMS. (which works for me)
3_ keep using smart phones and just accept that big brother will be keeping an eye over your shoulder and you can only try to minimize the scoop of the spying.
I think you may have missed my point a little. I’m not trying to be completely off the grid type of privacy, rather I just don’t like the idea of being so dependent on Google and Apple. I don’t mind using their products every now and then and knowing they have some sort of profile on me, but to be 100% dependent on them bothers me. What happens if all the sudden for some reason I need to be independent? Right now, I’m screwed as all my email, data backup, calendar information, notes, and everything is 100% reliant on Google. All my eggs are in one basket, and I know this is just asking for trouble one day in the (likely distant) future.
So I figure what better time to try and wean myself away than now. Yes I know I am being tracked and spied on, and likely will be till the day I die; however, if I have the chance to gain just a little bit of my freedom back without really sacrificing anything, then why not?
Before it gets mentioned, yes I am aware of the Librem 5. I want the Librem 5. The Librem 5 doesn’t ship for another year at the earliest. The Librem 5 is also expensive at $600. This does not help me right now.
Reputable custom ROM, F-Droid for your open source apps. Yalp Store for the few apps you need from Google Play, but without installing google services.
Thank you for that; bookmarked thread. Any thoughts on the iPhone route, or am I better off going Android for this? I only ask because I do really like the iPhone 5(s) era hardware.
1: Don’t jailbreak an iphone. You literally get shitty themes from 2007 and really low level OS tweaks that don’t actually do anything but crash your iphone’s DE. Trust me I fucked with cydia for months and never saw the use.
2: LineageOS with Aptoide and the Yalp Store is what you’re looking for. Lineage is a AOSP branch of android with the goal of telling google to go fuck themselves. Updates can be done by hand or by the guy who made the image. Doesn’t really matter who tbh. I wish it had a newer kernel though. I wish all android phones were on 4.15…
Anyways you root whatever phone, then you have Aptoide or/and the yalp store. Aptoide is neat. It lets you set up aptitude repositories for your phone that you can host yourself, or access other user’s repositories. The problems with this stem from Piracy nowadays, but back in the day it was VERY neat. Theres also a lot of neat app projects hosted on there, like an ARM port of Undertale. Then, the yalp store is a proxy, basically, for the play store. You don’t need to burn GAPPS to your phone, the telemetry stays out, but you get all the apps and updates you’d ever want to have from the play store.
Oh and your pen is just a mouse on a Note.
Advantages of rooting your phone are the same advantages of running root on any linux system. All the power, but also all the destruction. Be careful of what you are doing. Also an advantage of lineage is that you get DAYS of battery power by just running a base linux desktop and not fucking around with all the other shit.
How do you get apps and updates from the play store without google play services? My understanding was that many apps wouldn’t work without GPS, and the store certainly requires it.
Again, yalp store is a proxy. You sign in through the yalp store and it pulls them down for you. Its an open source app too so if you don’t trust it you can look at the code. Its only goal is to get rid of the constant telemetry.
OK, that gets you the APKs and means you don’t need to run the google play store app itself, but tons of apps require google play services running the background.
Anything that uses Google’s APIs for location, geofencing, mapping, activity recognition, payments, authentication, cloud messaging (ie, all push), and a ton more. Ars Technica has a bunch of great writeups on Google Play Services.
