TLDR: i complain about samsung’s flagship and newer android.
I use samsung flagship phone and it’s crazy, how unable I am to use full potential of my phone, just because I don’t want to log in to google neither to samsung. I try to use F-droid and Aurora Store whenever possible, but its so bad experience…for maps I use Organic Maps, but google forces it to be installed specifically from Google Play Store to work with Android Auto, so I have to log in every time there is an update. Most of games won’t work, because they require being signed-in to google, and thats actually kinda weird…before my phone now I had an old Galaxy S5 Android 6.0 and games there didn’t complain that much as here on Android 14 (so the newer android the less privacy you get, while them all companies “focus on privacy”, bullshit liars), samsung requires signing-in to usd like 1/10 of the flagship features…It’s so sad, as I love samsung’s quality, phone is really outstanding, overall all samsung products are very good quality, but pushing these fucking accounts is convincing me not to buy samsung’s flagship anymore. We need to finally unite and make some alternative to those close-sourced bloatware, as phone industry is nowhere near to being as free as desktop industry. I feel more free using Windoze than those fucking " smart"phones. Really if you have to buy new smartphone and are into privacy, think twice before you buy samsung…phone itself is great, but software side is a nightmare.
I bought a phone for something like $20 which is very simple. It has no vibration. It has 65 KB of onboard storage. And it is not a smartphone. I don’t even take it with me most of the time, because I know that nobody will call me anyway, so why bother. I use it very rarely. The most usage I have from it is calling, flashlight and maybe as a clock once every so often, since I have many actual clocks.
On the computer I use GNU / Linux. And I have no complaints.
So I don’t understand why even bother with a smartphone in the first place?
PS: I would love to try Pinephone or Librem5 though.
I personally use GraphineOS on my phone and Alpine on my laptop
As someone who’s used android literally since the first android phone was released, it’s a massive disappointment how locked down and enshittified it’s become.
the google corporate overlords are just straight up evil
We can all blame Google for that.
I am surprised it took you this long.
The next step in this evolutionary thinking is simple. Buying hardware specs is a fool’s folly. I don’t compare hardware. Ads and marketing are totally nonsense and not worth even a slight glance. The ONLY thing that matters is what open source projects exist and what hardware do they support well. This is how I shop. Open Source or F.O.
New motto: open source, open purse
I used to use Lineage OS before without gapps and it worked flawlessly although it was few years ago. Give it a try.
If you liked LineageOS without gapps, than I highly recommend DivestOS. It is a soft-fork of LineageOS with significant security hardening and removal of proprietary binary blobs.
Lineage and a fork, DivestOS are very close to Graphene, and run on far more devices.
The search for perfection is the enemy of good.
I’ve run Lineage for years on some spare devices. Battery life is so much better without Google Services.
My most recent device (Pixel 5 with DivestOS) is averaging 1.1% battery consumption per hour over the last day. That included an hour of navigation, using Google maps with microG services.
One old device runs longer with DivestOS than it ever did with stock, and the battery has lost 40% capacity. That’s how bad Google Services eat battery.
Plus Lineage permits you to use a number of old devices, unlike Graphene. It’s good, it gives you far more control than Google.
My final thought on Graphene - it needs to be taken over and lead by some professionals. Those folks act like stereotypical geeks of 30 years ago, arrogant, condescending (I worked with their type 30 years ago, and was a little like them then). They also denigrate anything less than what they deem “perfect”. The very definition of hubris.
Their attitude is “if you have a problem you must’ve done something wrong, why did you do something wrong”. Having that experience with them has put me off Graphene permanently.
Edit: I can re-lock the bootloader with Divest, so the condescending Graphene folks are just plain wrong about being the only OS that can do this. I don’t lock it, because my threat model doesn’t require it. The odds of my phone being grabbed by someone with state-actor-level skills being after me is non-existent, and there are easier ways to get the same data from me.
You can’t really expect to have any privacy if you’re using any online service anymore, so I just stopped trying. Blasting a Samsung phone with all the features enabled and not thinking of going back really.
Bad choice
