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Conversely, if Google were more like Apple -- just building and selling their own devices and not (one might say) propping up the entire non-iOS industry, they also wouldn't have this problem.

So while I'm happy to be able to run LineageOS on my phone (with GApps installed, for the record) and would prefer it if manufacturers were able to pre-install Firefox, I'm also worried that we may discover the cure to be worse than the disease.

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Running it without GApps is by and large a pretty enjoyable experience, provided you don't use the communication apps that seem to break/work like ass if they are not present (signal for example, while technically available without google services framework will just never work right). Really the only ones that come close to working right are Telegram (although it will never shut up about google services and "not running without them", it will run just fine) and the builtin SMS app. Email can be procured reasonably well and I have a sizeable library of games that I got from old humble bundles (back when they were actually good) that are fairly enjoyable.

WeChat runs fine fwiw.

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