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Comment by endemic | Hacker News Reader

AFAIK one of the best solutions for smartphone privacy is using a custom Android ROM without Google apps installed. Of course that means basically no 3rd party apps, but you can still get a surprising amount of functionality with just a web browser. You’ll still get tracked by your mobile provider, but I think that would happen even with a dumbphone.

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> Of course that means basically no 3rd party apps

I'm using LineageOS without Play Store/Services and would like to dispel this myth. Here are just some of the third party applications I can install directly from the developer using adb, without going through a third party store: Signal, Firefox, NetGuard, NewPipe, Orgzly, OsmAnd, Tor Browser. Those pretty much cover all of my smartphone needs and more.

Three kinds of apps that are very important to me, that I cannot get without play store:

The national 2fa app. The app people use to send money to their friends, sometimes street vendors. Rideshare app.

You can use microg. It's a Free reimplementation of google play framework, so that apps which depend on it can still function in a de-googled phone. It's imperfect, I admit it, and breaks some apps, but it's still a massive help.

I'll second (third?) LineageOS + microG! Full ROMs combining both are available [1] (OS updates often seem to have to be installed manually, but are supported on popular phones for years). In addition to using everything from the F-Droid repository, I can run Slack/Discord/Messenger/WhatsApp/GroupMe (though notifications are hit-or-miss) and a good few other apps (Duolingo, bank mobile apps, Uber but not Lyft). Many of these apps can be installed via Yalp Store [2], which is a frontend for the Google Play store with a built-in account to provide some anonymity. It'll do until I get a Librem5 [3].

TL;DR: no Google, most things work, but not necessarily smoothly. I've used it for a few years now.

[1] https://lineage.microg.org/ [2] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.github.yeriomin.yalpstor... [3] https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/

F-Droid is a pretty cool foss app "store" as an alternative to the playstore.

What do you mean by, "no 3rd party apps"?

You can use F-Droid (https://f-droid.org/) in place of the Play Store.

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