Comment by throwhauser | Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwhauser | Hacker News Reader

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It's strange that it has to be this way though. I just retired my iPhone 6s because the battery didn't last very long anymore. I don't really need anything but text/phone/email so I didn't feel like shelling out for a new iPhone. I got a Moto G Power. It's a good phone, except for all the absolute shit loaded onto it. So much to turn off in so many places.

Specifically, needed to get rid of:

- Google Assistant

- Google Location Services

- Avoid accidentally signing up for Verizon's "cloud" and "digital secure"

- Disallow Verizon's app from collecting location when not using the app

- Disable and de-permission Verizon Cloud, which has tons of permissions even though I never accepted using it

- Turn off Google "location accuracy"

- Turn off personal results for ads

- Turn off tracking for ads in apps which is a separate setting

- Change the default messenger from Verizon's "Message+" to normal messaging to avoid having my messages copied all over the place

- Get confused by some weird "premium" upsell in the Voicemail

- Turn off "monthly driving stats" in google maps which is enabled even though I have location tracking disabled, what the hell even is this?

And that's just the stuff I remember.

And I still get a nag screen on maps for having web history turned off.

I guess Google wants everybody's data and Verizon wants to sell "premium" things for more money, but I wish there was just one button to shut all this shit off. There should be a "good Android" option that costs less than an iPhone for people that would pay a little more money for less garbage.

As others have said, replacing battery is fairly straightforward for 6s, I did it a couple times on mine until replacing a few months back. Look for the higher capacity batteries, I had luck with Amazon. Will take you probably 30 mins to switch out.

Alternatively - I just upgraded to an iPhone SE which seems like essentially the same phone as 6s but a little faster/smoother. Fits my minimalist needs which sound similar to yours. Dealing with the Android crapware sounds a lot less fun to me.

> There should be a "good Android" option that costs less than an iPhone for people that would pay a little more money for less garbage.

There is, actually: Android One. E.g. Nokia makes phones that have minimal crapware preinstalled.

You will still have to deal with Google's own crap... like the retarded Assistant that just won't fucking die. Even with absolutely every setting in every google settings page in every google app explicitly disabling the Assistant, if you dare speak words resembling "ok google" it will still "helpfully" pop up asking if you'd like to enable it. And sometimes spontaneously. While you're typing, hoping you'll fat-finger "yes please".

I just tried saying "OK google" to my phone and it did not summon the assistant. (Hooray!)

I have the generic "Google" app disabled, which I think is the thing that listens on the microphone for that. I don't really know what else it does, so I'm not sure what else is unavailable once it's disabled. I don't expect I'll be missing much though.

>like the retarded Assistant that just won't fucking die

Sadly I can't describe all actions I've done (I just don't remember) but one of the most crucial is to replace you home screen app.

Zim/Omega launcher is a good starting point - Zim doesn't know about assistant, Omega has the options to not to use it.

Along with Hacker's Keyboard, F-Droid/FoxyDroid and methodologically going through the Apps and Permissions in Settings helps to tame this Hydra.

Or, don't start caring about your experience/security/privacy after buying a device,

do a few minutes of research in advance to buy a phone that has a prayer (Pixel 3a is popular in this thread),

and install Graphene on it from day 1...

Nokia is never an option, because they do not open the bootloader on any phone. Worse, in the beginning they lied they would, to get people to buy their crap. Also, don't be blinded by their brand, that brand is actually chinese HMD now, with the chinese attitude to running random closed binaries on your phone. So if you go down that route, better get a properly supported phone, like from OnePlus.

Why not replace the battery in the iPhone? It would have cost less than the G Power and probably continue getting updates for exactly as long.

Didn't think of that. Just saw my iPhone rocket down from 50% to 10% one time too many and instantly ordered the new Android phone.

The iPhone doesn't even let you turn off its version of Google Location Services (unless you don't want to get your location at all), so after that one-time setup, you ended up with a better phone.

> The iPhone doesn't even let you turn off its version of Google Location Services

Can you elaborate on this a bit more?

You cannot get your location on iOS without also sending your location to Apple. As far as I know, iOS is the only platform that has this deficiency. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21708157

The Moto G costs less precisely because they get the money back from those practices.

So get a used Pixel for the same price or less, and flash proper software onto it.

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