Ask HN: Stock Android phone free of bloatware?
Is there an Android phone available that comes without any pre-installed bloatware, offers long-term support, and ensures access to the latest Android versions?
The reason you don't see long term support on Android is because of Qualcomm. Qualcomm wants manufacturers to build on new chips, so they deprecate older chips and stop support. Most manufacturers don't want to hire kernel and hardware devs.
Samsung can pull off longer support because of Exynos and they have a lot of inhouse expertise to extend support on old Qualcomm chips.
It's all money. They don't want you keeping a phone for 5 years.
Apple can do it because they lock you into their walled garden where they can double and triple dip on getting your money.
They also build their own chips.
I hate mobile computing. It's a pale shadow of what I imagine it could have been.
What does this even mean?
If you're so concerned about not paying for anything, all you need is buy the phone from Apple. You don't have to pay for anything else.
The reason Apple can support their phones for longer is because they control most of the stack: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/09/owning-the-stack...
Is there an iOS equivalent to F-Droid?
Not can’t, don’t want to.
If it‘s not going to save or make money, company isn’t going to bother. And Google is on a cost-cutting crusade right now so absent an external motivation it’s going to happen even less.
Nonsense.
It’s because they have all the expertise in-house anyway, they get extremely good terms due to their weight and negotiation, and they figure if you don’t change phone now you might do so next year and they’ll get your money anyway. There’s no brand loyalty on the Android side, and fostering it seems impossible (even brand recognition efforts don’t seem to do much).
This incentivises them to support all their phones as long as technologically possible.
Other phone manufacturers have the opposite incentive, they want you to buy a new phone ASAP, since they earn nothing if you don’t buy a new phone.
From an e-waste perspective, Apple’s model is definitely better.
Funny way to spell “provide quality service compared to competitors”.
iOS, specifically, all of what I listed there and really nice, fluent system compared to Androids that have frame drops even on top end devices.
If it ever interests you: https://nextdns.io/?from=d6jchbnv (my affiliate link).
I am pretty active in the blocklist community, co-maintain a FOSS network monitor and firewall for Android, was a contributor to AOSP, and run a public DoH/DoT resolver; to me, the writing has been on the wall for the past few years. Plugins like uBlockOrigin, alt web-based front-ends like Invidious, and reverse-engineered apps like YouTube ReVanced will most likely be the only options left in the not so distant future.
It also doesn’t always work, particularly if the app isn’t covered in your blocklist (which it isn’t always possible to add them in any easy way, because “think different”)/the app hosts ad content directly.
If you really do refuse to use apps with promoted content then I guess you don't install anything to your iPhone.
The App Store is such a shit show now, I only go there when someone links to an interesting app from a website or podcast notes.
Now, if Apple unlocked the bootloader and promised no more ownership shenanigans, I'd never badmouth Tim or his company's software ever again. This website has my word on that.
To a first approximation, no one cares about open source app stores on Android.
Epic tried to bypass the Play Store and it was a disaster for them.
Now that’s just blatantly bullshit. The OS takes up at least 9GB. There are many Linux distros that take half of that. Not to mention the OS is preloaded with a lot of Apple’s proprietary apps, most of which are designed to pull you into some kind of sales pitch. Fitness+, Apple Music, iCloud, the entire OS is an ad designed to sell you on their ecosystem.
The most egregious statement, however, is that the OS “doesn’t change every year”. You say this right after the iOS 16 update completely changed a large portion of the OS, and in some very user unintuitive ways.
Not to mention iOS is a glitchy mess even on the latest hardware. Frequently the OS stalls on wakeup, stalls when trying to swap apps, randomly drops wifi when my laptop doesn’t, the keyboard will get stuck on screen, it’ll even skip inputs entirely and freeze for a few seconds.
Don’t care about that.
> Not to mention the OS is preloaded with a lot of Apple’s proprietary apps, most of which are designed to pull you into some kind of sales pitch. Fitness+, Apple Music, iCloud, the entire OS is an ad designed to sell you on their ecosystem.
I’ve been iOS user for almost two years now. The only sales pitch I saw, was at the start about 3 months of free Apple Music. The rest I haven’t saw, as I don’t use fitness app or any other things.
The only thing that I’ve bought so far, was €1 iCloud subscription to increase iCloud storage to 50GB. And I didn’t even see any “ad” for it.
> The most egregious statement, however, is that the OS “doesn’t change every year”. You say this right after the iOS 16 update completely changed a large portion of the OS, and in some very user unintuitive ways.
The only thing I noticed after upgrading to iOS 16 was a slightly degraded battery life and performance which was eventually fixed. The rest stayed majorly the same.
Compare that to mayhem that is Android where it’s Material 1 then Material 2 with apps still lagging behind on Material 1 then it’s material You, now it’s material 3 or whatever.
> Not to mention iOS is a glitchy mess even on the latest hardware. Frequently the OS stalls on wakeup, stalls when trying to swap apps, randomly drops wifi when my laptop doesn’t, the keyboard will get stuck on screen, it’ll even skip inputs entirely and freeze for a few seconds.
Haven’t seen any of the behavior that you’re mentioning.
Security updates for 5-7 years.
I can do the same thing with Windows. Microsoft figured this out almost 30 years ago.
Apple just released a security update for the 2013 iPhone 5s earlier this year.
Not a great point, Apple only sells like five devices.
I'd love to be able to run a mainline Linux kernel on a standard handset. It would enable a bunch of goofy things, like using old phones as IP wifi security cameras.
And that’s a problem that needs fixed. Out of any piece of software, the one that connects my hardware to my OS is probably one of the most important.
Although I find it dubious this alone is why Linux historically has failed at desktop. It certainly sucks to deal with, but at least people attempted to use Linux. Personally I would argue that people’s innate fear of change is the bigger problem, in my experience.
(1) Linux didn't fail, the desktop is already a joy to use imho. It is just waiting till it reaches critical mass, then the Year of the Linux Desktop will be nigh.
1. I kid, I kid
> Apple can do it because they lock you into their walled garden
Samsung can do it because they're smart, but Apple does it because they're evil? Why doesn't Apple also have in house expertise?
> Most manufacturers don't want to hire kernel and hardware devs.
Qualcomm seems like a scapegoat here. Google surely has expertise here. Isn't this sorely on Google?
Nobody said Apple are doing it because they're are evil, calm down.
Your parent said Apple can afford to give you longer support because they not only make money when they sell you the phone HW, they also keep making money from your iCloud, iTunes and every other third party subscription or SW you buy on Apple App store. Basically, they double dip and monetize you over the entire period of you owning the device. That's exactly what your parent said. Apple's walled garden affords them enough revenue to keep funding SW updates for your old Apple devices which Android makers can't do.
All the other Android makers, apart from Google, don't make any other money after they sell you the phone HW, since Google is the one earning 30% off Playstore sales, not Samsung, or the others HW makers. Therefore they can't afford to pay teams of SW devs to keep pushing you SW updated for your old phone, so many years after you stopped giving them money, especially since they depend on Quallcomm and other semi vendors giving them up to date drivers, which they won't do for free since semi makers also want to sell newer chips rather than supporting older ones for free.
Google could do like Apple in theory, since they own the whole ecosystem stack apart from the SoC and they do have the cash for it, but they don't want to do it because Google sucks at maintaining anything "old" long-term, especially HW, so they keep doing what Google does best and focus on the new shiny while sunsetting the older shinys.
It's ironic that Samsung offers longer Andorid updates for their flagships S-series, than Google themselves do for the Pixels. That says everying about Google.
Microsoft figured out how to license an OS to third party OEMs and still allow end users to update their hardware without depending on the vendor for literally decades.
Heck I was able to just throw a Windows 7 CD in my old first gen Mac Mini x86 1.66Ghz Core Duo and run it for years after Apple dropped support.
How much more all encompassing can you get than that.
I assure that Apple never went out of its way to release firmware for the 1st gen Intel Mac Mini so it could work with Windows 7.
Windows 7 supported all of my Mac hardware - Bluetooth, gigabit Ethernet, wifi, and it found the IR sensor for the remote. I never tried to use it.
Even before that, I had more obscure x86 hardware - a 486DX/2-66Mhz “DOS Compatibility Card” for my old Mac that came with Windows 3.1 and had a built in Soundblaster card. I was able to our Windows 95 on it without any updated drivers from Apple.
Cleaving the hardware support from the OS support is precisely why the PC ecosystem can sustain much longer support periods, because those are separate concerns. Yes, at some point BIOS feature updates will cease (although usually they will crank out an update for everything going back a decade+ if there is some major vulnerability) but that doesn't mean Microsoft or Canonical or Red Hat can't keep rolling out OS feature updates for another decade on the existing BIOS feature level. And while BIOS security updates are occasionally a thing, the attack surface is much smaller, just like the hypervisor reduces Xbox/PS5 attack surface too.
The problem with Android's model is specifically that it ties these two together, so when the SOC vendor or the phone vendor get bored, the OS updates also cease.
Google has been moving towards changing that, by packaging more and more things as Google Service updates/etc rather than OS updates, but fundamentally the Android model is like your PC not getting Windows 10 because the motherboard vendor doesn't want to package it in a new BIOS image. And that's different.
Sometimes there are genuine feature cliffs, like 32-bit support, or UEFI support, or Windows 11 starting to move towards mandatory TPM. But if the OS vendor is willing to live with the old BIOS feature level, the BIOS vendor or the System Integrator doesn't need to keep packaging the updates for microsoft.
You're cluelessly comparing apples to oranges. ARM smartphones, for better and for worse, are not like the Windows based IBM X86 PCs in any way when it comes to boot process, OS and drivers interactions.
ARM SBCs which is what all smartphones are, are completely different than X86 PCs which have more open standards when it comes to booting and driver support, versus ARM where it's mostly proprietary blobs different from vendor to vendor.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Hardware_Engineering...
I don't think this is particularly relevant. IIRC Qualcomm hardware support includes a handful of binary blobs with restrictive licenses. So if there is a vulnerability in one of those OEMs can't fix it without Qualcomm's support. So it is impossible to promise longer support than Qualcomm will provide. In practice they may be able to support the device longer if they can work around security issues from outside the blob or if no security issues are found, but they can't guarantee it (and without a guarantee there is also less incentive to actually do it).
We are finally seeing Apple, Google and Samsung creating their own SOC with longer software support, hopefully that is enough to disrupt Qualcomm's shitty practices here.
Yes.
Hardware vendors love Open Source. It essentially cedes all control of the market to them.
They spend minimal time/money/effort on software development and updates because surprise, surprise --- it doesn't produce profits, it consumes them. Hardware is where they make all their money.
The only realistic way to get long term software support on Android is from Open Source. This means installing a replacement, 3rd party Open Source ROM. This is the first thing I do when I buy a new phone --- and I won't buy a phone that doesn't have good 3rd party support.
I have a Moto G4 Play from 2016 that gets regular software updates running e/OS. The last update was May 14th. This is my backup phone (I have a backup for everything that is considered "essential").
My primary phone is a Moto One 5G Ace (2021) which also has excellent support from e/OS and it's currently cheap as dirt considering the hardware specs. Only $129 from Amazon with 6GB RAM, 128GB storage, Snapdragon 765 processor, 2 day battery and microSD expansion.
If I accidentally leave it in an Uber or drop it in a toilet, it's sad but no big deal. I just switch to the backup until the replacement arrives. Try that with your $1000 iPhone.
You’re just getting an updated OS.
Facebook isn't going to deploy malware to my phone using Whatsapp, MS isn't going to do that using Outlook, Google isn't going to do that through Google Maps. Everything I used is either by a reputable developer, or open-source from F-Droid.
The only way I'm getting malware is if they manage to: 1) exploit a bug in my up-to-date web browser, 2) bug #1 is used to exploit a bug in the hardware driver. Oh, and of course, since I only visit reputable sites, I'm never exposed to malware. I'd have better odds of winning the lottery.
Which is where most security issues are found and/or mitigated.
Unless a hacker has physical possession of the device, access to these blobs generally runs through the OS.
https://www.techradar.com/reviews/motorola-one-5g-ace-review
It's perfectly adequate for my needs and I haven't found any issues with the e/OS ROM support. But if only the best will do for you, this obviously isn't it.
It wasn't an important feature until I started getting potato quality photos of my children doing first-time-ever events.
Caring about performance in at least one of those categories is not that uncommon and carrying a dedicated device for that isn't crazy. I have used stand alone GPS receivers before even when I had my phone, and deciding that you need a better camera seems not crazy at all.
But I can have a modern high end phone with a good camera. I can’t buy a camera that lets me take a picture, edit the picture on the device, and then the picture automatically gets backed up to iCloud, Google Photos, Microsoft’s One Drive and Amazon Photos and gets synced to all of my other devices.
I don’t have to settle for a low end phone that won’t see any updates after two years where the operating system is created by an adTech company.
There are sets of preferences where it is not possible to satisfy all of them and something must be sacrificed. Some people will choose to sacrifice convenience.
> How's the camera? For me, the camera is more important than anything else on a phone, and thus far I've been stuck with Pixels because, despite the shorter support period (and absolutely mind-bogglingly bad customer service), that software does amazing things with old camera hardware .
> … that software does amazing things with old camera hardware .
This is what a good phone with a good camera can do better than a great camera with mediocre software
A major audiophile won't be happy with a phone. Someone big into 'caching' isn't using Google or Apple maps. A home theatre -phile won't want to watch something good on a phone.
> …that software does amazing things with old camera hardware .
A “better camera” supported by worse software is not what the poster seems to want.
Are you going to carry around your camera with you everywhere?
And as far as audiophiles, it’s been repeatedly shown in blind studies that they can’t tell the difference as often as their snobbery would suggest.
But I made good commissions in college selling overpriced Monster cables to them.
I'm not going to carry it everywhere no, nor did I say that. (Actually I didn't even say it applied to me.) I carry my Panasonic TZ100 when on holiday or otherwise desirous of better-than-phone photos. It fits in my pocket. Not the same one as my phone granted, but nonetheless in a pocket while in a case and straddling a spare battery.
There are audiophiles and audiophiles. A good chunk of them will laugh at Monster cables et al. as much as any of us.
You can appreciate a better DAC than found in most/all phones without descending into gold-plated USB-C charging cables that maintain optimal audio nonsense.
And even that assuming playback of some locally stored file. I'm not sure any of the mainstream streaming Services offer a format/bitrate that it's not possible objectively to do better than.
Or by laws and regulations.
I hope the EU will do something practical in this area, since it seems to be the only entity capable of pushing some useful changes.
Example: the digital markets act, which will force companies like apple to allow for side loading of apps. No us entity even attempted at anything similar as far as i know.
Every single phone shipping with Qualcomm SoCs are at the mercy of Qualcomm. When they want you to buy a new chip, they'll kill support for your current chip, meaning that the manufacturer will have to spend effort making newer Android work with older kernel versions if even possible.
My Sony Xperia Z3 had software support killed by Qualcomm. They refused to provide the binary blobs required to make next Android version work despite the CPU being perfectly capable, as evidenced by the beta builds that only needed a small update from Qualcomm.
What ROM do you use and what level of support does it provide? I was interested in third-party ROMs until I read this part of the GrapheneOS FAQ[1]:
> GrapheneOS can only fully provide security updates to a device provided that the OEM is releasing them. When an OEM is no longer providing security updates, GrapheneOS aims to provide harm reduction releases for devices which only have a minimum of 3 years support. [...] Harm reduction releases do not have complete security patches because it's not possible to provide full security updates for the device without OEM support and they are intended to buy users some limited time to migrate to a supported device.
So, what exactly do people mean when they claim that third-party ROMs provide "long-term" support? Do they just allow older phones to run newer versions of Android, albeit without full security updates?
See here: https://e.foundation/
Do they just allow older phones to run newer versions of Android, albeit without full security updates?
The "full security updates" GrapheneOS references has to do with proprietary device drivers. This is an unrealistic over-reaction in my opinion.
Why abandon perfectly functional hardware based on some unknown possibility that exists with both old and new hardware? Newer, supported devices could easily have these same sort of issues. They really don't know and the OEM does not offer any guarantee or certification otherwise. If the mere possibility of a bug is enough to abandon support, they really shouldn't support anything because this possibility always exists.
Most security issues occur in the OS or can be mitigated in the OS. Without physical possession of the device, access to drivers passes through the OS.
I'm not sure I'm saying it's a total loss, but I feel a bit lost on what to do as well. Do I think Google will support their Tensor chips longer? Not really.
I feel like I still lean towards buying a portable hotspot, a small Android tablet, and calling it good. I already get calls over VOIP and SMS/MMS over jmp.chat so I don't really need a "cellular phone". But also, ugh, those portable hotspots are probably even more of a vendor-ware security nightmare. At least I could upgrade them independently and somewhat treat it as isolated, if I only connect over Wifi? Maybe?
> Without physical possession of the device, access to drivers passes through the OS.
With all due respect, that is not a wise take on modern device security. At all, all, all.
Do you really keep them fully sync'ed? How do you sync photos?
A secret weapon in this regard is an Android open source file manager called Material Files which can create compressed files and speaks SMB. I usually create backups onto a SD memory card and then periodically copy these to local off device storage using wifi.
Apple and Google make money off you for as long as you use your phone. Qualcomm only makes money when you buy it. Thus, Qualcomm has little incentive to maintain old chips for long. Not because they are evil, that would be another conversation, but because they only make money off newly sold phones.
(Which is also nice for long term support.)
Essentially the same way UEFI secure boot works in the PC world.
You’re telling the device hardware “it’s only ok to run software that’s been signed with the private key that matches this public key”, so that once you’ve done that, you can have confidence that the operating system hasn’t been modified in future by anyone other than the original vendor (as only they have the private key).
This is a marketing phrase that twists a negative into a positive. Its better to use more objective terms. Gardens give you a perceptions of flowers and fruits.
What is that called, an ironic phrase?
I would recommend against Google phones, while 'they just work', they have been forcing users via dark patterns to use their services more and more. Its quite easy to get stuck with a google drive monthly fee or use their Maps app which is full of ads.
What are you on about? Every version of iOS I've used the past 11 years, on every iPhone I've used, has been a buttery smooth experience compared to most (not all; most) things Android, and on top of that I've gotten over 5 years of OS/security updates for each model which is practically unheard of with Android OEMs.
Bezos got his nudes leaked and Jamal Khashoggi was killed.
Of course it matters. Whether you get 6 months, 1 year, or 5 years of updates is a huge deal. Their patches' timing don't differ from that of other vendors: most vulnerabilities are fixed before disclosure, few are exploitable, even fewer are found in the wild.
>"Bezos got his nudes leaked and Jamal Khashoggi was killed."
What stupid, arrogant and inflammatory rhetoric, suggesting that the reason someone died was because of their personal choice of an iPhone instead of an Android phone. Dumb toad.
Nothing ever leaned towards there actually being an iCloud system breach. Everything points to weak guessable passwords and a lack of 2FA being the common vector for these leaks, because if there were a system breach there would have been far more victims and far higher value/content besides celebrities and their private nudes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_Project_(investigation...
This wasnt an iCloud hack, this was Pegasus exploiting 0 click.
Corporations invest a significant amount of effort and resources into building their brand image and cultivating a loyal customer base. Through clever marketing techniques, they create narratives and associations that resonate with individuals on a personal level. These strategies aim to evoke emotions and forge a sense of identity tied to the corporation's values, products, or services.
By fostering this emotional bond, corporations hope to maintain customer loyalty and influence consumer behavior. They want you to feel personally connected to their success, so when negative events like a security leak occur, it's natural to feel disappointed or upset.
However, it's important to keep in mind that this emotional attachment is often a result of marketing and manipulation rather than a genuine reflection of the company's character or actions. Corporations are primarily profit-driven entities, and their marketing efforts are designed to maximize their bottom line.
In moments like this, it can be helpful to take a step back and evaluate the situation from a more objective perspective. Consider the actions and decisions of the corporation separate from your personal attachment. It's possible that the security leak was a result of internal shortcomings or external factors beyond the company's control.
While it's understandable to feel emotional about such events, it's also essential to remember that the corporation is not an extension of your identity. Your values, beliefs, and self-worth should not be solely determined by your association with any particular corporation. Instead, focus on evaluating the situation critically, demanding accountability, and considering alternative options that align with your values and needs.
By recognizing the influence of marketing and manipulation, you can maintain a healthier perspective, make more informed choices, and develop a more balanced relationship with corporations and brands.
if you want the _pure_ android experience, aosp support for pixel hardware has traditionally been very good. (google posts signed binary blobs for google hardware and with the move to google silicon those blobs have been getting smaller or may be completely eliminated now)
This answer is painfully obvious and posts like OP's shouldn't be allowed on Hacker News.
The last time I had a Google phone was the 2012 Nexus, and I said never again. It had absolutely trash speakers and microphone. I couldn't be talking to someone when it was windy, I couldn't hear them. And when I tried recording a video at a sports stadium, the audio was completely distorted from the noise because the mic couldn't keep up with the noise.
Is the Pixel a good choice for people who spend the majority of their time on the road and not in a quiet office or home?
Overall 9/10 though! I hear the pixel 7 has a better modem
There is the Google Pixel. But it has limited updates and proprietary software for things like the camera. That camera is really nice though and it's as close as the Android experience Google intended to ship because this basically is Google's version of Android. I have the Pixel 6 and it's fine.
Nokia stays close to that but ships their own camera app. It too has limited updates that run out after a few years. Other than the camera software, it's basically "stock android". I'm not sure there even is a stock version for the camera at this point. There are plenty of alternative camera apps though. I always had a weak spot for open camera, which is nice. My previous phone was a Nokia 7 plus. The camera was not great but otherwise a fine phone.
The fairphone is probably the closest to what you want. But you are buying older hardware and at a premium. And fairphone OS is based on an older version of Android and also limited in time for updates. The updates run out at some point though they are pretty good at keeping the security patches going. Repairability is great though.
In short, long term support is hard to get. No-one seems to be willing/capable of doing that. At best you have phones that become unsupported at some point but at least allow you to install alternative firmware (without any promises or support).
Their track record is also good I would say. Fairphone 2 started with Android 5 and it currently offered Android 10 upgrade.
https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/997918043739...
Recently switched from FairphoneOS (the stripped, bloatfree, google-free Android) back to stock Android¹
Its updates are fast, steady and consistently good (and improving). The FP1 is ten years old, and still works (though android there is EOL and old, and spare parts no longer available), my FP2 and an FP3 work fine, I can still get parts and Android isn't too old. The hardware is slow, and old, though (e.g. no 5G, power hungry BT, puny camera by current standards). The FP4 is top notch. Spare parts are cheap (e.g. Replaceable battery only €29, new screen only €80), android 12 good enough. But it does have stuff like Google Meet or TV that I would like to remove but cannot.
¹I'm diabetic. Monitoring and Pump control is moving from dedicated electronics to native apps. And they often require Google Android, cannot or will not run on degoogled android. Same for banking and payment apps.
The only reason I sold my FP4 and went back to samsung and their android experience was that everybod kept complaininh about mic quality during calls and I couldn't seem to fix it. Seemed like others also had similar issues
It's based on a LineageOS, but they already have added all the apps and services to use it seamlessly.
I'm pragmatic though, I think Googles services (some, certainly not all) are just so good that I think paying with my data is OK. Like Google Maps. Even though I contribute to OSM, I think all the OSM apps range from "completely suck" to "fancy, but not on par".
I think find the camera poor though. It takes passable pictures in good conditions. Do you have a better camera app that does a better job?
I use both android stock photo app and openphoto (more to tweak).
I think the pictures are good. I'm also old-school in that I think composition, focus, cutout, subject matters far more than pixel quality.
My wife, also FP4 user, sold her canon DSLR 800 (I think?), used for product images in her webshops, because the FP4 made pictures that were just as good or better, without all the hassle.
released in september 2019
Fairphone 3 users despite still having "support" until next year are over a year behind Qualcomm and run the end of life Linux 4.9 kernel.
It seems to be a common thread with interesting phones… back when there was still some buzz around Sailfish you couldn’t get a device running that in NA either, which may have contributed to that project fizzling. There’s a lot of mobile devs with disposable income you’re opting out of by not selling in North America.
I'm not in this specific industry, but there are some generic trends with the USA
There could be a lot of non tariff trade barriers if you go to the USA.
And you get exposed to a lot of laws, like having to give up all of your data to uncle Sam, having to run specific programs in the company on top of what the EU wants you to do, and be exposed to the maybe not so independent DOJ.
Negociations for industrial products also seem to attract ears at the homeland security, because it's a national security risk when you sell cheaper than American companies.
Contracts are trickiest to write, because justice is based on what you write in the contract, and century of precedents (contracts in mainland Europe are much thinner because there are laws)
And nobody would want to have to report women who get an abortion out of state, nor to dispute the requests, nor to run several legal programs when you're a smallish company, nor to risk having your board held up in jail until you sell to GE (then charges can be dropped).
Also, there is the Buy American act, so you can't just sell in bulk to the government.
European car manufacturers no longer sell in NA, because meeting the weird standards would cost more than they would do by selling their little cars.
Fresh food like cheeses were sometimes suddenly bumped back to Europe.
Overall, if you're a small company, you avoid the USA to not be crushed.
Very occasionally I need to bounce the cellular connection, I suspect because I land on an unsupported band/channel. Otherwise LineageOS runs on it like a charm.
Any suggestions?
I disagree. It overprocesses a lot and it's the worst on people's faces (very unnatural colors).
Other phone makers do that as well with various trade-offs. Samsung is better for portraits, but struggles in other places.
I miss my Huawei Mate 20 Pro, somehow it seems to me that today's flagships are still taking worse SOOC pictures than it.
I like Android though because compared to others I know with iPhones, there seems to be more ways to customize Android. Termux is one obvious example -- with a BT keyboard, feels like a pocket Linux device. I also use a different launcher as well as different browser and search engine.
It gets as many updates as other Android phones, and there is no blotware whatsoever. Not sure what your comments here are about the camera app. It's just an improved version to use the features of the pixel camera.
People seem to forget how ugly it was in the Samsung S5 times...
Its only for fast moving stuff IMO.
The issue isn't bloat - the issue is spyware.
Their phones are really solid but they do lag on OS updates, and their cameras are never good.
Cameras are always sub-par (partner has pixels, and I'm light years behind), although the latest is the least bad in comparison with her current phone.
Current one has survived most of me building a home extension with little damage...previous one developed an intermittent screen touch issue, but only after I dropped it 12 feet onto a concrete floor,so I can't complain on reliability either.
My brain went right to old Nokia phones and I thinking "Thank fuck it was a Motorola, back in the day you would have to had the foundations checked over if it had been an Nokia"
But yeah, Always been happy with Motorola G phones (bar the cvamera, but I'm not really a photo person anyway), I still have an old 2014 Moto G to test apps on old devices/Android.
E.g. video on my moto would always be blurry due to bad de-noising settings used by stock software. mcpro24fps allowed me to take dramatically better videos. The difference was HUGE.
Same with photos. Custom gcam roms, after a long time of trying different ones and tweaking, gave me dramatically higher quality photos. Again, night and day difference.
So the hardware is fine; they shoot themselves in the foot with the software.
Tried loads of GCam versions, the one that worked best was LMC8.4R8. Camera and Night Sight work amazingly well, and all 3 cameras are supported.
For videos however I had to use mcpro24fps. I don't recall the details now, but basically videos from stock camera app looked far blurrier than the photos, suggesting a software issue. It turned out to be some denoising feature that is on by default with no option to switch it off. You can also try it out by installing Open Camera, enabling Camera2 API and disabling Noise Reduction in Processing settings.
Unfortunately, I have not found a way to record slow-motion (high-fps) videos without the noise-reduction blur.
Another thing about the Moto G phones is that they seem to often come with the compass uncalibrated to the point of being useless. Here are some instructions: https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/moto-g31/Compass-application-fo...
So in other words, great hardware at an amazing price let down by lousy software.
I wonder if there's an app that can do this now on any phone, but I hadn't thought to look until now.
On the non Moto phone I tried replicating it with Tasker. It worked... Sometimes. But it was a really cheap random Redmi model so that might have been the issue, more than the app itself.
It's nearly like shaking and uses the gyros because there's no touch interface there.
One slight warning, and I'm not even sure if it's completely true, but my G8+ is only a few years old and it has slowed to an absolute crawl. My current understanding is that this is because the flash storage is running out of writes and slowing down. If true, it means they used a sub-standard part with an unacceptably short lifespan.
Camera's definitely terrible, but I don't really use my phone camera all that much. Biggest advantage, IMO, is the <$150 price tag. It means when I trip and toss my phone into traffic, or forget to take my phone out of my pocket when going snorkeling, or drop my phone off the balcony of my apartment, I can just order a new one on Amazon, swap the SIM, and carry on with my life.
I've used custom ROMs for years, but never used Graphene.
My current phone is a Xiaomi Mi9T. With a custom ROM, to properly make use of the camera you need to flash a magisk module. Otherwise you are stuck with the stock android camera app which doesn't perform nearly as well.
This phone is on its last legs, the screen was smashed so I had to replace it with a cheaper LCD, which has affected battery life and sometimes is unresponsive.
Thinking about getting a used Pixel 6 and giving Graphene a go.
> Google Camera can take full advantage of the available cameras and image processing hardware as it can on the stock OS and does not require GSF or sandboxed Google Play on GrapheneOS. Direct TPU and GXP access by Google apps including Google Camera is controlled by a toggle added by GrapheneOS and doesn't provide them with any additional access to data. The toggle exists for attack surface reduction. Every app can use the TPU and GXP via standard APIs including the Android Neural Networks API and Camera2 API regardless.
> We aim to reduce the benefits of Google Camera compared to GrapheneOS Camera over time, especially on Pixels. Many features of Google Camera will end up being available for GrapheneOS Camera in the next year or so via CameraX extensions including more aggressive HDR+, Night Sight and Portrait. Video features such as slow motion and time lapse are likely further away than within the next year. These video features could potentially be provided via CameraX vendor extensions or could be implemented via our own post-processing of the video output. Panorama, Photo Sphere, Astrophotography, Motion Photos, Frequent Faces, Dual Exposure Controls, Google Lens, etc. aren't on the roadmap for GrapheneOS Camera. Video frame rate configuration and H.265 support should be available for GrapheneOS Camera in the near future via CameraX improvements along with DNG (RAW) support in the further future.
All the info: https://grapheneos.org/usage#camera
Pure Android experience with no bloatware, 2 full days of battery with moderate usage, a decent screen, fast, confortable to use, and also was cheap.
Nowadays most Android phones have plenty of bloat and lack some specifications unless you spend some money. It's sad how a cheap phone that were usable was €150 to €200 and now the bracket is between €300 and €350.
The best options are:
- Google Pixel
- Motorola
- Nokia
I ended up with a Google Pixel 7. The Motorola Edge 40 was a close contender, but I ended up axing it from the list due to the curved screen edge. My selection criteria were: cleanest Android possible; latest Android version; long-term support; wireless charging; decent IP rating.
My previous phones were a Moto G2 and Nokia 6.1, for comparison. The first one replaced due to the charging port dying and running out of storage, the second one having its screen destroyed by dropping it on a tile floor.
Android manufacturers suck in terms of long term support.
Samsung offers the longest support, but their phones are full of bloat. and they recently passed some ToC updates that prevent you from suing them which I find a super anti-consumer move.
If you can compromise on long term support and don’t care much about photos, the Asus Zenfone 10 is probably your best bet
https://grapheneos.org/faq#recommended-devices
Note that the particular device unit (not model) must have an unlockable bootloader (so, probably not a unit that was solid by a carrier that disables this):
You might want to check this site out to see if your bank app works though: https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compa...
Even if your app isn't listed there, there's still a chance that it'll work. Mine isn't listed on that site, but it still works with no issues.
(Added bonus: you can shed even more bloat by installing Graphene OS, something that requires a Pixel at the moment.)
https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/4457705?hl=en#z...
It's also trivial to install thanks to their web installer.
Best buy trip to working grapheneOS took under an hour.
The negative is the really really awful camera.
I understand that the latest Android systems require an account to initialize the device - they have disabled the "Skip" [connection to the Internet] button when you first turn them on.
For example, it makes it easier to disable the search on the home screen, and many other tweaks. I also like being able to hide apps from the list of all apps, but they are still accessible using the search. It helps make the bloatware less visible (ex: I don't use the Youtube app, or most other pre-installed apps).
I use a Pixel 6 with very few features from Google, and happy with it. Long-term support is the only issue, although they do offer 5 years for security updates, which is better than previous Google models.
I've not seen any. There are growing collections of debloat scripts that use adb and do not require rooting the phone but it's hit and miss per model as to completeness and not breaking the OS startup. Some vendors lock down their bloat so that rooting is required and in my opinion those should get returned / refunded and the product reviews on sites such as Amazon should warn others rather than rooting the phone. I've returned a few. My uleFone had the least cruft on it and the least lockdown but still uses upwards of 4GB ram after my first pass so I still have a long way to go.
It's the only smartphone assembled in Germany so not sure if its available where you live.
for my mother i installed /e/OS myself, but if she had to get a new phone while i am not around i'd point here to that website and tell her to get one of those.
/e/OS is free of bloat, yet easy to use.
It looks good, just a tiny bit bulky.
Not sure on how it will do long term.
My OnePlus has been serving me well for more than 3 years now.
Haven't they been around long enough now to answer that?
I have a 9 pro. Has a single uninstallable app (OP store) and battery life is over a day.
But the headphone jack socket is basically unusable, because it is so worn, and I have similar issues with the USB-C socket, although that also depends on the cable.
Not sure what I'm gonna replace it with eventually, I'd just have a new battery if it was replaceable...
The 7a has poorer battery life than the 6a/7 so its a poorer choice for my personal use case but ymmv. Otherwise the 6a runs about 3 days for me (got 4 out of it initially but I use my phone very little) or 2 days when driving and needing more usage out of it.
Meaning: every time you screw up (or get a new phone) you have to start all over, without the ability to restore a backup.
This can easily take many days worth of man-hours.
Source: I've tried.
The backup problem is a notorious problem with any Android phone, I don't understand what it has to do with custom ROMs.
If I don't feel confident I'll be able to get a custom ROM working on my phone I'll have 2nd thoughts about erasing the original ROM
As for backup: stock backup facilities (adb backup/restore) aren't exactly the best thing for sure, (rip Titanium Backup, Seedvault isn't even remotely there), and TWRP is broken on most of devices with modern encryption support (specifically, on Pixels). Coincidentally, Mediatek SoC based devices are the 'best' when talking about backup (as in: you can dump and clone all partitions through a built-in service mode [1]).
0. https://sourceforge.net/projects/andyyan-gsi/files/ 1. https://github.com/bkerler/mtkclient
> there's no way to take full backups on Android phone, rooted or not
Er, no? On the contrary, root is exactly how you get full backups on Android - with, I grant, the exception of whatever Android calls their secure element / TPM, which I've only ever seen affect 2FA apps.
I know in terms of privacy, Google is worse due to built in telemetry (and cloud based chromeos). If there is no security benefit either, then there doesn’t seem to be a major reason to prefer Google’s products over apple’s. Pixels aren’t much cheaper either (particularly considering the shorter support period).
A pixel with grapheneOS, calyxOS or /e/OS would be the next best thing.
They come without really any bloat, but most models are also well supported by LineageOS, GrapheneOS or others if you wanted to get more privacy.
My Pixel 5 is a perfect phone. Stable (125+ days uptime a few times), fast, no Samsung style bloat.
Or of course a Pixel, though if you don't use all of Google's stuff you might consider they come with more 'pre-installed bloatware'. They'll also probably always be supported by Lineage, so you could install that when official updates dry up, or just from day one to avoid 'bloat'.
My banking apps work fine, surprisingly. And some Google (Gmail, Phone, and Fi) apps too, surprisingly, but not all (eg Meet, Messages, and Fit)
I do have a local payment app, which would be nice to not lose, but it's not a hard requirement. The number of apps I use these days are surprisingly low.
You can load at least a few different alternative operating system, but finding one that will give me at the very least Signal is proving difficult.
No Android phone is going to give you the same level of long-term support. iPhones have zero bloatware and you can uninstall first party applications. You’ll get OS releases the day they come out regardless of your phone model.
If you are a nobody, there isn't a need to pay for the "latest and greatest". Security updates are a meme and just a way to add more bloat. Don't download apk's from unknown sources, use an adblocker and that's 99% of all attack vectors closed.
That only leaves pre-installed bloatware, a legitimate issue that can be solved with a few steps. The phone doesn't matter but get something android 10 or higher, their selective permissions are nice but you can go as low as android 6 without too many issues. But you might have app compatibility problems.
During phone setup, don't immediately connect to the internet.
If you can uninstall the apps do that. Otherwise, force stop and clear data of every installed app that you don't think you will ever use. As long as the apps don't open or take up ram or cpu cycles then the phone is functionally 'bloat free'
Remove all of the permissions that don't make sense. Your calendar doesn't need access to your microphone or even contacts.
Turn off all settings that even hint at telemetry including locations.
Once this is done, you can connect to the internet. Download fdroid through the browser and look for a local VPN that is capable of blocking access to apps and has a decent permissions menu. Get that configured and then you are good to go. The local vpn will almost certainly break things the first time you use it. But you can just tweak it and as long as you aren't installing any new apps very often you won't have any problems. Stick with open source apps as much as you can.
And only update Apps when they break or if there is a feature you really want. Don't actually do anything important on your phone like banking but if you have a browser with adblock then that's fine but keep it minimal.
I like this method because it's phone agnostic. I don't have to settle for a pixel or another phone that I need to get root on. If this sounds like too much and you don't want to flash a new OS, then just get an iphone.
What. Are you serious? You mean in general or on certain brands for example?
For computers, it depends but as long as you're not downloading sketchy shit and have an adblocker then you're fine.
And once again, all of this applies as long as you're a nobody, which is at least 70% of the population. Those who don't work in government, medical, aren't businesses etc.