I wanted to degoogle since Google has been most annoying so far with S21FE. Was thinking of getting Pixel 8a but due to mixed reivews I was looking for other phones. Thoughts on this? Would be also nice if I can get some opinions from people who have the phone as well.

  • GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml
    151·
    6 months ago

    Afaik /e/OS isn’t completely Google-free. It just uses some anonymization stuff to make Google services a bit less invasive and I think it has proprietary software too. For a complete Google-free experience you probably want something like LineageOS or GrapheneOS

    • lemmyreader@lemmy.mlEnglish
      14·
      6 months ago

      /e/OS is based on LineageOS with microG. They did make a choice for Magic Earth as maps app which is not open source. For “normies” /e/OS seems a fine choice to me to De-Google.

    • jinwk00@lemm.eeOPEnglish
      31·
      6 months ago

      Aw shucks, the porter moved on from Lineage to develop more on e/os

      Any alternative custom ROMs that are generally considered complete Google-free other than those 2?

      • Ilandar@aussie.zone
        3·
        6 months ago

        Here’s a comparison of the main ones. They are all good projects in their own right so take a look at their features and which phones they support. Some are focused more on hardcore security and privacy, while others are more casual in their implementation. Some only support Google Pixels while others support a pretty wide range of new and old devices.

      • lemmyreader@lemmy.mlEnglish
        2·
        6 months ago

        Have other comments made you dislike /e/OS ? microG, which /e/OS uses is not using Google but a replacement for the Google Play framework if you would for example need location feature for some of your apps.

      • GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml
        2·
        6 months ago

        Idk about completely Google-free ones. Most of vanilla ROMs (such as crDroid, ArrowOS, CherishOS etc) do have some pre-included fixes for Google apps because most of the users flash them and I think they use the proprietary version of Monet theming (there are 2 versions of it). Usually LineageOS is what you go for if you want a completely vanilla ROM. I heard they’re considering adding some fixes for Gapps too but I don’t think it’s going to be anything bad or proprietary

        • jinwk00@lemm.eeOPEnglish
          1·
          6 months ago

          Should I be concerned if I am not going to be installing Google Apps (or gapps) or microG?

          • GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml
            2·
            6 months ago

            Depends on the exact ROM (I think they’re only really tested with Gapps) but usually you should be fine. It might be relatively easy to identify a user of ROMs like this because of mismatching device fingerprints (done to unlock Pixel features such as unlimited Google Photos storage and high FPS limit in games) though