this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2024
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DeGoogle Yourself
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You can degoogle some phones without root, assuming they have support from a good custom ROM (the classic example being GrapheneOS on a Pixel). You'll need to look up what ROMs are available for your particular phone, and if you're lucky then there'll be a good one which doesn't require too much hackery to install.
If you're unlucky and there's nothing for that device then you probably can't fully de-google it, but you can still improve the situation by avoiding any Google apps and services. This could be by using adb as you suggest, or by managing the network as the other comment suggests, or just by using alternatives.
It all really depends on your threat model and whether or not it's worth buying a new device just for this!
Installing a custom ROM on that phone is not much less hackery than rooting it + there are no trustworthy options because the model is really really rare and it has an MTK
Then I guess I should reinstall everything and use the first phone as the secure one
Nah buying a new device is a very big deal
Ah bad luck, yeah if the first phone has better support for custom ROMs then that does sound like the better option. Just make sure you can get everything critical works on the MTK phone before you start tinkering with the other one just in case it goes wrong!
It's a real shame phones (and ARM devices in general, I think) are so locked down that they just become ewaste if someone hasn't done the work to support custom ROMs.
Agreed. Fortunately the first phone has magnificent custom ROM support