this post was submitted on 10 May 2024
1 points (100.0% liked)

Privacy

31921 readers
683 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Related communities

Chat rooms

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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.

top 4 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

I managed to degoogle stock ROM, as I wanted to have the glyphs available (I feel like I'm in a minority of users that find them useful as well as just cool).

I did have the phone enter crash dump and at points had no ROM or recovery and it took a while as I was endlessly searching tools available.

I'm more than happy to share what I did?

Word of warning is you need quite a few tools, apps and packages, but they have source code available.

I'm not a mobile developer but going through the tools they are regarded well in the developer community, or scanning the code myself didn't raise an alarms.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

if you want to degoogle the only way to run some apps without unprivileged code (GMS/microG) is to use grapheneos & its sandbox compatibility layer. this is unfortunately only available on the pixels.

I also worry you won't be able to use some of the customization options that the nothing phone 2 offers with its hardware when using a custom ROM. if thats something u care about.

I have the pixel 7a & have had essentialy no issues with anything for what that's worth.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Just be aware that everyone has a different idea of how much privacy they need and who/what from. Whilst it is absolutely true that there are more private custom ROMs available, that does not necessarily mean that /e/ is universally "bad for privacy". Depending on the extent to which you are attempting to deGoogle your life, it may be good enough.