Samsung has great hardware, but their version of android is getting more and more bloated. And android itself is moving in a direction reminiscent of how I felt about Windows after win7.
Some 20 years ago I used Cyanogenmod on a Samsung phone, and that worked great, but it seems to no longer be active.
I see many alternatives, such as graphene, lineage, et.al… what are the pros and cons of each? For one I see that GrapheneOS only supports the pixel.
Note: I’m not 100% ready to deegoogle entirely, so if possible I would like to keep some features related to Google Play and its services.
I’d love an actual linux phone again; I bought a Neo FreeRunner early 2008, and while the tech wasn’t very mature at that point, it was my daily use phone for a while.
And no, I’m not buying a fucking iPhone. Made that mistake in 2009.
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As a fellow former CyanogenMod user, I run GrapheneOS. I like that it gives me the most control over my hardware, of any of the Android variants I have tried.
Edit: I buy phones specifically looking for GrapheneOS support, now. But for non-pixel phones, I have found LineageOS to be fine.
I guess I’ll keep my Android phone for whatever I need big corpo for (bank app, whatsapp every1 uses, 2FA), and get a GrapheneOS-able phone for the rest.
I’m currently leaning towards graphene, as my current phone will have to be replaced at some point. Even if I’m not ready to 100% degoogle, I am taking steps to avoid things that require Big Corpo Mobile OS. For example, any Norwegian knows about BankID… it’s basically a very convenient 2fa app for anything that requires a personal login such as bank, taxes, Healthcare, etc. While the app itself is pretty good, they have effectively tied themselves to apple and Google, and it probably won’t work on any of the alternatives.
This June I’m going back to the OTP Keychain dongle that I used a decade ago.
It’s obvious that banks want to move users away from it for practicalreasons, but they do concede that not everyone can rely on an app on a smartphone, so my excuse of “I work on ships and don’t always have wifi or cell coverage available” was good enough.
You can go with GrapheneOS. Currently, it’s only Pixels supported. GOS and Motorola have a partnership and GOS on a Moto should be available in 2027.
I installed GrapheneOS on a Pixel for my dad along with Sandboxed Google Services so I know you don’t have to fully degoogle with GOS. The good thing with this setup is Google only gets the info you allow it to have.
Sandboxed GS can also be installed in a second user profile.
There are many alternatives. None of them are “good” yet.
Nothing is perfect.
But every alternate Android ROM I have tried has given me a dramatic speed boost over what shipped with the phone.
I guess there are other definitions of “good”, haha.
For me good==fast, and GrapheneOS is the most responsive phone OS I have used, and therefore the best.
Ah yeah I wasn’t considering graphene OS an android alternative when I made that answer because it’s made with android. Graphene is fantastic, all things considered.
All those alternatives are Android, but mainly degoogled, lots are pretty good, I like CrDroid on my Poco F3, this is a very nice ROM, Graphene, Lineage, etc are all fine.
Main problem is mainly a lot of banking apps will not work, oh yes you can install Magisk, SuperSU, Zygist, SusFS, keybox, Mask Integrity, Autofix, TEE hacking, spoof a lot of things, etc and BANG! your bank app or Google Wallet will work and you can tap to pay with NFC! It will work 2 or 3 weeks until a google update/bank app update, and you re-spend countless hours on XDA or Telegram to find how to fix this. Until next time.
If you don’t tap-to-pay or your bank app does not mind running on an insecure OS, everything else is perfect in all those ROMs, pick one.
If you want a real alternative, you have the Apple world but you already made the mistake before 😜, or Ubuntu Touch maybe.
Great point about bank apps.
Thankfully I never got in the habit of tap to pay with my phone.
The amount of data that bank apps want to slurp up in the name of “security” makes me uncomfortable, anyway.
I just bank via web browser, today.
