this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2023
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Android

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DROID DOES

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Everyone has their preferences, I would love to hear why you guys prefer using Android!

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If you use any app other than what Apple provides, you become a second class citizen on your own phone.

Third party apps simply don't integrate with iOS nicely unless Apple allows it. Even though you can choose a web browser, it has to use Safari's underlying code base.

I'm on a Pixel 7. A lot of people say it's like Google's iPhone, but I can use Firefox as my browser natively. Adblocking actually works, too. I can choose any app as a default for whatever. Lots of FOSS! Google doesn't own my Pixel the same way Apple owns the iPhone.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

On a pixel phone you can even install a google free OS like graphene (that's what I did)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Hi. I've heard quite a few people do this but never managed to ask why. So, taking the opportunity to ask.

What I mean is, if the large part of the phone is about the software experience and software optimisation (and the hardware in itself is nowhere near cutting edge) what's the upside of installing a non-google OS on it?

Perhaps I'll try it someday. For today, just curious. If you could shed some light on it. Thank you!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Sorry for the late reply, still getting used to lemmy and missed the notification.

I'm probably in the minority but I didn't actually do it to completely de-google. I still have some Google services installed, they are sandboxed and limited to what I actively want though.

My main reason was removing the insane bloat that comes with modern phones. Think Facebook/Google and vendor specific apps being preinstalled without the ability to remove, forced google search bar on the home screen etc.. Now I have a pretty clean, fairly safe, OS which behaves almost exactly like a normal phone.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Also important to remember on GrapheneOS is that your google play services are

  1. Optional
  2. Sandboxed Meaning even if you need google play, it's a more private experience than stock android. I personally use a separate user profile for apps that require google play services.
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Some people want to get away from Google services and tracking; having a non-Google OS can allow for that. 🙂