I got a new smartphone (Motorola) because my older one crashed .
I would have preferred to get a dumbphone but the prices for those are almost the same as the entry level smartphones nowadays. I was a Samsung fan for 15+ years and owned just 3 androids in this time untill well after their End of Life.
First startup
Endless configuration
Agree to terms, bla blabla, setup this, accept that. It seems you can’t simply use a phone without selling all your data
The Bloatware Preinstalled Apps
The system has preinstalled apps, especially the Yet after you go through the initial config motorola decided to install 10-20 more apps, including games, linkedin, temu (the china cancer, spyware, pollution, crapware)
What do we do in this case? Uninstall them all.. And disable motorola’s app manager. (You can’t uninstall that one)
The games
The games are simple boring 2d ones.. which you can easily install on linux or play in a browser as a standalone game. All of them require you to accept their freakin ToS and Privacy. WHY THE HECK DO I NEED A TOS FOR A SIMPLE TETRIS GAME OR A 5 INA ROW!!
So, I uninstalled them all.
F-Droid alternative to App Store
F-Droid is an alternative app store to Google Appstore. It features open source software only. You could say that the security model is higher, although if you’re paranoid about your security you can discuss about the security model. In reality, you should build your own APK’s from the source, but who does that?
Well, even if you try to install F-Droid you’ll get meeted by an error that it’s unsafe, even after allowing it, and you have to manually sip through the settings and
So to get rid of the google apps which sell my data I immediately started researching alternative f-droid software and there are plenty.
The funny thing is that some require a plethora of permissions so I go for the minimal ones, even if they lack some features.
Apps I installed.
I ended up with installing:
- Firefox with ublock
- SyncThing Fork - This is very slow from Android to Linux, don’t know why, but between 2 linux devices it flies like a rocket even on wifi.
- Goguma IRC
- DataBag -
- Thunderbird - I use it on linux so I should give it a try on android, don’t want to use gmail
- Fossify file manager - Again, don’t want the default google drive
- Fossify music
- fossify gallery
Sure, There are probably better apps out there.. who cares at the moment.. i just use my phone to research info, take notes, take pictures.. and not become an addigt