(Please when answering, assume I’m not a beginner at privacy/programming :) I know where the good stuff at)
First off, shameful confession: I’m writing this on a dying yellow iPhone XR I bought second-hand three years ago (189€). I absolutely love the look of it: the screen, build quality, are all amazing. The only problem was the locked ecosystem (sideloading Spotify/Torrent client was sooo hard).
I saw the android phone of my mother dying really fast. She currently has a Xiaomi phone that’s ridiculously big for my hands, there’s advertisements in the stocks apps (?!!), the UX is janky and everything. It looks like a bloat, privacy nightmare.
So… because it’s impossible to find a jailbreakable phone nowadays I need to buy an android and ideally I would want:
- Good screen (vivid colors)
- Good build quality (not shitty plastic)
- Don’t care about the camera (I don’t want those ridiculously big cameras they make nowadays)
- Would want to install either GrapheneOS/LineageOS
The things that scare me off:
- I really need my bank app and I need it updated so I have to use Google Play Services but I don’t want it to plague my phone with privacy bullshit (I want to be degoogled)
The things that excite me:
- Customization possibilities
- Learning experience
- Even more privacy than a de-googled IOS phone :)
- F-Droid!! (Maybe I’ll find a beautiful IRC client)
- More choices for Mastodon & Lemmy clients
- Freedom of free software.
- client for open-source git providers :)
But to get all of that, I don’t want Google, I need shitty apps (non-free software) I have to install:
- Instagram (for non-technical friends)
- GitHub (job & open-source)
- No-Ad Modded Spotify from Balatan
- Discord (gamer friends)
- Telegram (cryptobros friends)
- Steam (because I still love gaming)
Any advices? Phone ideas? I’m so lost in this ocean of choice (freedom ✨)
My current phone:
I would just add a +1 for Sony Xperia phones with LineageOS support (do check). They offer OLED panels, a 3.5mm headphone jack, & microSD card—with the last two once being standard now almost impossible to find despite their usefulness.
As for services, many of them can be accessed thru a browser. There are enough Firefox forks out there that you could stay authenticated with these grimy, untrustworthy apps & another fork with your typical web browsing.
That said some of this could be given up to an extent. If you have a microSD slot or carry a separate DAP, there shouldn’t be much need for Spotify where an offline library is quicker, saves data, & can offer higher bitrates (obv no ads too). Microsoft GitHub is not useful on a phone since no one codes on a phone & you can subscribe to the things you need either their Atom feeds or via email & all of your personal code should be living somewhere off the proprietary platform—especially if you want to help access to contributions since it is blocked for US sactions in some regions & they bow out to capitalist interests (see youtube-dl, or Switch emulators, etc.), while requiring your contributors give up their privacy as there is no way to report bugs or send patches without an account. And the chat options, depending on the situation you should see if you can get folks to consider your privacy too (else why on this sub?) & switch to something decentralized & with E2EE the default for DMs & optional for groups—XMPP is a great default choice, Mumble was built for games, but there are other options. Need is a strong word, & it might take a few years, but eventually, hopefully you can ween yourself & help friends get off these platforms as it is bad for them too, but you are not going to get much privacy if the corporations & governments can still read all your chats.