I hope this is not considered a low-effort post, but I wanted to ask if using stock Android without signing in to your Google account/ using Play Store is worth it. It should be more private, right? I’m planning on buying the cheapest Samsung phone there is (probably the A14). I currently have a stock Android Oneplus phone. I bought it before I had my “privacy epiphany”. I knew that you shouldn’t use Huawei phones as those “definitely” were spying on you; I read that Oneplus phones are safe because they use Western hardware, but they can still gather your data via the software, right? But I digress.
The reason I’m planning on buying a cheap (Samsung) phone is because I realized I don’t need a fancy phone (for me “fancy” is a 400 local currency mid-ranger). I considered getting a dumb phone as they are definitely private, but the utter lack of features is depressing. The main reason is I can’t give up the camera. So I’m willing to go with the cheapest smartphone, because it’s still miles better than the best dumb phone.
As I understand it, most cheap phones are not supported by GrapheneOS and besides I’m worried I might brick the phone. I’m willing to use APKs (from official sources and I only need a few apps). To return to my question, is stock Android without a Google account/ Play Store better than using an account/ Play Store?
EDIT: Thanks all for the useful replies. I’m still not sure what I’ll end up doing or what my current financial situation will allow me to do, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be moving away from Google anyway. Thanks again!
I bought a refurbished Pixel 4 over a year ago and am super happy with it. CalyxOS is running smoothly and the camera is amazing (all my friends are jealous!) GrapheneOS would be overkill for me though, CalyxOS feels like a good compromise.
How is GrapheneOS overkill? Its identical to the stockOS but hardened for privacy.
Well, that was my impression when I was reading up on the differences between GrapheneOS and CalyxOS nearly two years ago. I had to decide and people suggested that GrapheneOS would be more secure and private while CalyxOS would be a still private but more comfortable (= less apps are broken etc) solution. Especially with microG and such. But this might not have been true in the first place and/or might have changed since then.
Would putting LineageOS or GrapheneOS on a Samsung phone eliminate the Samsung stuff and give you privacy?
I’m one of those people who believe every step towards privacy, no matter how small is a good choice. However I don’t think doing what you said does any good since google will still be collecting your data to build a profile on you, even worse if you already have an account they can easily link it to your existing profile
How though? I am genuinely interested.
AFAIK, and I know very little of smart phones and how they work, but isn’t degooglifying and then not installing any Play Store or Google Apps the way to go? Especially if you don’t have a Google account.
I too am on a similar trajectory as OP and would like to know more.
Even if you don’t sign into an account, you still have google play services running on your phone (it’s seperate from play store). So even though you’re not directly feeding your information into it, they still infer a lot of information from how you use your phone e.g. the wifi you connect to, apps on your phone, location services etc. You can’t tell who someone is based on one or two of these little bits of data, but put them all together and now they know exactly who you are
Wait what! I thought degooglifying meant no play services either. If play service is running, then yeah Google can definitely fingerprint you.
You’ll still have gms and google apps installed also the proprietary apps installed Most are system apps but some can be uninstalled
Have in mind in stock OS’s you’ll need an account to recover from a factory reset
Friend of mine runs his phone this way and is pretty happy. He had roughly the same goal. So yeah it’s definitely doable.
I would suggest F-Droid as AppStore due to play store being unavailable without Google.
Also grapheneOS is more or less a Pixel only ROM but there different other ROMs out there. The most popular ROM currently is Lineage OS wich is, what i read, degooglefied and you have to actively install the Google apps. Wich OnePlus do you have ?
I have an OnePlus 8t and the experience rooting and flashing it was not so bad.