As the title says, I want to finally degoogle (completely) my life. I’ve found a Pixel 7 8/128 for ~270€ (or pixel 8? ~470€ but no white :c) it’s refurbished so google doesn’t get a shit from me.

I’m curious to know if:

  • You can change the default icons color (black and gray-ish in the image) or is based on the wallpaper
  • The camera app is good. Not going to make professional pics or videos but I still want to use it to take pics and a good quality is important. Tried their camera on a phone and the bottom menu to switch mode (picture/video/night mode/etc) was buggy
  • Battery life is better/worse than stock Android (if anyone tried that)
  • How the sandboxed play services work
  • Anything else that I should know about. Some people say it’s good, some it’s bad so I’m curious to know.

I’m still looking for a good maps replacement, Organic Map is not the best because it’s missing a lot of places where I live. I wish there was a google wallet Foss alternative… I needed it to use my card with the phone (rare but still possible!)

Help a new user to fully leave shitty phone companies

  • TheOubliette@lemmy.ml
    0·
    30 days ago

    Hi friend!

    • One of the best things abiut GrapheneOS is being able to easily restrict network access for apps. So for a camera app, you can use anything you want, even Google Camera, and just turn off network access so there is no way for Google to spy. The suggestion of OpenCamera is also good. It has a lot of power and options.

    • Battery life should be just as good, more or less.

    • Sandboxed play services basically means that GrapheneOS gives it fewer permissions on your phone. Normally it has a very privileged position in the OS and is fairly imvasive.

    • Its user profiles are very powerful and I highky recommend using them. I recommend not installing samdboxed google play services on yiur main (owner) profile. If you do end up needing google play services for an app, it is better to put it in a separate profile.

    If it is helpful, I think of Degoogling as being mostly about replacing services. Graphene is a good atep, but definitely do a checklist of Google services that you use and slowly replace them and take control over your digital spaces. I would recommend dealing with your email as a top priority. Buying a domain (use a common/safe tld) so that you own your address (e.g. [email protected]) will mean no company can ever prevent you from sending or receiving emails on a whim. Using something like fastmail to receive and send emails via your domain will be the easiest first step.

    • Cris16228@lemmy.todayOP
      0·
      30 days ago
      • YES! That’s an amazing permission I wish to see on normal OS but that’s something they’ll never do. I downloaded OpenCamera and it was super confusing. I have to go back to it
      • Battery life is not a big problem but I was curious to know if was good/bad
      • Yeah, something I hate! So many unnecessary permissions. Fuck google
      • it’s interesting. I’ll make a “FUCK GOOGLE” profile if I’ll ever need to use play services and I want to isolate some apps I can’t avoid

      I made a post here some time ago and replaced most of my apps but it’s not enough! I want to replace phone and OS now and tale full control of my data (or do my best). I have protonmail as personal mail, and best or not, I like it. Sadly, I can’t find a replacement for YouTube (site) because invidious instances don’t have all the videos from channels I follow