[ironjunkie]

Why does it feel like every choice for a phone is a losing choice nowadays:

- "Pure" Android from Google (Pixels and co): You end up being controlled by Google and enclosed in their ecosystem. They manage and decide the ToS for everything and you have very little say about it (as this issue proves).

- "Modified" Android from other manufacturers: Full of bloatwares and basically unusable after 6 months

- iPhone: Closed source and managed by Apple. Not a lot of technical options to customize if you don't like the default behavior (An issue I have with every Apple product).

For a non technical person, as a comment said above the iPhone is the best ethical solution. You get what you pay for and there are no shenanigans.

As a technical user however, I feel it is kind of sad to own an iPhone as I like to go deep and being able to modify a lot of settings and behaviors. I simply don't like the overly opinionated way iOS or MacOS handles the user (Which again would be fine for 99% of normal users).

[ryukafalz]

For a technical person, you have another choice: LineageOS (optionally with microG, which is what I use). It's nearly-stock Android without the Google apps, and with a few extra features. (Privacy Guard is very nice.)

microG lets you use apps that depend on Play Services without actually having Play Services - it's not complete but most of the common APIs are there.

There are other ROMs, but LineageOS (formerly CyanogenMod) is the only one I personally have experience with.

[scott_karana]

I love LineageOS, but using it still doesn't prevent OS-level privacy/attack vectors like the recent "report cell tower location despite location services being off" mishap/invasion. (1)

Yes, Android is open source, but at the end of the day Google is the dominant contributor, so you're still subject to their will... (just like Chromium)

1 https://qz.com/1131515/google-collects-android-users-locatio...

[benjaminjackman]

Just curious how is performance and how old is the phone you are using with it? My biggest issue with android phones, even the google flagship ones is they just fall apart after 18 months both physically and with software overwhelming them to the point of extreme lags in every interaction with the device. Does the same dividend exist here as on desktop where it’s pretty expected to be able to run a 10 year old pc by running Linux on it without much issue?

[coward83847]

I personally use Lineage on a Samsung Galaxy S5 and love it. It's far better than the stock roms. It offers access to newer OS versions (currently Nougat) and quicker access to security patches. Better battery life, a cleaner less bloated experience, and options for tweaking settings to your liking. There are some downsides though. Mainly reduced camera performance.

[kevin_thibedeau]

It runs great on older phones. I have a 3 year old Moto G with 1GiB RAM. It will never be a speed demon but LineageOS Nougat is much better than stock Lollipop for performance on resource constrained phones.

[diminish]

Hope there were some phones with LineageOS pre-installed.

[umanwizard]

In what sense is iOS more closed-source than Android?

My understanding is that both are open to a similar extent: the kernel is open-source; most of the rest of the system isn’t.

I don’t use or work on android so I could be wrong.

[Veratyr]

Android is _completely_ open source. You can build an entire usable system from scratch yourself: https://source.android.com/setup/

The only closed source stuff is device-specific hardware drivers.

Also, Android the platform is more open than iOS, you can build and install any APK you like and even root your device if you want. iOS restricts you to the app store.

[scott_karana]

Unlike iOS, virtually all of the Android userland, and all of its SDK, is also open source: AOSP is the name of the project containing it all.

IIRC only two major things aren't included: binary blob-only drivers, and proprietary Google apps: Play store, Maps, etc.

Despite those limitations, you can practically just `git clone` and build the entire OS for your device. :-)

https://source.android.com