[spiraldancing]

Here's a first-hand review. I posted this as a reply a minute ago, then decided to make it a primary comment.

Wire has been my go-to communications app for 2-3 years now. Running it on a Google-free phone, it has gradually become more buggy, and less reliable over time, and sadly, still the best secure/encrypted app I could find.

Testing Jami. I tried Ring 8-10 months ago. Text worked, audio/video did not.

In the past few days, trying Jami, audio-only works very well - clear, crisp, no lag - much better than Wire. Video was a bit buggy, but still decent.

Connectivity was an issue, calls froze, or got cut off a couple times. Tentatively, it looked like switching from a local WiFi to phone ISP was at least part of the problem.

Also, using the same account across multiple devices is a bit buggy. Contacts established on one device are not available on the other.

All things considered, the basic quality of the connection is very good, better than Wire, maybe better than Skype. Reliability of the connection, and the various 2ndary features that people take for granted, still need work.

[cheez]

How have you built a Google-free (and presumably Apple-free) phone?

[arendtio]

I think the most popular choice is running LineageOS without Gapps.

[KAMSPioneer]

Not GP, but I assume he doesn't mean a phone with /nothing/ Google on it, but more likely that the phone connects to no Google services and lacks Google Play Services. I do something like this by running AOSP on a Pixel device, which makes my choices of apps that work...less numerous. I'll have to give Jami a try, based on GP's good experience.

[floatboth]

AOSP derived ROMs without gapps are pretty much "nothing Google". Unless you count AOSP itself as "Google", which it kind of is I guess, but it's not Google proprietary.