One of the biggest problems is probably that there's almost no way of using an android phone and purchase apps without a google account (which will be then linked to purchases and activities).
There's two caveats: (a) it's a little unstable with no Google account but using a throwaway Google account fixes this, and (b) it doesn't get you away from Google because they still have a lot of ways to track you in Android without an account, but...
You can disable Play services and install Aurora Store from F-Droid and have a very reasonable Android experience with no Google account.
Aurora Store is a Play Store client that doesn't require a Google account, so you can get access to all the "normal" commercial apps and games that are absent on F-Droid. The developers use a central account for API access which can get rate limited and get blocked sometimes (they recommend you sign in with your own throwaway Google account to avoid this), but otherwise it's better than Play Store in many ways.
Some apps will not work without Play services but I've found that in most cases it's either a matter of:
- some annoying notification function of the app doesn't work but the rest of the app works fine
- in some rare cases, apps with a strong reliance on Play services have alternative independent builds available as apk from their own website
You can also just leave Play services enabled and simply never log into your Google account (the Aurora account login is separate, it doesn't link into the rest of the device) BUT if you do this Google will plague you with prompts to login for all eternity.
Honestly, we need a optimised non-custom rom alternative to smartphone operating systems, which is not iOS or google/android.
While the custom-rom development has come a long way, it's to fiddly, often lacks long-term support, shortcomings in terms of stability (network/singal disruptions, battery usage, crashes, bricks)and even privacy.
The 2005's rang, they want their phones back. My Sony Ericsson 500i was my edgy love of my teenage college years. Every provider had their own phone with their own firmware. Android appeared and nearly-all of them got in to bed with Google.
And so here we are, living in a world of a million different sized rectangles; all running Android.
> Honestly, we need a optimised non-custom rom alternative to smartphone operating systems, which is not iOS or google/android.
Symbian was way ahead for its time. But I'm just glad we have some developments such as PinePhone and Librem
Using is possible with microG [1], but it’s not stable yet and purchasing is indeed very rarely possible (the only Android App I have bought outside the playstore is Titanium Backup)
https://e.foundation/ is an Android/Lineage fork that removes Google services. It comes with its own app store (mix of F-Droid and Play store APKs, from what I can tell)
It's not perfect, but works well enough for daily use in my experience.
There's two caveats: (a) it's a little unstable with no Google account but using a throwaway Google account fixes this, and (b) it doesn't get you away from Google because they still have a lot of ways to track you in Android without an account, but...
You can disable Play services and install Aurora Store from F-Droid and have a very reasonable Android experience with no Google account.
Aurora Store is a Play Store client that doesn't require a Google account, so you can get access to all the "normal" commercial apps and games that are absent on F-Droid. The developers use a central account for API access which can get rate limited and get blocked sometimes (they recommend you sign in with your own throwaway Google account to avoid this), but otherwise it's better than Play Store in many ways.
Some apps will not work without Play services but I've found that in most cases it's either a matter of:
- some annoying notification function of the app doesn't work but the rest of the app works fine
- in some rare cases, apps with a strong reliance on Play services have alternative independent builds available as apk from their own website
You can also just leave Play services enabled and simply never log into your Google account (the Aurora account login is separate, it doesn't link into the rest of the device) BUT if you do this Google will plague you with prompts to login for all eternity.