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by hypertele-Xii 1578 days ago
> There should be a "good Android" option that costs less than an iPhone for people that would pay a little more money for less garbage.

There is, actually: Android One. E.g. Nokia makes phones that have minimal crapware preinstalled.

You will still have to deal with Google's own crap... like the retarded Assistant that just won't fucking die. Even with absolutely every setting in every google settings page in every google app explicitly disabling the Assistant, if you dare speak words resembling "ok google" it will still "helpfully" pop up asking if you'd like to enable it. And sometimes spontaneously. While you're typing, hoping you'll fat-finger "yes please".
3 comments
justsomehnguy 1578 days ago
>like the retarded Assistant that just won't fucking die

Sadly I can't describe all actions I've done (I just don't remember) but one of the most crucial is to replace you home screen app.

Zim/Omega launcher is a good starting point - Zim doesn't know about assistant, Omega has the options to not to use it.

Along with Hacker's Keyboard, F-Droid/FoxyDroid and methodologically going through the Apps and Permissions in Settings helps to tame this Hydra.

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aaaaaaaaata 1578 days ago
Or, don't start caring about your experience/security/privacy after buying a device,

do a few minutes of research in advance to buy a phone that has a prayer (Pixel 3a is popular in this thread),

and install Graphene on it from day 1...

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throwhauser 1578 days ago
I just tried saying "OK google" to my phone and it did not summon the assistant. (Hooray!)

I have the generic "Google" app disabled, which I think is the thing that listens on the microphone for that. I don't really know what else it does, so I'm not sure what else is unavailable once it's disabled. I don't expect I'll be missing much though.

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summm 1578 days ago
Nokia is never an option, because they do not open the bootloader on any phone. Worse, in the beginning they lied they would, to get people to buy their crap. Also, don't be blinded by their brand, that brand is actually chinese HMD now, with the chinese attitude to running random closed binaries on your phone. So if you go down that route, better get a properly supported phone, like from OnePlus.
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