I do NOT want to depend on a large company that tries to force itself into everything people do (search = google, email = gmail, handhelds = android, phone number = fi)
Chinese devices are easy to flash, reflash and mod.
If you are worried about that, you are honestly better off buying a pixel and putting grapheneos on it. 100% the cheap chinesium has other tracking/spying nonsense built in at levels lower than the android os, I think that's much less likely on pixel devices, especially with the grapheneos guys watching those devices.
I would expect someone serious about this to have their spyware built to use the cellular to send the low bandwidth, high value stuff and then possibly wifi for larger data dumps.
On the software side, they seem to be equally good from a technical standpoint: they let you live outside of google, be root etc.
I'm less a fan of the google pixel hardware: eInk devices provides a different experience.
In the "usual" (Google, Samsung...) western brands, there are no good eink pocket (cellphone sized or less, like the inkpalm or hisense) or normal sized eink tablet (>8" screen) alternatives, especially if you want color.
The kindles are more like phablets, and have lots of software limitations preventing you from flashing what you want. On top of that, their eink screens are always black and white, and most often very small.
I have a color eink tablet with a 10" screen. Outside of Chinese companies, there isn't anything available. If there was such a google pixel device and I could reflash it and mod it as easily as Chinese devices and without limitations, I would consider it.
> Allying with the CCP instead is an interesting choice.
I'm not here to talk politics, especially for such a loaded statement. "allying"? I "ally" with no one.
Also, my choice is not political but technical: I have a color eink device android where I do everything in the console with tmux and a Lenovo Bluetooth keyboard.
I have root, the device is degoogled, and I have removed from flash (mtd) what I didn't like. I use it mostly offline, but it's firewalled (with iptables) when I need to use ssh for example.
Best of all: it came ready to be hacked!
Maybe you believe your google device is more "protected", but I have a different opinion.
Given the amount of effort companies like google put into trying to insert themselves into our lives, I suggest a healthy skepticism to their claims of "privacy" or "protection".
I'm responding to the language in the comment I responded to. With your level of technical expertise it seems like you've figured out a safe enough way to be.
Well, I'm even less inclined to "ally" with the CCP, because I have no devices from Chinese companies, I have a laptop from MSI, a laptop from Apple, a phone from Samsung, and a phone from Apple.
I think it's a better choice to use a device from Taiwan or South Korea (perhaps more so than the US), but it's begrudgingly that I deal with the Google stuff on my Samsung, and I have less Google stuff than I would if not for it being Samsung.
I don't think owning an Android phone that requires a Google Account is allegiance to Google, but the way Samsung is providing stuff that requires a Google account kinda is, but I can see why, and hopefully one day they stop. I also don't think buying a phone from a Chinese company is allegiance to the CCP.
That said, I'd be happy to be called an ally to Taiwan. I'm not sure if I've earned that yet, but if anyone has any ideas how, let me know!
This time, I got myself a BigMe. You can get one on https://store.bigme.vip/ the URL looks suspicious but don't fall for the official looking bigmestore.com: it's run by a dropshipper called good reader, who apparently impersonates several Chinese companies by squatting the .com domain name and pretending to be them, just to raise the prices and in return generally give you a negative service (slower shipping, not saying the truth about unit in stocks or shipping dates...)
If you need to know more about this dropshipper shady methods, use your favorite search engine with "goodeareader scam" and learn from the various user reports, the BBB ratings or trustpilot.
The difficulty was getting a legit Bigme from the official store, but the hardware is great: I think the quality is higher than the Boox (which I already liked a lot), but unfortunately it seems to have a lot more google software than your usual Chinese device.
OTOH, there's also a 5G module in the BigMe, so I could get data anywhere... it's complicated: I might return to Boox when they have a better lineup, but getting either a Boox or a BigMe is a good decision if you like the slower refresh rate of eink and the "more visceral" feel of eink compared to emissive technologies (TFT, OLED...)
Although it should be noted that sometimes, these devices need an internet connection or even a registered account with the vendor in order to unlock the bootloader.
I prefer devices that let me unlock the bootloader fully offline.