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kiki
2y

Several rants ago I promised to drop a bombshell about Android. What took me so long was my research.

I wanted to measure the extent of Google’s background data mining. I put Android at a significant disadvantage — it was Redmi 6, a device with a 5-year-old half-dead battery that was heavily used by my partner. The only change was me installing Lineage OS + microG — a private, degoogled combo that has no quality of life ramifications. Google Play Store opens, apps download. MicroG emulates Google Play Services — maps, banking and other Play Services-dependent apps work flawlessly. This made a huge difference.

Before degoogling, this phone lasted one day tops on standby. Now, with Wi-Fi connection enabled, apps auto-update working (one game I had installed auto-updated during the test), and no battery saver engaged, I was able to pull ELEVEN DAYS on full charge. Battery saver promised even more uptime, but I considered that cheating.

Modern phones have modern screens that drain battery quickly. Yet, they also have 4000+ mAh batteries. If your Android smartphone performs worse than mine in a test like this that doesn't use screen, kiss your privacy goodbye.

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  • 0
    2y
    too late, wont and don't know where to search it for just one kiss...
  • 9
    2y
    @mansur85 with a flashlight sending the code with light impulses or morz ;p. fun aside there r plenty of tutorials around the net, and it's not complicated, but it's kind of risky so be carefull
  • 6
    2y
    This is really interesting. I was really wondering if different OS can sensibly impact battery life.

    I was previously on Win 10 where the amount of processes and services running on background is just absurb. Idk why they have so many of them in the first place.
    I'm on Linux Mint now ( after a couple of suggestions from ranters ) and I have to say I am mostly please with it. One of the observation I made was battery life. I have 1~2 extra hours which is just great. Wish I made a benchmark before and after though 🤦🏿‍♂️

    Regarding your experiment I have to say that pulling 11 days out of a smartphone is fucking insane !
  • 3
    2y
    @mansur85
    Unlock bootloader (voids warranty)
    Install custom recovery
    Flash custom rom using custom recovery.
    Flash gapps or microGapps ?

    Make sure you have the appropriate imgs before flashing them on your phone though.

    Or try the GSIs.

    @We3D
    It's not necessarily that risky. With recent phones you can try GSIs (global system images, if I recall correctly) without having to install or doing anything crazy.
  • 1
    2y
    @soberGhost good to hear, haven't done the process in years :)
  • 3
    2y
    @We3D there are devices that come with Lineage OS, GrapheneOS or /e/os out of the box

    - https://pcmag.com/news/...

    - https://murena.com/

    - https://e.foundation/e-os/

    - https://www.fairphone.com/en/
  • 4
    2y
    @We3D if you don't care about warranty and want a degoogled android smartphone with top specs, buy Pixel. They always have a good support and huge mod communities. GrapheneOS (even better than Lineage OS) is made for Pixels exclusively. Installation is a breeze — https://grapheneos.org/

    Lineage OS supports pixels too. Degoogled Pixels are the way to go
  • 0
    2y
    @kiki thanks, I'll have it mind as a next phone ( or alternative one ). I was inspired to make a linux phone ( which you can buy nowadays preinstalled ) in the early days of that OSes and from the supported phones at the time I choose to get the LG Nexus 5, but they got Nexus 5x locally and I fullishly took it thinking the x might represents a diviation of the model, but was completely upgraded one and after a few years waiting SO to migrate the code for my model the entisiasm faded away...
  • 0
    2y
    @mansur85 it's mi.com
  • 1
    2y
    @mansur85
    1 - Don't cry if you brick your phone.
    2 - Am writing from memory so double check the fastboot and adb commands on google (am no expert and the last time I did this was over a year ago on my brother's Samsung).
    3 - Back up your data (and firmware if possible).
    4 - Make sure u have the necessary files before starting up
    5 - Copy rom to the device's storage

    The process really depends on your phone's model but I usually go through the following steps (for custom rom installation)
    Note that you can't just install any random rom on your device (the partitioning sizes, modems and other important files are obviously not the same for every android device).

    Now,
    - (Again) backup your device ( data + firmware if possible) before you do any major changes on your device.

    - Google !
    See what other people have done with the same phone model ( while saving links of roms you find interesting)

    - Download appropriate recovery and your chosen rom.
  • 2
    2y
    - Unlock bootloader
    Most phone's have OEM unlock option in the developer options ( you have to enable it to be able to unlock the bootloader and make changes to the system)
    + Download ADB and fastboot on your computer
    get the zip or install via chocolatey on your on Windows
    Same with linux but it should be available via the package manager
    + Connect your phone w/ usb
    + Run "adb reboot bootloader" (on file directory or directly if adb is installed globally, just run "adb devices" to check if that's the case)
    It should restart the phone and bring you to the bootloader screen
    + OEM/Bootloader unlock
    • Run "fastboot unlock bootloader" (sometimes you need a pin for this part). Again double check the command (am no expert).
    • You should see a message on your phone, confirm the action.
    • Type fastboot reboot if it doesn't reboot after confirmation or just press and hold power button.
  • 1
    2y
    + Install custom recovery (Its main purpose is to backup your current System and or data or install a completely new one. You can use ut to clean cache and install scripts for perf, battery optimization, rooting and whatnot but I recommend you use magisk instead of all the scripts and rooting)
    - (turn on the phone if it's not) Reboot to bootloader with adb
    - navigate to recovery image location
    - run "fastboot flash recovery recovery.img (assuming that it's the file's name)
    - run "fastboot reboot recovery"

    At this point you can now use the recovery for making backups (preferably on sdcard) and whatnot.

    - install rom
    + Clear cache and data (if you want clean install)
    + Navigate to the rom's directory and install
    + Now just reboot and enjoy

    Damn this took time to write. Make dua for me Mansur 😂
  • 3
    2y
    Thats a fact about any non FOSS end user Operating System
  • 2
    2y
    everyone wants to spy on u these days...how else will they gather that big data for their ML models...
  • 0
    2y
    @mansur85 Ameen bro.
    Take your time, watch videos and read posts about it to gain more insight before hou dive in.
    Btw xda dev is a good place for this kinda stuff. You can find roms and recoveries there too.
    Salam
  • 3
    2y
    @mansur85 in general, I recommend XDA. Search for your device. This is the Xiaomi hub: https://forum.xda-developers.com/c/...

    For Xiaomi specifically, you don't really need Xiaomi's flashing tools. You only need them to flash Xiaomi's own ROMs.

    What you need to do first is to unlock bootloader. Then, flash a TWRP recovery. From there, it's trivial to flash any ROM you want.
  • 5
    2y
    @kiki feels like an irony that the best phone to degoogle is a Google phone XD
  • 4
    2y
    Who would've thought that a bloated Chinese rom eats battery faster than near stock AOSP /s
  • 4
    2y
    Exactly what electrineer said, lol.

    Where is your evidence on this? It sounds like you decided it's Google, because you don't like their data gathering.

    Xiaomi also heavily relies on data collection and selling. Who knows what kind of trash is built into OS.

    When I bought Xiaomi back in the day, it came with extra spyware. I had to re-flash MiUi. They just added some "extra" spyware during manufacturing.

    Hope your private phone doesn't have a hardware backdoor. At the end of the day, Xiaomi still falls under CCP.
  • 5
    2y
    So it isn't normal for a rarely used smartphone to last a month?

    Happy FDroid user here - don't even have a Play Store account.
  • 2
    2y
    You know why this happens? Because everything is built to have the ability to track everything about you.
  • 0
    2y
    @AndroidJester sounds like your gpu doesn't go to sleep properly
  • 0
    2y
    @AndroidJester Are you gaming on Linux ? 😂
    No but seriously though, what distro are you on ?
    Am on Cinnamon, it never uses 4gb of RAM with any of my workflows, fans are quiet and cpu usage very low. But am not doing anything crazy. I have firefox and chrome with few tabs open, Notion and Vscode at the same time at most.
  • 0
    2y
    @AndroidJester their's definitely an issue. Try to figure out what's eating up your battery. Might be gpu like @electrineer suggest but one thing is for sure you have some power hungry background processes
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