First things after buying a new phone:
Unlock bootloader, install Lineage OS

Fuck you Xiaomi for creating MIUI, damn it's so bloated with non-removable adware to the level of extreme annoying. It Keeps popping up ads from creating a Folder to Playing a music.

Look at that screenshot. It even serve an ad in built in cleaner app, like What the fuck man?! For real? I already disable the serve ads option. But it keeps turning on.

I even messing with the Permission settings, doesn't even help.

I REALLY WANT TO MOVE TO LINEAGE OS SO BAD, but the warranty is on duration. I don't want to void it.

God, give me a patience for another 7 month.

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.

Word of advice: never buy the UMIDICI C Note 2.

Bought it myself and it's an utter piece of garbage.

Just bought another phone which runs stock android 7 and Lineage OS might be installable.
Also it can be rooted, good enough for me!

My nexus 4 joined the nougat family!

I DID IT!!! just fucking installed lineage os <3 never imagined that it could be so complicated... they really don't want you to flash your phone man. I guess the main problem was that my phone is old x)

So I'm trying to get a clean and free environment, any advice about applications? My biggest problem is with telegram, I'll try wire, bit there is anything else that can replace telegram and on android and Linux? I mean I need to keep conversations sync, and I won't use a Chrome application TT so no signal.

yes, lineage os is still on nightlys

As some of you know I work as an occupational therapist and one of my clients wants to ungoogle his phone by installing lineage os on it.

He was asking me today if there are some good tutorials for doing that. He has an Xiaomi A1 phone and he would like to have a german tutorial.

If you know any pls share link.

Finally! Got rid of miui

I rooted my phone and flashed a new Android version and I got to say, I can't be happier. This is best choice I've made since ever.

I've had a Xiaomi Mi 8 for a few months now. Although I'm impressed by what I got for the amount I paid (a phone that cost about $250 for 6GB RAM, Snapdragon 845, Android 9 and premium build quality is quite a steal), it definitely comes with a consequence.

MIUI (specifically MIUI 11) is godawful. It is single-handedly the worst Android ROM I've ever used since my shitty Android 2.2 phone back around 2010. If you're gonna buy a Xiaomi phone, plan to install Lineage OS on it (but even that's a pain which I'll explain why later).

- Navigation buttons don't hide while watching a video.

Why? God only knows. The ONLY way to bypass without root this is to use its garbage fullscreen mode with gestures, which is annoying as all hell.

- 2 app info pages?

Yeah, the first one you can access just by going to its disaster of a settings app, apps, manage apps and tap on any one.

The 2nd one you can access through the app info button in any 3rd party launcher. Try this: Download Nova launcher, go to the app drawer, hold on any app and tap "app info", and you'll see the 2nd one.

Basically, instead of modifying Android's FOSS source code, they made a shitty overlay. These people are really ahead of their time.

- Can only set lock screen wallpapers using the stock Gallery app

It's not that big an issue, until it is, when whatever wallpaper app you're using only allows you to set the wallpaper and not download them. I think this is both a fuckup on Xiaomi and (insert wallpaper app name here), but why Xiaomi can't include this basic essential feature that every other Android ROM ever made has is beyond me.

- Theming on MIUI 11 is broken

Why do they even bother having a section to customize the boot animation and status bar when there's not one goddamn theme that supports it? At this point you're only changing the wallpaper and icon pack which you can do on any Android phone ever. Why even bother?

They really, REALLY want to be Apple.

Just look at their phones. They're well designed and got good specs, but they don't even care anymore about being original. The notch and lack of a headphone jack aren't features, they're tremendous fuckups by the dead rotting horse known as Apple that died when Steve Jobs did.

Xiaomi tries to build a walled garden around an inherently customizable OS, and the end result is a warzone of an Android ROM that begs for mercy from its creator. Launchers integrate horribly (Does any power user actually use anything that isn't Nova or Microsoft launcher?), 3rd party themes and customization apps need workarounds, some apps don't work at all. People buy from Xiaomi to get a high end budget Android phone at the price of some ads and data collection, not a shitter iOS wannabe.

They really, REALLY want you to have a sim card

If you don't have a sim card and you're using your phone for dev stuff, you're a 2nd class citizen to Xiaomi. Without one, you can't:

- Install adb through adb
- Write to secure settings
- Unlock your bootloader and get away from this trash Android ROM

What's the point? Are they gonna shadow ban you? Does anyone contact them to unlock their bootloader saying "yeah I wanna use a custom rom to pirate lizard porn and buy drugs"? They made this 1000000000x harder than it needs to be for no reason whatsoever. Oh yeah and you gotta wait like a week or something for them to unlock it. How they fucked up this bad is beyond me.

So yeah. Xiaomi. Great phones, atrocious OS.

!Rant
Just resurrected my old Galaxy Nexus with LineageOS. It's still shiny af even on Android Nougat.

Speaking about almost 6 years old device. 😍

So I gave my younger brother my OnePlus One since he is now using an even older Google Nexus and don't care much for phones. The camera is slightly better basically.

Asked him to test drive it:

Me: so did you set it up yet?
B: nope, what's the rush?
Me: well you see it's running a custom OS (Lineage) as it technically doesn't support it. You need to test drive it and make sure it works with your SIM? May need to change some configs
B: sounds like a pain, should I just get a new phone?

Me: ... yes probably...

He's a just graduated CS major that doesn't like tinkering with tech...

(Well can I have it back then so I can play around with it?)

Who fucking thought its a good idea to disable the bluelightfilter in the battery saver mode on lineage os?! 😶

Why the fuck is it so hard to find a proper guide on porting a custom rom(LineageOS) to a device?!

Build my own phone and support the Zerophone project by writing code.

Seriously what the fuck is going on with the development of major companies smartphones. Every year all there is are larger displays, better and more cameras, faster processors and some more 'AI' thrown into the mix.

What the heck am I supposed to do with a phone costing multiple hundreds of euros but locked down with an OS spying on you. The processing power available is hardly ever used because most people just use apps like Instagram, WhatsApp or other messaging services.

I get why larger screens are useful but at some point it gets ridiculous.
Better cameras are useful to some degree as well but there's a limit to it.
If you really want to get into photographing then please buy an actual camera.

Another aspect I'd of course like to talk about is privacy. It's hardly existent on IOS or Android smartphones with Google services. Of course one can install different ROMs like Lineage OS but if I already pay multiple hundreds for a device then I'd prefer it working for and not against me.

And dare you break a single part of your phone. You can't really repair it yourself anymore and one can't even change its battery. Most people either have it repaired or just buy a new one and throw it away. There is so much electronic waste, very difficult and expensive to dispose of, just buried in the ground somewhere.

Summing up: I don't really know where the development of smartphones is heading. A phone is a device you carry around with you almost everyday so I'd like it to be tailored to me and not spy on me.

I hope the Librem phone will be a success and other open source phone projects will gain more attention. I want a phone I can repair myself and tailor the software running on it to my needs. I'd like to write messages, listen to music, make calls, run a WiFi hot-spot on the phone and maybe play some tiny games on it once in a while.

Switched to LG G5 from iPhone 7 Plus.

Lg's screen has burn in and took me about 10 hours to completely fuck it up, restore it, flash crDroid(Lineage os based, the only custom rom working fine so far) and workaround the faulty wifi chip giving null mac address by faking it.

Still love my new(old) phone more than the iPhone.

Experience with Plasma Mobile:

After an hour of confusion and bash file trolling (as in scrolling through a bash file, not trolling someone with a script), I ended up needing to reinstall Lineage OS on my phone.

While it's a new and seemingly exciting expanse for modern Linux and Android phones, it's very obviously not ready yet.

Even after fixing some bugs within the bash file, my phone seemed to have a mind of its own; prematurely attempting to boot into the OS during a critical part of the setup. Even after finishing the setup correctly, my phone never actually boots into the system.

While I like the concept behind Plasma Mobile, it does still have a ways to go. But I have some hopes that the project will start getting bigger and better as the time goes on.

I think I'm gonna give up on privacy. It's hard to use the interwebs without JavaScript. And I use a phone on which you can't install lineage os or any other secure rom.

i want to make a paid subscription service for products that can replace google's and are privacy-respecting. primarily email and messaging apps. all with optional e2e. cross platform, open source, all that good stuff.

after that, maybe add alternatives to google docs, or release a first party phone that runs a mobile os that runs lineage or something.

After reading through an article by EFF about Google's new FLoC technology, I finally woke up and realized that Google isn't any different from the other huge organizations, and that it isn't here to fight for greater user privacy and rights... As such, I made a switch, going from Google to DuckDuckGo.

Sure, I still use YT, but other than that, I don't have a gmail address that'd be of importance, don't use their search engine, and now...

Got any tips on how to minimize tracking potential of an android-based rooted smartphone? (Stock rom, Xiaomi Mi 10T Pro). I know using a custom rom is an option, however, Lineage isn't officially supported for this model of phone, and I still value functionality over anything else, so... Unofficial daily drive OS is sub-optimal.

Alternative hardware solutions like PinePhone, although nice in theory, are way too behind the commercial brands in terms of technology and features, so that's a no go.

I am working on partitioning my life and getting my tech stuff and online life organized. Partially fun, partially dread. Still one of the better things I'm dealing with right now.

Tech stuff mainly includes desktop PC (Qubes OS), network (to be driven by openwrt) and smartphone (already running Lineage OS, but I want to build my own LOS). This is the fun part. I want to add a NAS, but I'm too cheap for a proper one (at least for my >20TB media).

Furthermore offline stuff: Remove clutter, get analog documents properly organized (with a sustainable system) and possibly digitalized. I already have maybe half of the things I own in boxes each with a specific purpose (e.g. audio cables, network cables and game controllers each have their own box). Can be tiresome, but it's easy to see a progress and that makes it quite okay.

Online life: That's a big one. A large chunk is email and the hundreds of website accounts. I have them in a keepass file, but all running under the same address. Unfortunately I need to have a Facebook account for some purposes, but I'd like to start over with a new one. Not so easy when you have to transfer group admin privileges though, when I tried the last time I tripped some system and the new account was banned. Annoying.