As the title says, I want to finally degoogle (completely) my life. I’ve found a Pixel 7 8/128 for ~270€ (or pixel 8? ~470€ but no white :c) it’s refurbished so google doesn’t get a shit from me.

I’m curious to know if:

  • You can change the default icons color (black and gray-ish in the image) or is based on the wallpaper
  • The camera app is good. Not going to make professional pics or videos but I still want to use it to take pics and a good quality is important. Tried their camera on a phone and the bottom menu to switch mode (picture/video/night mode/etc) was buggy
  • Battery life is better/worse than stock Android (if anyone tried that)
  • How the sandboxed play services work
  • Anything else that I should know about. Some people say it’s good, some it’s bad so I’m curious to know.

I’m still looking for a good maps replacement, Organic Map is not the best because it’s missing a lot of places where I live. I wish there was a google wallet Foss alternative… I needed it to use my card with the phone (rare but still possible!)

Help a new user to fully leave shitty phone companies

Edit: Does it have some kind of cross profile notifications? Can I see notifications of another profile on the main?

GrapheneOS supports forwarding notifications from users running in the background to the currently active user. Forwarding notifications to other users is disabled by default and can be enabled within each user profile where forwarding to the active profile is wanted. Notifications forwarded from other profiles are displayed by default in a standard local notification channel.

It does

  • TurtleTourParty@midwest.socialEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    I’m a photographer and don’t find the stock GOS camera to be good enough. I use BigKaka’s GCAM mod which is Google’s camera with even more features. It doesn’t require internet access and everything works in version 9.2 on my Pixel 8. It doesn’t require google photos like the stock GCam.

      • Mezmer1zed@lemmy.world
        0·
        2 years ago

        I’m pretty sure the OnePlus 12 could meet all that, haven’t looked up rooting but otherwise I’m pretty sure it’s easy to do. Also, I’m bringing it up because I just got it and it’s the best phone I’ve ever had in my life by far, no bloatware super fast and easy to use.

      • Saizaku@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        0·
        2 years ago

        No wonder, as they’re the only phones left (to my knowledge) that don’t demand half your soul just to fucking own your own phone.

        Literally who outside of samsung and Huawei? I guess xiaomi is a bit annoying with the wait time but pretty much all other phones are dead simple.

        Oneplus, Nothing phone: literally the same process as on a pixel, no code required to unlock bootloader or anything like that. Just fastboot flashing unlock

        Vivo: The exact same thing, just get vivo’s binary for fastboot since the unlocl command is different

        Motorola, Sony: Just go to the website and you get the unlock code instantly, then just run a fastboot command and you’re done

        Realme: Download their app, apply for unlock, gets approved within an hour. Unlock with a fastboot command

        Xiaomi, poco: Get their app, wait a couple of days for the code, unlock bootloader with fastboot command.

        Honor and huawie are a pita, but there is an open source unlocking tool for certain devices which makes it deadsimple.

        So there are still plenty of options if the goal is unlocking bootloader and rooting a phone, all of these brands offer phones with oled 120hz screens, with cameras ranging from decent to some of the best on the market depending on the model. There are probably some brends I missed, but you get the point.

          • Saizaku@lemmy.dbzer0.com
            0·
            2 years ago

            But besides, being able to unlock bootloader is great (even though root is way more important to me)

            My bad I thought you were generally up to date with how rooting basically works nowadays. The defacto rooting method today is systemless root using magisk, which works by patching your boot.img. So on 99% of phones today if you can unlock the bootloader, rooting is as simple as installing the magisk, patching the boot img from the app and the flashing itl. You can also just flash magisk from recovery too. That’s why I focused on bootloader unlocking in my previous post.

            Now I can’t claim that every device from these manufacturers works flawlessly with magisk, but most do. And a quick glance at the xda page of the specific model would be an easy way to find out before buying.

              • Saizaku@lemmy.dbzer0.com
                0·
                2 years ago

                Perfectly fair take tbh, in terms of security on android phones grapheneOS is as good as it gets and has been for a couple of years. I personally refuse to use pixels due to no sdcard, but more importantly no 3.5mm jack. The slight hiss/hum noise present on every bluetooth headset I’ve tried (and I’ve tired my friends bluetooth sennheiser that’s like $600) bothers me way too much for w/e reason. I find crdroid for example gets me 90% of the way there with a bit of work through various magisk modules and it’s good enough for me. But things have definitely gotten better on nonpixel phones over the years, I’m for example running a poco x3 nfc that was $250 4 years ago when I bought it and I still get monthly security updates through crdroid anf battery life is still great cause it came with a 5300mAh battery.

      • OminousOrange@lemmy.ca
        0·
        2 years ago

        Who would buy a flagship gaming-pc without the admin-pwd and without being allowed to change the os?

        Is that not exactly what a gaming console is?

          • OminousOrange@lemmy.ca
            0·
            2 years ago

            Right, I just mean the general public really doesn’t seem to care about these types of things, unfortunately, and sale of things like consoles and other proprietary systems is an indicator of that.

            Everyone’s been brainwashed conditioned to think that having no control of their devices is just the way it has to be.