Here you can find reviewed, impressive and comprehensive European alternatives for digital products and apps if you wanna break from American (big) tech companies.
Have a look, you’ll be impressed…
Here you can find reviewed, impressive and comprehensive European alternatives for digital products and apps if you wanna break from American (big) tech companies.
Have a look, you’ll be impressed…
So no smartphones.
Nokia is Finnish and I’m not sure if t hat’s considered European. It’s not American though. In fact the only American company left making phones is Apple. The problem is, the rest of them uses Android, which spies on you. Counterpoint: Apple won’t let you install apps your government doesn’t approve of. Counterpoint to the counterpoint: Android. Fucking. Spies. On. You. Counterpoint to the… you get the idea: Apple still hasn’t shipped a working software keyboard. Pick your poison. Spyware or a broken keyboard and you can’t use a few apps you may not care about… but you’re buying from an American company whose CEO kisses Trump’s arse and literally gave him a solid gold participation trophy.
I want to see real Linux phones that don’t run Android and are somewhat competitive with Android phones, at least in the mid-range space. No one expects them to compete with the iPhone, or the equivalent Android phone that comes out 3-5 years later and stops getting updates while the iPhone it matches on performance is still getting them… but it shouldn’t have to. We kinda hit a plateau a few years ago.
Otherwise, definitely worth a look.
Linux phones exist, but they’re:
There’s also Jolla with Sailfish OS, but don’t know if they are any good
Pff of course they are!
Yeah, why wouldn’t it be? Lol
Not all android spies on you. Have you ever tried GrapheneOS? It’s very secure and pro-privacy. Technically it’s not android (if you really want to nitpick), but you need a Google Pixel to run it.
Yes, GrapheneOS is Android (it’s AOSP without Google Play Services and GApps, with open source replacements). It’s like what CyanogenMod was back in the day. I haven’t used Graphene; I’ve never owned a Pixel. And Graphene is only on Pixels.
I’ve used a ton of Android custom firmware… from around Ice Cream Sandwich through Lollipop — back when Android was named for desserts. My favourite CFW was LiquidSmooth based on Jellybean, based on AOKP, which was an AOSP fork that tried to be “cool.” It wasn’t quite as cool as Paranoid Android (which was fucking awesome), but it was way more stable. And CyanogenMod was the most stable but “boring” by comparison. I mean it wasn’t flashy. But LiquidSmooth was rock solid. So no, I haven’t used Graphene, but I’ve used forks/ROMs like it.
If Google Play Services is running on it, and you’re not blocking it with a firewall (not sure if you even can, but I suppose it isn’t impossible), then yes, it’s spying on you. (I do not think GrapheneOS runs Google Play Services.)
There’s a large graveyard of attempts at this. The most recent and successful is probably Tizen. Prior to that Firefox OS. People just don’t buy them so there’s no market for them.
The iPad also wasn’t Apple’s first tablet. The Newton basically sucked and no one liked it. But now there’s really no point in buying anything but an iPad if you want a tablet, even if you use an Android phone.
There were a ton of bad MP3 players before the iPod and a bunch of smartphones before the iPhone, except in both cases, some of them were good. You just had to be real savvy to find those diamonds in the rough, because it sure was a rough market.
The problem is, Google is a data services (advertising and marketing) company. The only reason Android even exists is because Google bought it from a hobbyist (Andy Rubin) because they knew they could use it to scrape more data than Gmail alone. Android exists to harvest your data so that Google can collect and sell it.
Meanwhile, Apple is still kind of trying to sell phones like computers. They’re pushing performance harder than their rivals, and they want to be a privacy-first company, but they’re based in the US, and are licking fascist boots, so it’s not a good look. And now Apple is pushing services as well, subscriptions and whatnot. Is it really better than Android? Especially given the shortcomings in app choice (e.g. sideloading) and the broken ass keyboard? I dunno. I’m a Mac guy, I like Apple tech, warts and all. And I still think they protect your privacy. I think, like Mozilla, they collect telemetry so they know how their products are used, but I don’t believe they are tracking your activity across apps/the web, building a profile on you, and selling this to advertisers. And they’ve gone after companies that try to do so on their platform — when CEO Tim Cook came out and said “starting today, we’re still going to let Facebook track you across apps and the web, but we’re going to make them get your permission first” or something like that. And from then, you had to agree to the tracking. If you said no, the app was stopped from doing it. Apparently it was effective, Facebook ran a huge ad campaign claiming to be a small business and saying Apple was hurting small businesses like them. (They’ve since found ways around it. Apple has tried to block them. It’s a cat-and-mouse game.) Anyway, point is, I don’t know how long Apple can keep selling phones like computers. Arguably, they stopped a while ago. And that’s a shame. And it’s why, as an Apple guy, I’m rooting for Linux phones. Because if Apple won’t sell a phone like a computer, well… that’s the kind of phone I want. A pocket computer that can call.
Jolla from Finland has quite the successful preorder phase right now for their next true Linux phone though. I have a preorder voucher myself and am quite intrigued in how it will turn out and if it’ll actually proof usable in daily life (considering banking or healthcare apps its probably gonna get tricky but I’ll see)
We indeed need to degooglize smartphones.
There are ways but difficult to implement for now…
I mean, the best way is to throw iPhone money at Google, and get iPhone 11 level performance out of a Pixel 10, then wipe the firmware and replace it with GrapheneOS. This is problematic for a couple reasons. One, if you’re gonna pay iPhone money, maybe just get an iPhone? Solves a big chunk of the privacy issue, but doesn’t get you away from American tech companies, which was your original point. So we set that option aside. Two, you have to give Google money, so they win either way. Sure, they lose out on that targeted ad money, but they sold you years-old tech at a premium price — so they win. Of course, you can buy a used Pixel, but it’s gonna be even less powerful (assuming it’s an older model).
I think the best option is to take the open-source AOSP (Android Open Source Project) that the closed-source Android is based on, and make a fork that doesn’t use Google, like Amazon did with Fire OS. Then you’d just need a hardware partner.
Apparently, Graphene OS is looking into this, but I don’t like the idea of a stripped-down Android phone. If I’m paying iPhone price on years-old hardware, the OS better kick some ass. The alternatives to iPhone just offer too many compromises in the name of virtues that I don’t really think matter enough. If we can’t get an alternative that can match iPhone on performance, it should have an awesome user experience.
i remember learning to degoogle with adb. it wasn’t easy and i had to reset more than a couple of times
then i installed LineageOS, after adb it was easier. For somebody else it may be “difficult” indeed
then i installed GrapheneOS for a friend. It can’t get any easier. Their web installer makes degoogling accessible to everyone.
Interesting!
Jollaphone would be an alternative. Not a good one though.
I heard of Sailfish OS, linux-based but with an Android compatibility layer.