Recently I’ve been looking for a phone that will allow me to install an google-free OS. I’ve never installed a different OS on a phone before. I’ve been looking online but haven’t really found a clearly best option.
Problem with standard recommendation
From what I’ve read GrapheneOS seems the best alternative OS. Unfortunately they only support the Pixel devices. I want to have local, offline access to my files (e.g. music files, documents) and don’t want to be dependent on cloud services. The Pixel with the most storage comes with only 256GB and no slot for an SD card.
Possible options
There are some other routes that may be feasible that I’ve listed here.
Fairphone 6
- No USB 3
- Pricey for what you get, both in terms of hardware and in terms of fairness, at least according to this post).
- It has an SD card slot
- You can order it with e/os installed, very convenient
- No GrapheneOS
Fairphone 5
- According to this post, the FP6 is a lot snappier
- Not significantly cheaper than the FP6
- It does come with USB 3
- It has an SD card slot
- Can also order this with e/os.
- No GrapheneOS
Sony
According to the Bootloader Unlock Wall of Shame Sony isn’t the worst of the bunch.
- Many Sony’s from the LineageOS list of compatible devices have an SD card slot
- Have to install the OS yourself
- No GrapheneOS
Pixel
Get a refurbished Pixel anyways and get a separate dumb MP3 player for music.
- Might be an option but 256GB is still cutting it tight with what I want to have available offline.
- The 256GB option is a lot more expensive than the 128GB option compared to the cost of a 128GB SD card
- Extra costs from buying the extra MP3 player
- Have to install the OS yourself
- Can install GrapheneOS
DumbPhone:
Get a dumbphone for calls, texting, banking, govt stuff, 2FA app, and music listening. Have a separate linux phone for all the other stuff.
- Not sure how privacy friendly the dumbphones are, might still be using Google Play services?
- Two devices instead of one to carry around
- Extra costs for two devices
- Tinkering with a linux phone could be a fun project
Bonus option: don’t get the linux phone
- Less screen time
- Only 1 device to buy/carry
- Can’t go on the internet while traveling
Questions
- What would be your recommendation that allows plenty of storage on the phone?
- Do you have good/bad experiences with any of these phones/operation systems?
- Are there any good options I’ve missed?
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https://volla.online/en/index.php
This might interest you. Comes with own google free android OS or Ubuntu Touch.
I have no experience with it though, just stumbled upon it when looking for alternatives.
If I were you, I’d wait until Aug 20, when the new Pixels get announched; they might have one with 512GB and you should be able to install GrapheneOS a bit after launch.
Good idea, I’ll definitely wait and see what they come out with. A 512 GB Pixel + separate MP3 player might be a good option. Thanks.
Is GrapheneOS even a good recommendation at this point? I won’t be surprised if changes Google makes to Android will effectively kill it, as soon as this year.
Welp, that’s a good question, but the Graphene folks seem confident that they can support it for now.
I have installed Lineage on all my families phones.
all with android 15
Oneplus 5T; still going string after 8 years use
motorola edge 20 128GB 8GB RAM; I had to buy it for £20, fluff in the charging port. fabulous phone.
motorola edge 20 pro 256GB 12GB RAM: My daily driver.
Samsing SM-T500 Tab: As an Ebook reader.
Android 11. no longer supported Samsung S4 with E/os: my alarm clock and stop watch for the kitchen.
There is a New samsung Heimdall firmware flasher called Heimdall-Grimler for installing custom roms on samsung phones. A much improved Heimdall.
I only use Heimdall-Grimler especially on linux where there is no Odin only Jodin3-bin which is a pain to use.
It’s nice to see how many people wants alternatives to Google and Apple… I just wonder what would have happened, if so many people had actually supported either the Ubuntu phone, or the Firefox Phone?
We still have a chance with Linux mobile.
No idea, this is the first I’m hearing about either of them. Sometimes a great idea can fail because it is too early. A lot of people around me who have never been interested in tech are messaging me asking about what browser is most private, what social media alternatives there are, etc. Maybe there is more momentum now?
That’s my experience… And I really hope it is true, everywhere else too…
Pixel + GOS - no complaints works great
Pixel + GOS just works, even has proper sandboxed Play Services if the need arises. Never had a Fairphone myself, but I really do fancy a SD card slot and removable battery.
Words of caution on dumbphones though, especially if you live somewhere with 4G as the minimum:
- The overlap between 4G+VoLTE support and true dumbphones is very small
- Watch out for KaiOS “dumbphones”, which will come bundled with Google’s goodies and telemetry
- Voice calls and SMS are already unencrypted and monitored, so I don’t see any undue risks from a dumbphone, as long as you don’t store any more data on it than you need and use a true dumbphone rather than one with KaiOS or even Android.
Additional dumb phone warning:
SIM swapping attacks take all of 10 minutes to accomplish, and will give an attacker access to your phone number for them to use SMS 2FA codes to lock you out of your email and accounts. You will have zero access or recourse until you physically go into a carrier location and get your phone number fixed. Then you begin a lengthy process of reclaiming accounts to see how bad the damage is.
Thanks for the warning about the SIM swapping attacks. Do I understand correctly that this is an issue on the dumbphones because you can’t install a 2FA app on it but have to rely on SMS? I thought there were also some ‘dumbphones’ where you can install apps, just not browsers or social media apps. But maybe those are the ones @[email protected] was warning about.
Correct. 2FA apps are the safest option.
2FA codes sent by SMS are barely better than just a password, but if your password leaks and your phone number is public info on a data broker site, it’s simply a matter of when the attacker makes it to you on a list. It’s especially bad for people who flaunt crypto or stock wins online and make themselves a target worth trying a SIM swap on.
Indeed. One of my pet peeves are services, especially from financial institutions, that force you to use SMS for 2FA with no option for more secure options.
Seriously. I’ve almost left my bank over their shit security. But they’re nearly all bad!
Yes, I wish GOS would support the fairphone, then it would be a no-brainer.
Thanks for the warning re: dumphones, I had no idea. Is there one that you think is suitable for privacy and 4G+VoLTE support?
I use the Maxwest Neo Flip LTE as my backup dumbphone
I got my FP6 with /e/os a few weeks ago and I love it so far! Only downside is the camera which will apparently get a software update eventually.
Edit: someone told me to enable the HDR setting which wasn’t enabled from the start. So there’s hope for the camera yet! I haven’t had time to try it out but it sounds promising.
Nice, good to know. Have you run into anything with the USB 2 connection?
fyi it’s usb-c 2, not old usb 2
Which is completely not confusing to anybody
yeah i was confused at first too, i just had a conversation about it here recently
I only use it to charge the phone, so nope. Works just as expected. I rarely even have to charge it, the battery is awesome compared to my old iPhone!
You should look at Brax 3 on indiegogo right now. No telemetry tied to big tech under $300. Iode is privacy focused. Braxtech.net
Quite impressive of Mr Braxman. Third time he’s worked with an ODM to release a phone degoogled out of the box at this price point. Would love to see something analogous for GrapheneOS, though I suspect it’s been hard for them to find an OEM that meets their high bar for security.
Looks like a great option (with SD slot) and a lot cheaper than the alternatives. I can’t find the specs on their website though, am I looking in the wrong place?
Out of interest what music files and documents do you need with you at all times that will fill up a 256GB phone?
Not speaking for OP, but having a 1 TB microSD would let me:
- Sync my music library in FLAC without having to re-encode over storage limitations
- Have more of Wikipedia downloaded through Kiwix
- Keep a backup copy of my photos and important documents on hand
- Pop the card directly in the computer and bypass the clumsy MTP protocol when syncing files
All for under 100 USD
Fair enough, seems like a nice setup. I guess I’ve already accepted that I can’t do that on most phones and constant network access to cloud stuff is a reasonable alternative. There is no perfect device so we’ve all got to choose which compromises to make, eh?
Absolutely, everyone has different priorities. Personally I dislike the rent extraction model of cloud services, especially for use-cases like mine where local storage would suffice.
Local storage is so abundant, and cloud so expensive. We will hopefully see more innovation to bridge the gap for non sys admins. I.e. no more rent extraction!
Don’t buy the fairphone 4, qualcom doesn’t support the drivers. Security is shit. As to the 5 and 6, they don’t meet the hardware security requirements of the GOS team.
If security is your priority go for a Pixel with GOS.
Filen offers a mountable drive stackable 100gb lifetime deal. Free 10gb, so 110gb. The lifetime deal is like 20 bucks. So pay 40 bucks 220gb. The deals are stackable.
If you use my referral I get an additional 30gb 😂
Anyways that’s not why I recommend them, i was in the same position using syncthing, self hosting. Until I spend the time to harden remote access filen is simple and damn good.
The convenience of cloud is to always have access to your documents when you need them. I want that, but without relying on a cloud provider. Syncthing syncs from desktop to phone when I’m home and I always have access to everything when I’m away.
There’s about 100GB of various photos, files, documents, notes I sync. Music collections can easily grow to significant sizes if you don’t use streaming services.
Have you thought about getting a homeserver? Immich is great service to selfhost for photos, paperless ngx is a very nice selfhosted document management system and there are several options for notes. If you use a VPN to connect you phone to your home network you don’t even have to expose any service to the general web.
I do have a homeserver for hosting stuff around the house. Unfortunately am not knowledgeable enough to be comfortable opening it to outside. And sometimes I mess around and bork it, meaning I would lose access to my things until I fix it.
My router has a great wireguard integration, that makes it pretty easy to tunnel into my home network. I don’t open it to the outside in any other way. But yeah, it does require some maintenance and a backup strategy. I bought an unraid license back when the lifetime ones were still cheap, that makes it pretty easy to work on overall.
You could look at doing a VPN only connection to your home server - some people use tailscale / headscale to achieve this but I’ve been happily using PiVPN on my home PiHole to provide full home server connectivity from anywhere for years.
my current, somewhat curated music library is almost 500 gb (mostly flac tbf), that i copied over to my phone, a fp4 with a 1tb sd
Impressive, though do you actually need to have it all with you at all times? I’ve been there, and ultimately having everything on me all the time wasn’t worth the other tradeoffs.
Does your no cloud policy extend to running a nextcloud instance on your own computer and pulling data over the network when necessary?
If that’s something you are willing to do, then I would go with the Pixel and just pull data from your nextcloud device when needed. I believe you can install nextcloud through Docker to make it super quick to update and deploy.
Kind of, it seems like a lot of extra work to keep that secure and up to date, esp with having access from outside. My current solution is just Syncthing desktop <-> phone and works exactly the way I want.
In that case, I’d probably go with the Fairphone 6, since you can get /e/OS on it by default, but you can also put lineage on it, if you wished.
Personally, I absolutely hate the /e/OS launcher. It reminds me too much of iOS. And I honestly hate it.
Personally, I absolutely hate the /e/OS launcher. It reminds me too much of iOS. And I honestly hate it.
You can install whatever launcher you want. No need to stay on the default (don’t like it either). One of my old phones has /e/os and I’m using Zim Launcher.
Nice that you can install a different launcher
You should be able to do it in all androids.
True, but ever since Android 10, third party launchers don’t work quite as well as they used to.
Thank you, yes, that does seem super convenient and in case /e/OS sucks I could change it to Lineage
So I wanted to make sure before you did so, and it turns out the Fairphone 6 is not as of yet on the lineage OS website as officially supported. So you might be stuck with sl/e/OS for now. I’m fairly certain the Fairphone 6 will get lineage. It just does not appear to have it yet. So you might either want to wait or consider buying the 5 instead, which already is supported for certain.
Good catch, thanks fo checking. Another comment also mentioned that the 5 is supported by CalyxOS. Means that there is a lot of choice of OS for the FP5, which is great
I believe these six will be supported. I just think it’s new enough that it hasn’t gotten official support yet.
Also, to the best of my knowledge CalyxOS is dead for the moment. I want to say the main developer who was working on it left and they said it would be like six months or something like that before they could get a new person.
Sony Xperia with Sailfish
Are the compatible Xperias new?
I have a Pixel 7 with GrapheneOS that used to be my daily driver. It’s nice, but I’m trying to move away from doing everything on an Android or iOS smartphone, so I’m going the multi-device route. I still use my Pixel for banking apps on wifi at home and as a Briar server.
I got a OnePlus 6 to install Linux on because it’s one of the more well-supported options and I got it on eBay for $80. It works okay, but doesn’t check enough boxes to replace any devices. I’m waiting on an MNT Pocket Reform computer that I hope can be a better, albeit more bulky option.
I got a Mudita Kompakt as my phone primarily because of the switch that can cut power to the GSM module and the 4-day battery life. It’s slow, but calling, texting, and Signal work fine on it. I use it with a $10/month 30GB/month T-Mobile data-only plan and a VoIP phone through JMP. chat.
I use a digital camera for photography and a Tangara music player.
I got a physical transit pass to not need a smartphone for that.
When the PocketMage kit becomes available, I hope to offload notes and calendar to that. I’m also playing with replacing other smartphone functionality with a Meshtastic or NomadNet bot hosted on a server at home combined with a T-Deck LoRa device for things like live transit schedules and weather forecasts.
It is a lot of different devices that take up a significantly larger volume and are heavier, but what I’ve found is that I don’t need all of them all of the time and more often than not I still just have the Mudita Kompakt in my pocket.
I’ve an old OP7T, with 512gb. Only thing is security is no longer updated. Installing Linux is fun, sure, but security is lacking because the hardware vendors no longer updates the drivers. Meaning big security holes. At least this is my understanding, or the thing could act as cloud storage, or at least local storage.
Thanks a bunch for this great overview. Looks like you keep up with open hardware. The multi-device route is something I’m considering as well, e.g. going to the gym with only an mp3 player, having a separate navigation device, etc.
The Tangara music player looks awesome, unfortunately they’re currently not available (according to this). Do you know of any other cool open hardware devices that are worth checking out?
Had a look at the Mudita Kompakt, never heard of it before. Love the idea of a minimalist eink phone. You say it’s slow, is that because of the eink display? Is it slow also when texting/using Signal or only when using more intensive apps? Do you know if the OS is open source? It looks like they have Mudita OS open sourced, but that it’s not used in the Mudita Kompakt.
Yeah I heard the Tangara team is taking a break. Hopefully they’ll start back up soon.
The other open hardware devices that I’m excited for are the Precursor once it gets more functionality and the Teufel MYND once it’s available in the US. There is, unfortunately, a lot of stuff out there that claims to be open hardware, but isn’t released under an open license or any license at all, and true open hardware end-user devices are few and far between.
The CPU on the Mudita Kompakt is a huge part of what makes it slow. There is definitely latency in Signal because of that. The OS is not open source and it’s pretty infuriating. There was an opportunity to create a device that the open source and security communitirs could rally around. Instead they decided to focus on pseudo-science and “wellness”, which is incredibly unfortunate.
Sony phones are supported by sailfish OS
Thank you, hadn’t considered Sailfish yet. Would you recommend it as a good OS?
I like it when I can get it to run on unsupported devices but I’ve never had an officially supported device.
If you pay for a license you get their android compatibility layer
Fairphone 5 with CalyxOS?
No updates, but you’ll have one of the best Android OSs, and a SD card slot.
Good point, CalyxOS I hadn’t considered yet. Would you say it’s comparable to GrapheneOS?
This is not the time to be considering Calyx - Calyx website
The simple fact is a Pixel + GOS will be the most secure option by far and is going to be the most frequently updated.
