I’m using a Pixel 6 Pro right now, and I’m looking around to see if there are any good phones. However, I have heard that there are ads in the newer flagship phones (Samsung, Xiaomi). I am willing to spend around USD$750 on a new phone, but I just don’t want any crazy ads or preinstalled apps like Facebook. Are there phones that don’t suck nowadays? I can buy a phone that is sold in the US, Canada, or EU.
(I don’t want to go through menus to disable ads (Xiaomi), and I’m currently looking at phones other than the Pixel lineup to see if there’s a better option for me)
(I also don’t want to mess around with custom bootloaders/systems, I rely on Google services way too much)
EDIT: If it wasn’t clear enough, I am not looking for things like GrapheneOS or LineageOS or others, I am looking for a phone and judging based on the stock system on it.
Q: what’s a nice phone to buy? I don’t want to go through menus
A: flash graphene os
Cmon lemmy
Or Lineage, or DivestOS (a fork of Lineage).
Sounds pretty sweet to me… got a dialer with built in call recording.
I can install a 3rd party app store without moving to the EU and waiting 4 more years.
You can Dee-Google it by hacking the matrix with some ASOPs and pay $7 a month for a proton mail account while crying into your open office.
Run some McAafs
feey antivirus for that hit of early 90’s nostalgia, or Norton if you’re really old and miss the 80’s ;-)Firefox with a real uBlock plugin would be pretty sweet? Do they have that working yet?
I’m thinking pay-as-you-go burner but… oh right, android smart phone… I’m old and forgot what I was doing for a second.
I really can’t tell if this is a joke or not (I’m not mad), but don’t third-party app stores have almost all of the features as of the Play Store? F-Droid has the ability to automatically update apps silently, I think.
It’s both, I think we should all have the ability to easily record a phone call on the hardware we pay for.
But I feel like both platforms need to do better with security. Apple pretends their shit doesn’t stink and google says play at your own risk… and Israel says I’ll do that for a dollar 🤑
Try librewolf for browsing it’s a privacy oriented fork of firefox and I have ublock on it also I suggest nextdns for ad and tracker blocking on your whole phone and even router
I’ll give it a look. I generally just use Firefox and uBlock when I have a choice.
I’m running Techtinium right now for DNS privacy, any killer features in NextDNS that made you pick it?
Sorry, as I was corrected in another comment, I meant Mull not Librewolf. Librewolf is on my PC and Mull on android. I also use an iPhone in which case I have the Orion browser from Kagi…
I think techtinium is a self hosted solution if I’m not mistaken? Not really heard much of it so if it fits your needs then great. I like nextdns because I don’t want to self host my private dns and it is easy to setup and monitor for all my devices and provides a lot of lists to easily choose what I want to block on what devices. For example I have a different profile for my kids with parental control. Medium for the wife so that her internet browsing isnt distupted and strict tracker blocking for myself because I don’t mind things not working.
Oh okay, that’s pretty cool. I don’t think Techtinium can do per-device settings at all, and (obviously) only works on my home WiFi. And the bulk of the DNS requests are just passed to cloudflare, so it’s better than using my ISP, but only by a bit.
I love librewolf too but there is no mobile version. And don’t say mull because that refresh rate makes it unusable.
Oh yes I’m sorry I meant mull! Didn’t realise there was a refresh rate issue until you said it. Is there any alternative you recommend?
I would use mull if they only increased that refresh rate. But as it is now, I use Firefox on mobile in the strictest tracking protection mode and UBO.
So it turns out you can fix the refresh rate if you disable resist fingerprinting. However, mull advises you not to do that, and not knowing much about it I learnt online the following details and now I prefer a lower refresh rate to disabling it -
“Resist Fingerprinting” is a privacy feature that can be found in various web browsers, including Mull Browser, which is a fork of Firefox focused on privacy. This feature aims to make users less identifiable and trackable across websites by minimizing the amount of information browsers reveal about users and their devices.
Web fingerprinting involves collecting details about a user’s browser and device, such as screen resolution, operating system, installed fonts, and browser extensions, to create a unique identifier for tracking purposes. Each piece of information might seem benign on its own, but collectively, they can create a detailed profile that can uniquely identify a user, even in the absence of cookies or traditional tracking methods.
When “Resist Fingerprinting” is enabled, the browser attempts to reduce this uniqueness by:
- Providing websites with less detailed information or more generic information about the browser and the device.
- Limiting or altering the behavior of web APIs that can be used to gather unique information about the device or its user.
- Adjusting the content of HTTP headers to be less revealing or more uniform across users.
By doing so, Mull Browser and other browsers that offer this feature help protect users’ privacy and make it more difficult for advertisers, analytics companies, and other third parties to track users across the web without their consent. However, it’s important to note that while “Resist Fingerprinting” enhances privacy, it may also cause some websites to behave differently or break certain functionalities that rely on the information it restricts.
Thank you for your effort, but I honestly already knew all this. What I want to know is why one couldn’t simply report 60hz to fingerprinters while, in reality, maintaining the highest possible rate in the browser.
I don’t want to turn off resist fingerprinting but that refresh rate ruins the browser for me.
Samsung completely blocking the ability to record calls in their US phones really annoys the shit out of me. Outside of rooting and installing a custom rom they just didn’t leave a way to do it.
I live in Canada and screen recording a phone call with audio doesn’t work, and the option that seems to be in the phone app for India isn’t on my phone, even though Canada is a one-person call recording policy country.
So gay.
Same with Apple AFIK, though I think it’s broadly true… I think the legal theory here is that if you make an illegal call regarding that the company has aided your crime and could be culpable… but I’m not a lawyer, I just play one on TV 😎
But it’s standard in other countries and legal in most states. It should just come with a warning on legality and give you the choice. It’s legal to buy a Ford that’s able to do 120 down a residential street, but Ford won’t get in trouble if I plaster a 10 year old when I do it.
Yeah… this is where the  “play one on TV” part comes in. This is the standard explanation for why they don’t support call recording, but it’s always felt like it was missing something to me 🤔
I wasn’t aware that it was standard functionality everywhere else… now I like my country even less! There have even been a handful of (usually paid) services that try to get around it; running the speakerphone and audio recorder simultaneously was my favorite, but there were subscription VoIP solutions with call recording, $80 Bluetooth answering device with onboard recording.
Either Samsung has a compelling legal reason, a clearly identified financial incentive, or they would just rather make more bloat nobody wants? Is it Google? Have they locked all US phones… can’t be because people import them occasionally.
IDK… I’d love to hear theories. 
I dunno what samsung has behind blocking it off, but in some countries like India it’s just a simple setting to turn on in the settings menu under phone calls. You just click it to turn on and record calls. The option is just removed for some countries like the US.
Weird. Got to be some financial motivation then. I’m going to research it more now that I know it’s a stock option in some markets… Thanks :-)
Too old to know what a telemarketer is?
The nice lady who plugs the connections at the post office would give a telemarketer a stern talking-to and that’s that.
My friend’s parents still have the same landline they had when we were kids, and the phone is always off the hook now. They said it rings all day long with calls from telemarketers. Pretty lame that’s legal.
Too isolated to have used a modern phone that receives dozens of spam calls a day? They give telemarketers a run for their money.
Why do you feel the need to change phones? Pixel 6 Pro should still be plenty good enough.
If its stock ROM bothers you, you’re in luck because Pixels are surprisingly hackable and it’s very easy these days.
See i.e.: https://grapheneos.org/
No need to worry about Google services, they work: https://grapheneos.org/usage#sandboxed-google-playYep, Pixel is the best phone to get the most Google free experience for those that seek it.
Depends on your usecase and your country of living. Why do I say so? I will name my 2 points:
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Lack of sd card. Yes I need my sd card, I don’t want to upload stuff online on a 400kbps connection or download on a 16mbps connection. It’s not a good experience.
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Not officially sold in my country, only available rarelly in resellers for 200+ euro more than normally.
Pixel has a Trusted Protection Module like computers with secure boot. No phone hardware in existence is documented at the hardware level. This is how planned obsolescence is created and why you have to buy a new phone every few years.
With a TPM chip it becomes possible to run signed and secured code on top of untrusted hardware and underlying software. Without this, your security is very limited in practice. Graphene OS is verifiably secure and only runs what you put on it.
The entire Android system is designed for people to use when they have no clue how to secure a device themselves and when they are far too incompetent to learn. The way this is done is to delegate a lot of permissions to app developers. This gives a lot of freedom to the apps you run. They can exploit the hell out of you within their little sandbox of vague permissions. Graphene does everything possible to limit what is happening in the background and the exploitations. It is default privacy.
I do not purchase phones as hardware any more. I don’t care what is sold by any of the exploitation clowns. I shop for my ROM and buy a device that is well supported by that project. I’ve owned several Graphene OS devices and am happy with them. I had a Lineage device I liked too awhile back.
That’s all fine and dandy, but when it outright doesn’t have features you wan’t, and costs in most cases double your wage it just doesn’t pay off.
What does this have to do with what they said?
Fairphone is also quite hackable. Hard to get in the US, only distributor is Murena. In Europe they’re pretty easy to find from what I hear. Sd exists but you need to power cycle the phone to access it so maybe not your best bet. Still, if I need to transfer stuff quickly USBC is really fast.
Too bad I live in the tech shithole called croatia where fairphones are even rarer then pixel’s here.
Well, for the use-case described (“most google free”), Pixel is it.
Now, if you wanna lay down some other requirements, then its a different use-case.
I connect my Pixel 8 to my PC with a USB a to USB c cable. Plenty fast.
I bought it from google, off their website. On sale.
Thats nice, but google doesn’t sell them here like I said, we only have them on resellers sometimes. For example there is pixel 6 pro here sold for 600+ euro on a reseller, while there is no other pixel available rn in the country at all.
That’s true, but I was just talking about the best phone to get for a Google free experience. Stuff like pricing, specific features, or availability is another matter. Like it someone asks what is the best consumer available GPU VR gaming to get people would say 4090. Since unless they ask about price and availability they are just asking about hardware.
And this person already has a Pixel. So availability or price isn’t an issue for them.
I live in Canada, and the Pixel non-pro phones seem to sell at a normal price for me (I still don’t want to overspend on a pro model) I’m also really in the Google ecosystem right now, so I can’t leave and install custom systems and disable Play Services. I’ve also never heard of the Pixel’s being out of stock here.
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I have already said that I don’t want to deal with custom bootloaders/systems. I’m also just looking at phones (and by extension phone companies) to see whether I should stay with Google in the future, or switch to a different brand.
How about phones sold preinstalled with a custom rom?
I don’t see any ads on a non-rooted Samsung.
If you’re seeing ads, its because you’re using apps that deliver ads.
Google services still work on Graphene, Lineage and DivestOS. With Graphene they run in a sandbox, with DivestOS they run in a user context.
I’ve done all of them. My google stuff works fine.
Or the phone’s been infected with adware.
I don’t see any ads on a non-rooted Samsung.
If you’re seeing ads, its because you’re using apps that deliver ads.Wow, that’s interesting, I’ve actually been avoiding Samsung, because I’d heard there were sooo many ads even on top models.
I can see you have a decent amount of upvotes, so I guess that means it’s probably true.But does no ads include not nagging about Samsung services? AFAIK Samsung has many Google equivalent services they advertise.
I’ve read that the FairPhone comes with a standard, vanilla Android OS on it, no bloatware. I cannot say if it’s true, but you could have a look at the FairPhone forums and see what people think of the OS.
I know you don’t want to tinkle with the bootloader et al., but if you’re willing to try a different OS without the hassle: it is posible to buy a FairPhone with /e/OS or iodéOS preinstalled.
As the owner of a Fairphone, this is indeed my experience. The only non-standard app is the Fairphone app, which is easily ignored or might even be useful.
I’ve read that the FairPhone comes with a standard, vanilla Android OS on it, no bloatware.
So does the Pixel.
This isn’t true, the OS on pixel phones has pixel exclusives, which are not part of AOSP. It’s certainly closer, but not strictly AOSP.
Such as?
I’m currently using a Moto Edge 30 Ultra it’s basically completely AOSP Android the only stuff that’s pre-installed are the Moto Apps that are actually useful for the phone which also don’t have any ads and the phone has way better performance than all my stupid Samsung Exynos phones. So Motorola would be very good for what you’re looking for. If you don’t want to go with Motorola though I would recommend Sony or Fairphone.
I’m on a pixel 6a, I swapped out my DNS server to dns.adguard-dns.com and now I don’t get ads on any app or game I use, excluding YouTube (which I use very rarely).
Just taking the YouTube app off my home screen and replacing it with a Firefox shortcut has done wonders for my sanity. It’s really disorienting now, when I follow a YouTube link that opens up the app. All of a sudden it’s all ads and shorts and sponsors.
I’ve got a 6a and I ended up rolling my own DoT server so that it would adblock, but also resolve to servers in my own country.
I also moved to GrapheneOS. The only Google stuff that broke was Google Wallet’s tap payment thing. Reportedly even Android Auto is supported now.
Oh - my kid just got a Motorola G84. It was a very cheap handset for 12GB RAM and no ads so far. Very close to stock Android too.
Motorola seems to be a good choice for me, then.
I’m using a Motorola Edge 30 Pro that I got 18 months ago. I’m very impressed with it. It’s got flagship CPU performance, and long batter life. Good screen, decent camera, and NO ADs.
Is it really? The hold up for me switching to Graphene has definitely been android auto compatibility. That’s huge.
Do you use the Stock operating system? If yes, I highly recommend you to check out GrapheneOS.
ELI5 swapping the DNS? (I know what it is, but thought that wasn’t possible on the device.)
I believe you just add that to your network settings for private dns.
Go to settings - network & Internet - scroll down to see Private DNS and add a DNS of your choice like dns.adguard-dns.com.
Worked for me so far as I use pihole on WiFi at home but now not seeing adds on mobile data like I used to.
Update, this will override all DNS settings it seems. Just did a test at home and it now points to this DNS vs my pihole. If someone knows a better way, please lmk otherwise I’ll poke around more.
Tried that. We’ll see if it works!
Unfortunately, there isn’t one, since it’s working as intended, short of pointing the phone DNS and Pihole to the same servers.
You’re overriding the DNS of the phone to point to the new server, and it will prioritise that over asking the router for one, like it might otherwise do if there wasn’t one configured.
Got it, that makes sense. Just wasn’t sure if Android had an option to only update per radio/device/adapter like you can in Windows and Linux.
For now, I’ll just switch it when I’m on the go. Thank you!
Pixel 6 Pro+GrapheneOS is my choice. Finding apps that dont need google play services is tough, but doable. Its insane how much of the android app ecosystem relies on google play services, especially for push notifications.
Well…since Google is primarily an Ad company…
I just plug into the Private DNS settings dns.adguard-dns.com and run ad free. As for bloat- mine was infested with Facebook and other apps preloaded by Samsung, but it was easy enough to remove by long pressing and deleting it. They fortunately didn’t make them system apps.
With that said, if you are handy with android-tools such as ADB, you can place your phone in debug mode and issue adb commands to disable system apps. Pretty easy once you get the hang of it.
I’ve been happily running cheap Nokia phones for the last couple of years. It’s vanilla Android with very little bloat, no ads and years of security updates.
Either keep using your current phone and install GrapheneOS or get a newer Pixel and flash Graphene. It’s the best mobile operating system you can find. It doesn’t come with any ads, trackers, bloatware, or any other annoying shit. It’s just pure Android with many privacy and security improvements.
I have already said that I don’t want to deal with custom bootloaders/systems.
It’s really not hard, it takes 10 minutes and the entire installation process can be completed from nothing more than your web browser. https://youtube.com/watch?v=L1KZWjZVnAw
Any with good hardware as long as you can switch to stable and community-made ROMs.
I am still loving my Pixel 6 Pro. Other than installing AdGuard, or just change your DNS, I pretty much use it as is. I turned off all the Google home or whatever that thing was to the left. Take a minute and go through your installed apps and turn off notifications for things you don’t want or just uninstall. I don’t think you could ever convince me to buy a Samsung again.
My only gripe is the size and how the camera sticks out. The battery life is great, I have plenty of space locally, and I can wirelessly charge my earbuds with it if I want.
You want your Pixel 6 pro to be bigger or smaller?
A little smaller as it is a little “tall”, but I otherwise love this thing. The uneven back (or something else?) makes it difficult to consistently work with the wireless charging pad in the car.
You can disable all the bloateware on any phone using an universal adb/fastboot debloater script on xda.
Does not need root access.
My recommendation is FairPhone. Check specs before buying. It’s only a mid range CPU.
The mentioned debloater script is found here:
https://github.com/0x192/universal-android-debloater#how-to-use-itThis is the list of apps the debloater script uses:
https://github.com/0x192/universal-android-debloater/blob/main/resources/assets/uad_lists.json
I bought the Zenfone 10 for those reasons and I’m pretty happy with it. I’m not going to buy a Samsung again.
The Zenfone looks really nice. I’m going to have to skip it though, because it’s just too small. (Hopefully they make a 6" screen version)
