Please write the 3 phone brands (in order please) which you think they bring the least number of third-party apps.
Notes:
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1- PrivacyGuides recommends Google Pixel. But it is not selling on my country. I can not bring it from other countries because it will not have warrant.
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2- We also don’t have fair-phone and nothing-phone (i can not bring it from another country).
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3- we only have: general-mobile, huawei, samsung, asus, tcl, htc, xiaomi, vivo, infinix, oneplus.
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4- please dont recomend custom ROM. Its technically difficult for me. Also I will recommend the device to my friend (they don’t have even an idead what is custom-rom)
You might want to take a look at Universal Android Debloater it may help, but not necessarily meet all your requirements.
This is very sound advise.
This is a bit of a pickle. Apart from Google, I think only Motorola and Nokia have stock-ish android. But they don’t have stellar software upgrade promises
There is a German manufacturer called GigaSet which does stock. I am rather happy with their GS5 phone and they even have a senior option if you want a not as smart smartphone for a parent.
I had no idea Gigaset manufactured cell phones. I have a set of their DECT home phones, and they are amazing. Have had them for over 6 years now.
I had a Galaxy Note 10 die on me after just a little over 2 years (such a shitty fucking phone) and then, swearing I would never pay so much for a phone again, switched to a Motorola Edge 30. It cost less than a third of the Samsung, and it even came without the bloating bullshit. Highly recommend it.
My Sony xz2c does have bloats installed, namely amazon and facebook. Don’t know what the state they’re in now tho.
OnePlus offers mostly stock android too
You mean other than forced Facebook and shit?
Amazon and Facebook app managers come preinstalled as System apps on so many android phones.
It’s a real pain in the ass, for sure.
In some cases adb can’t uninstall them, so even worse
It used to but oxygen OS is pretty far from stock now.
Warranties are practically useless, or I should say I find better value buying a 2 year old phone for a fraction of new. I can own three or four Pixel 5/6 for the cost of a new Pixel.
I prefer having a spare around. One dies, just swap Sim and move on.
Custom roms are significantly easier today, and you can buy phones with them pre-installed, e.g. Graphene, /e/, and Lineage. I’d look at those 3, noting that /e/ also provides some google-like convenience.
I don’t have bad experience with fairphone’s warranty. The part where I agree with you is that warranties don’t make sense for smartphones that are still functional. They become such an important part of our lived that parting with it for repaird is difficult.
General-mobile only makes phones with 10 years old hardware afaik. Asus is probably what you’re looking for. Huawei has fake ad icons on home screen by default which are not installed apps but still I don’t recommend them because they don’t have Play Store. Everything else will give you a lot of preinstalled 3rd party bloatware apps I think. Google Pixel or custom ROMs are the ways to go for lowest amount of pre-installed apps
Asus zen phone had received great reviews. You can use it as stock Android or with Asus’ slight customizations. It’s on the smaller side but it’s a good price.
Isn’t Asus disable the bootloader unlook and lost a case? I think I read this somewhere in Lemmy.
It was disabled on the 10, yes. ASUS promised to enable unlocking but last I checked (a few months ago) they still hadn’t done it.
You make it sound being small is bad when it’s the reason I bought it haha love not having a tablet for a phone!
i loved mine but 2 years from launch they stopped all updates. can’t recommend asus at all just for that reason. i havent tried custom roms because a couple years ago when i tried they all had weird issues
Pixel phones from Google are the cleanest.
Pixel phones ship the entire Google garbase.
Anyway, OP said can’t get a Pixel phone.
I appreciate OP has requirements. But as this discussion reaches a wider audience, it is absolutely necessary to indicate that pixel phones are the cleanest out of the box phone experience you can get. For all of the people who are not OP who are reading this.
The absolute cleanest experience is a pixel phone loaded with grapheneos, which isn’t hard to install - they have a website that does it all for you.
it is absolutely necessary to indicate that pixel phones are the cleanest out of the box phone experience you can get.
No they’re not. Have you actually bought a newer Pixel and used it without a custom ROM? They are loaded with extra Google applications and features now. It’s a very different experience to several years ago when everyone referred to Pixels as “stock” Android. Motorola phones have a more “stock” experience than Pixels now.
Motorola phones: asop + google + Motorola
Pixel phones: asop + google
Asop flashing pixel only: asop
How is the risk surface lower on a Motorola phone?
That’s not true, though. Motorola phones do not contain all the same Google features and applications as Pixels and the way in which their first-party applications are embedded in the OS is less significant than the way in which Google embeds theirs.
EDIT: Your risk surface question is also a strawman and shifting the goalposts. Neither myself nor OP made was making an argument about risk surface.
I see we are talking about very different things when we talk about bloat.
If Google play has super control of the phone I consider that bloat and a huge risk surface.
If Google play has super control of the phone
You are describing basically all phones, including Pixels. If you want to flash AOSP or some custom ROM, fine, but that’s not an “out of the box” experience as you originally claimed.
The cleanest out of the box would be a brand shipping AOSP or something closest to it. Maybe Nokia, I’m not sure.
Pixel phones do not ship third party apps other than Google apps.
If you want to install pure AOSP, the only pure AOSP builds I’m aware of are for Pixel phones. And you can install them here, clean without any Google proprietary stuff, just AOSP pure and simple.
From the docs:
https://source.android.com/docs/setup/test/flash#device-requirements
Pixel 2 and newer DragonBoard RB3 (also known as db845c) HiKey 960 HiKeyThat’s not “out of the box”.
It’s as close as you can get.
Then you should edit your original comment to reflect this.
you can’t have both privacy and total convenience
Take a look at https://lemmy.ml/post/13548401
Google Android comes with tons of bloat so custom roms are the simplest these days.
You can buy devices running /e/os last time I checked
So you’re posting on the privacy community. Point 4 makes things very difficult, as every smartphone by default ships with either Google apps or Apple apps pre-installed, both of which collect data and send them to their respective companies.
What is your threat model?
The only way to get away from Google or Apple is to install a custom ROM, and OnePlus currently has the best phones for that at the moment, not including Google or Fairphone phones, since they offer unlockable bootloaders. The 12R currently has an AOSP port for it, and the 12 has a WIP port that has yet to be released to the public (but can be compiled from source).
Keep it with smartphones like you would with every other computer: reinstall the preinstalled OS. Meaning in Android: a model that supports custom rom.
Btw, Samsung has probably the most, hum, custom vendor rom on their phones.
Latest samsung models are quite locked down (at least I dont see any custom ROM for them on xda) talking about high end ones
it will not have warrant.
No warrant will refund our privacy.
Its technically difficult for me. Also I will recommend the device to my friend (they don’t have even an idead what is custom-rom)
You think we were born knowing it?
Nokia ? I have an XR20. Doubles as a GPS etc on the front of my bicycle, its great, has a headphone jack and SD expansion.
I am not that familair with their lineup though there is an XR21 I think? And a bunch of other models.
I’ve read on several websites that Nokia comes with pretty much stock Android.
Motorola as well. Either way, stock android is very intertwined with Google bullshittery, making a degoogled ROM like DivestOS or GrapheneOS necessary for proper privacy from google. A privacy respecting ROM won’t fix relience on google apps though.
On Xiaomi it’s very easy to remove whatever you want without rooting. Here’s a 3:30 min video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_rqhoMpr_Y
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=3_rqhoMpr_Y
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
