Android without google?
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@pie_flavor Ah. You appear to be correct, though it took me some digging to find. I initially could only find ones to allow bluetooth or wired headsets the ability to use it through the device being locked, but I was able to find one that's labeled "Unlock with Voice Match". It appears to be off by default.
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@e4tmyl33t Yup. Imagine if someone could just bypass your password by saying 'Hey Google'.
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@pie_flavor said in Android without google?:
@e4tmyl33t Yup. Imagine if someone could just bypass your password by saying 'Hey Google'.
Ah. Better check Samsung's defaults after the next update. Sounds like something they'd do.
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I told google play to only do updates on wifi. When there is an update for the play store application, it thinks itself is too special to repect this setting and downloads it on mobile anyway, wasting my data.
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@sockpuppet7 said in Android without google?:
wasting my data
Protip: When you use your data posting here, you don't get it back by deleting your post. ;)
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@hardwaregeek said in Android without google?:
@sockpuppet7 said in Android without google?:
wasting my data
Protip: When you use your data posting here, you don't get it back by deleting your post. ;)
EU quickly takes note. Begins writing new laws to make ISPs give data back.
Edit: Oh wait, the Bad Ideas thread is
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Ok, so I switched to android...
For the minimum-google goal, I had different approaches ready and I was going to try them from best to worst, but the first one worked, so I'm set for the time being.
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Skip attaching google account at initial setup.
There were no apocalyptic warnings that nothing will work, just constant nagging to setup the account at every step. 'Oh hai, while you're at it, how about setting up google account? ' No, fuck off, I answered 20 times already. Also Play Store crashed every 2 minutes while installing some stuff, which was worrying, but it turns out it installs everything just fine. -
Install apps without Play Store.
I downloaded everything I wanted with apk downloader. Installation was painless. Everything works fine. -
Substitute google apps.
Mail - builtin already, Contacts - Outlook, Drive - OneDrive, Chrome - Opera/Firefox, Maps - Here, Tasks - Todoist, Photos - don't remember, Music - Musicolet/Black Player/Spotify, Notes - OneNote, Search - DuckDuckGo, Docs - Word/Excel -
Settings and permissions.
Fucking hell. It took me 2 days to set things up properly and take away permissions from stuff I don't want. I still have some stuff to configure.
Gains.
Google free to extent I'm happy about. No useless notifications, only when I get text/email/etc. No app updates, but system updates work.Tradeoffs.
Or rather "tradeoffs" in my case. No system backup - never used it. No 'find my device' - never used it. No app updates - that's good. No google ecosystem 'convenience' - that's very good.
The only thing I may possibly miss at some point is that currently I have no way of installing payed apps, but I don't use any, so not a problem for now.As for the system itself, it's a mess. No standard for anything, every app behaves differently. Settings are a clusterfuck. Some UI solutions are just laughable when coming from Windows Phone.
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@scarlet_manuka said in Android without google?:
Background data restricted
Touch to remove restriction.And yet, when I turned my data connection on a couple of days ago, I suddenly got notifications from two apps that I hadn't explicitly been running. So this appears to do very little in practice; I've turned it off again. If I have to have background apps using data, I may as well get rid of the annoying permanent warning.
I have noticed that the data connection seems to be stuck for a lot less time now that I told GMail to stop syncing to my account, so that was probably the main culprit in terms of unwanted data usage.
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@mrl said in Android without google?:
As for the system itself, it's a mess. No standard for anything, every app behaves differently. Settings are a clusterfuck. Some UI solutions are just laughable when coming from Windows Phone.
almost like google stuff is better than non-google stuff
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@pie_flavor said in Android without google?:
@mrl said in Android without google?:
As for the system itself, it's a mess. No standard for anything, every app behaves differently. Settings are a clusterfuck. Some UI solutions are just laughable when coming from Windows Phone.
almost like google stuff is better than non-google stuff
Bullshit. The Google stuff is just as bad for that.
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@loopback0 No, it's definitely all got consistent UI and settings.
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@scarlet_manuka said in Android without google?:
@scarlet_manuka said in Android without google?:
Background data restricted
Touch to remove restriction.And yet, when I turned my data connection on a couple of days ago, I suddenly got notifications from two apps that I hadn't explicitly been running. So this appears to do very little in practice; I've turned it off again. If I have to have background apps using data, I may as well get rid of the annoying permanent warning.
I have noticed that the data connection seems to be stuck for a lot less time now that I told GMail to stop syncing to my account, so that was probably the main culprit in terms of unwanted data usage.
Emails and things will still arrive with background data turned off. There's different categories of data.
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@pie_flavor said in Android without google?:
Emails and things will still arrive with background data turned off. There's different categories of data.
Well, in my case at least the emails don't, because I told GMail to stop syncing to my account, which has made a noticeable difference.
Is there anywhere I can find out about these different categories of data? A quick search didn't turn up anything useful.
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@scarlet_manuka All I know is some stuff gets through, and some stuff doesn't, and the stuff that does get through, I'm happy it got through.
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@pie_flavor said in Android without google?:
almost like google stuff is better than non-google stuff
What does Google pay you? Like, are you moonlighting or is it enough to make ends meet on its own?
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@blakeyrat They "pay" me in shit that actually works most of the time, which is a grand luxury these days.
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@pie_flavor said in Android without google?:
@blakeyrat They "pay" me in shit that actually works most of the time, which is a grand luxury these days.
Are you alluding to terrible quality of certain forum software?
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@mrl said in Android without google?:
@pie_flavor said in Android without google?:
@blakeyrat They "pay" me in shit that actually works most of the time, which is a grand luxury these days.
Are you alluding to terrible quality of certain forum software?
No, just software in general.
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@pie_flavor said in Android without google?:
@lorne-kates If you can find a way to root a Verizon-locked Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, I'm all ears.
- use google and end up here in 2.5 seconds: https://forum.xda-developers.com/verizon-s7-edge/how-to/root-method-nougat-t3566978
- Don't buy a locked phone.
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@doctorjones said in Android without google?:
I have recently been thinking about this. I've been trying to resist doing this for years, just so I can stay officially supported.
I've had my phone over a year, so I suppose I could try taking the plunge.How long is the warranty and do you actually care?
(Plus in most cases, unless your phone is Very Ded, you can roll back to stock before sending it off for support)
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@pie_flavor said in Android without google?:
@e4tmyl33t said in Android without google?:
At least that's how it works on my Pixel 2 XL.
You seem to have missed where I said 'Samsung' three times.
I'm very good at ignoring Samsung.
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@pie_flavor said in Android without google?:
@blakeyrat They "pay" me in shit that actually works most of the time, which is a grand luxury these days.
Wait, I thought you said you were using Android?
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@lorne-kates said in Android without google?:
@pie_flavor said in Android without google?:
@e4tmyl33t said in Android without google?:
At least that's how it works on my Pixel 2 XL.
You seem to have missed where I said 'Samsung' three times.
I'm very good at ignoring Samsung.
And I wasn't talking to you.
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@lorne-kates said in Android without google?:
@pie_flavor said in Android without google?:
@blakeyrat They "pay" me in shit that actually works most of the time, which is a grand luxury these days.
Wait, I thought you said you were using Android?
Yes, and was talking about Google stuff. What, you think Google stuff is better on iPhone or something?
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@lorne-kates said in Android without google?:
@doctorjones said in Android without google?:
I have recently been thinking about this. I've been trying to resist doing this for years, just so I can stay officially supported.
I've had my phone over a year, so I suppose I could try taking the plunge.How long is the warranty and do you actually care?
(Plus in most cases, unless your phone is Very Ded, you can roll back to stock before sending it off for support)
You've convinced me. I'll have to give it a try.
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@lorne-kates said in Android without google?:
(Plus in most cases, unless your phone is Very Ded, you can roll back to stock before sending it off for support)
I believe since the S3, they've been putting in an eFuse that gets blown if you root the phone (flash the recovery partition through fastboot). So even if you flash back to stock, they'll refuse warranty service. I remember it took me two and a half days or so to develop an exploit to root it without blowing the fuse.
After that I stopped buying Samsung, because they're clearly working for the carriers now and don't give a single shit about the consumer.