A community for those that would like to get away from Google.
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Ive been using google's services since 2017-2018, now its time to finally depart from that. I just got it in the mail yesterday and I'm already in love with it. So much lighter and easier to carry than my samsung galaxy. Gonna transfer everything over in a sim card, switch to Tmobile and ill be good to go. ๐
If you go to Teracubes website, getting the degoogled version of this phone was only 50 USD more then the regular android version they have, which is nothing in comparison of how much these Linux phones, preinstalled degoogled phones and even dumphones are being sold for. And that too, the tinkering is not easy like most make it out to be, unless you get a Pixel to install Graphene OS (which is what im realizing that most use on here)
Getting this phone lessened the headache by a landslide, and it's the most affordable without spending an arm and leg on a dam phone that might not even work properly (Linux phones) , a phone that is just to expensive (dumbphone), or finding out your tinkering with the wrong model device or completely brick a phone ( I can personally say this is what happened to me when I tried to degoogled my Unihertz Jelly Star)
Again, like I had to tell someone else, not everyone on here is super tech savy. And there's gonna be more people like that coming here, especially with what's going on with Reddit.
That's 2 weeks worth of groceries (at least where I am from), what the hell man.
You are probably thinking of the devkits. The community has mostly moved on to getting existing devices to run their favorite distribution. Which is mostly for fun's sake, since pretty much everyone has a desktop computer with the same. The community is tiny since it's right in between "modern day smartphones are a necessity" and "Android isn't open enough", anywhere below and above (incl. spectrums) are unlikely to think of getting desktop Linux on a phone.
(??)
I keep stating this and I will state it again. An MT62xxx nugget costs ~10 USD new online OR ~4 USD old new stock at the closest to me bazaar. OR ask relatives if they have a keypad phone in a drawer somewhere, you will probably get it for FREE and it will have quite a lot more functionality and homebrew (not exactly a "dumbphone", more like a "smartphone" but by 2000s definitions).
Well, I personally wouldn't consider it difficult. If you happen to get a phone that allows proper bootloader lock of course (bypassing gets more complicated, not end of the world most of the time). See here and there.
Ask friends. If you don't have any, I can volunteer to remote into your computer and do the thing, actually.
Do you still have it? Should be relatively easy to unbrick that nugget.
Unihertz Jelly Star
I still have it but don't use it. After going through that with Canta and Shizuku, I factory reset the whole thing. There's this weird glitch on Canta where you can't download the apps you uninstalled, which was what I needed to do to get it working again, but I couldn't do it.
Now the dumbphone community is interesting, it teaters on the line of the period before smartphones and let's get away from the addiction of smartphones. Basically modernized flip phones, T9 phones and even some bringing back the Blackberry. But most are to limited in their features and are very pricy.
And that link, with the "dumb phones" that has to do with Nokia's I believe?? They're unfortunately unusable in the US because we got rid of 2G between 2017-2020 and 3G in 2022; with the 4G model, you can't even buy them here. So all of those phones are basically collectables. Yes cheap but once again, unavailable. The phone market here is heavily monopolized.
What about the FuriOS phone?
I think that market is slowly changing cause you can find some phones that actually are build to run like a phone but the problems that have appeared are compatibility issues like calling/texting or running apps that are needed for some (banking apps).
Don't bother, there's still Unihertz's spyware in there. LineageOS and derivatives are buildable as generic images that use the OEM drivers, reported working on that specific device. It's a complete pain to build but some random people publish premade files, see here (get the first "Vanilla EXT4") and here. More options there.
There's a manual specifically for the Unihertz Jelly Star here. Although the download link there is outdated and the MicroG instructions are also outdated (follow the official ones instead).
If you don't want to use the phone, may as well give it to a comrade locally that wants it.
Sad. Although there should be modern bricks with 4G that aren't too expensive, usually marketed as "for grandparents".
There are other phone manufacturers than Nokia. Always have been. Shocking, I know.
EDIT: looked around and the ones with reasonable prices are usually the carrier contract ones from the carrier store and carrier prepaid ones from literal grocery stores :/
Never heard of it.