this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2026
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DeGoogle Yourself

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So, I just learned about this the very, very hard way. After buying a second hand S10 and finding american ones can't be unlocked, traveling 4 hours to buy another one after much research, much annoyances to unlock it (samsung requires you to be online, which I didn't know) and testing multiple ROMs, I finally read this page more properly https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/beyond1lte/ which says "known quirks: IMS". I thought it was just something like dolby sound.

What it means is that it doesn't suport VoLTE and most currently used phone systems. Samsung made their proprietary mess, unlike most other developers, which means it will probably never have an open source version.

And that applies to ALL modern samsung phones. I had samsung phone before with a custom OS, but didn't realize because VoLTE wasn't mandatory back then. Now it is here in Australia, and many countries. So if you ever plan to buy a samsung phone to degoogle it, know that it won't make phone calls. SMS and mobile data also doesn't work.

I don't know how I missed this. It should be talked more often given how popular samsung is. There should always be a warning "YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO MAKE PHONE CALLS IN THE FUTURE IF YOU CONTINUE".

S10 was the last decent phone ever made (for me). Not too big, SD card, headphone jack (one of the most important things for me), good camera, etc, etc... That's why I was so persistent to find one to degoogle.

So I'm stuck with my amazingly shitty pixel 5 (and other ones are even worse for me). And considering the possibility of a life without smartphones at all, since this is a losing battle. Mainstream doesn't care and evil companies have every incentive to kill freedom. It has been getting really bad and it will just get worse. But anyway... this post is not about this.

Be warned, if you care about freedom don't ever buy samsung again. Not because they are evil (they are), but because you won't be able to make phone calls on your "phone".

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[–] john_t@piefed.ee 9 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (3 children)

New hosts/adblock/pihole/adguard filter/rule:

#GOOGLE===============================  
0.0.0.0 google.com  
0.0.0.0 googleusercontent.com  
0.0.0.0 googleapis.com  
0.0.0.0 gstatic.com  
0.0.0.0 android.com  
0.0.0.0 google-analytics.com  
0.0.0.0 googlehosted.com  
0.0.0.0 googletagmanager.com  
0.0.0.0 googleadservices.com  
0.0.0.0 pki.goog  

Phone now degoogled.

[–] guismo@aussie.zone 1 points 9 hours ago

That won't get rid of the google/samsung crap constantly running on your phone and trying to phone home.

I tried on the american s10. Most unnecessary google and samsung stuff is disabled or blocked. The phone hangs on almost everything. Every time you try to open something, do something, it hangs. It becomes unusable. Spyware is an integral part of modern mainstream systems.

[–] non_burglar@lemmy.world 3 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

You don't sign in to your phone, like straight lineage with no microg?

[–] ozymandias117@lemmy.world 2 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Not OP, but for me, yeah

Almost all apps come from F-Droid, with two apps from Aurora that I needed for work

Why would I sign into a proprietary network for a computing device?

[–] non_burglar@lemmy.world 3 points 13 hours ago

I was just checking, I think a lot of ppl forget how tightly integrated the google+android thing is.

[–] inari@piefed.zip 4 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

Do you use this yourself? I wonder how much stuff breaks if you use it.

Also YouTube URLs are conspicuously missing...

[–] Krauerking@lemy.lol 3 points 19 hours ago

As someone that has a similar list but not exactly that... A lot. A lot of stuff breaks but! You don't see ads in shitty mobile games anymore.

Another thing you find is how many links go through a google analytics or seems to be sponsored

[–] john_t@piefed.ee 1 points 17 hours ago

Indeed it breaks everything. I've only it tried it for a couple of days. It's just an extreme example of degoogling. But if you wish to really degoogle, this would be a small part of the effort. The list is mostly what I picked up of google apps calling home in the background in my phone. I didn't include youtube because I don't have the youtube app installed on my phone, so it's not calling home.