Kind of irrelevant but nice album choice
this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2026
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DeGoogle Yourself
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Thanksπ. Its my favorite out of all of her albums, especially with seeing her live last month for opening for Evanescence. Such an amazing band.
Yo, nice, I got to see them live, too! Such a sick show, awesome band, can't wait till they swing by my neck of the woods again.
T-Mobile isnβt the place to switch to. They went evil.
The US is evil.
Unfortunately, they're the only phone company that we have in the states that accept phones like this. Even with what's going on with the dumbphone and Linux phones market, only choice you have is Tmobile or a carrier that is own by T-Mobile.
I've had good luck with US Mobile so far
They use a combination of ATT, Verizon and T-Mobile networks. Will still look into them of course and see if its worth it.
I just bought a pixel10 that I intend to override with grapheneOS.
I thought thats an easy way to de-google. Isn't it?
It is (so far) but I wanted a phone with a SD card slot. Pixels don't have that and also I just don't want a pixel.
Ok, then that makes total sense. :)
I was just worried there was something undesirable about my choice.
Erm, I hope you didn't know that someone literally just ran a few commands on an off the shelf phone and increased the price tag.
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.
50 USD
That's 2 weeks worth of groceries (at least where I am from), what the hell man.
Linux phones
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.
dumbphone
(??)
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).
not everyone on here is super tech savy
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.
bricked (...) Unihertz Jelly Star
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).
Canta
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.
in the US (...) we got rid of 2G
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 :/
FuriOS
Never heard of it.
Some people just don't like tinkering, or trust themselves enough to do that, and that's okay.
If I had a job I'd buy a One Plus direct from China and put LineageOS on it. I don't need to relock the bootloader since my phone is mainly for browsing and text/calls (no important private stuff). I don't even log into Lemmy on my phone because the PC experience is superior.
Recently I got rid of WhatsApp (now fully deleted my account) plus I removed Signal. My battery life is incredible now. I don't even fast-charge cos I'm too poor and my phone doesn't support any worth-while fast charger anyway! Next step is to get LineageOS and get rid of Google Play Services. Even more performance and battery saving.
Lots of caveats there. To preface, most active rom development used to take place on forums, mainly XDA. Nowadays it's on telegram, which is gated unfortunately, so lot's of knowledge get lost.
First, you NEED to be able to unlock your bootloader to be able to install custom ROMs. Here is a source
Back to hardware, recent chinese bought Xiaomi are nearly impossible to unlock bootloader without paying a 3rd party. EU/Global ones can be unlocked, but it's a hassle (waiting 30 days + need to have windows). That makes finding device tree for them hard let alone, finding ROMs.
Oneplus unfortunately is getting worse. Op13 onwards has hardware ARB (which Will brick your device). OP15 onwards has a bit complex way to unlock bootloader.
If you buy it from China, it must be ColorOS version otherwise, you won't be able to unlock the bootloader. Even with COS, you need to install an app to get an unlock token from their server to allow you to unlock the bootloader (this for now, takes 24 hrs max, but this might change and could be like Xiaomi). The Global/EU ones, are fine for now.
Remember you need to have the device tree (basically all the recipes for the hardware of the device to get it to work with other ROMs). Google used to publish this for Pixels, that's why it used to be easy to build ROMs for Pixel. This has changed recently.
So it's getting gloomy for Android devices. I just wish Fairphone would actually follow their "eco" mission, and become the new Pixels. On the other hand Jolla seems to be following up with a no compromise "Linux". Time will tell.
Putting a custom OS on a phone is like trying to install Linux in 2004. Out of curiosity I had been looking at some phones here in New Zealand, available on Trade Me (our Ebay, basically) and some of those phones had a note that there was no guarantee that the boot loader could be unlocked :/
To preface, most active rom development used to take place on forums, mainly XDA. Nowadays itβs on telegram, which is gated unfortunately
That user said "LineageOS", not "black sky project andromeda void to infinitum nanogapps safetynet bypass v pizde optimized custom kernel gambling android read only memory: gold bar edition".
bootloader lock sux
True.
Wny not just get an iphone?
Unless your into jailbreaking, don't get an iPhone. Also, as an ex-iphone user, its SUPER hard to get out of their ecosystem.
... Because its an Iphone? What kind of question is that?
While iphone is more privacy friendluly than OEM android, it's much more restricted. You can do amazing things with AOSP Android (compile arm busybox, have a linux toolchain on it, host adblocking), and most importantly totally breakaway from big tech, much more than iphones.
Thank you for saying this. Yes, its getting way harder and its not easy finding an older phone to install these ROMs. Even with what's going on with how Google is reacting with Graphene OS. They are slowly locking y'all out of the Pixels, and AOSP dropped support of the Pixels with Android 16.
(This is one example) The latest update to the Pixel 10 camera is locking out Graphene OS users cause it needs Play Services in order to work
Gcam builds are still a thing. But you need to lurk on forums/telegram to find the right one. It's sad this is a thing nowadays for pixel.
That was actually my first choice I was gonna do as well. I got myself the Nord N200 5g but I unfortunately received the wrong model from Back Market. I returned it and ended up getting this phone for less of a headache to try to find the exact model of a phone in order to install LineageOS. That's my only problem with them.
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It's extrmely easy to degoogle xiaomi phones too, but they're a bit more expensive.
I saw that wallpaper and at first thought you had degoogled by smashing your phone π
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~~What model of phone? What OS are you running?~~
Is this the A16 5g -> Teracube 2s (Degoogled version with e/OS) you have been waiting for?
In the photo caption it says itβs a Teracube 2s running e/OS
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Something to consider for the future. Meanwhile i'll try graphene os.
grapheneOS merits more than a "meanwhile"
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