Privacy

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Question regarding android phones (lemm.ee)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by geography082@lemm.ee to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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When the iPhone 15 came out, I felt the pressure to upgrade, so I bought the standard model with 128 GB. I'm now experiencing the limitations of their ecosystem, which closed as dolls ass. I'm looking to sell my iPhone 15 and buy two Android phones for myself and my wife. If I could get some extra cash out of it, that would be a nice bonus. I'm not concerned with the fancy cameras or features. I just want something I can manipulate to be private and also install whatever I want, use the common apps everyone uses with no issues, stream movies and TV shows. My main concern is that most phonew from well-known brands, their Android OS are almost as disappointing as Apple products. I think it would be better to get a phone with hardware that is well-suited to a custom Android OS that is well-maintained and known for being reliable, and with a focus on privacy and not bloated. Thank you in advance for your help.

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[–] rc__buggy@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Can you run google maps without their location service? That's the one thing I really miss and there's no way to do it with Calyx that I know of

[–] scott@lem.free.as 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

You sure can.

[–] rc__buggy@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

Thx, time for a reinstall then

edit: naw, one has to install google play services (and sign in) in order to use their location services which are required for google maps. hard pass.

[–] hobbsc@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Organic Maps works really well and uses OSM, though searching for business names is kind of wonky. also, GMaps WV is a wrapper around the web interface for Google Maps that works pretty well.

[–] rc__buggy@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 months ago

GMaps WV looks perfect for when OSM doesn't have the address. Thanks, looking forward to copying the GPS location out of it and pasting it right into Organic or OSM_and

[–] scott@lem.free.as 1 points 2 months ago

You don't need to sign in and it's not needed for their location services. It works without it. It complains but still works.

GrapheneOS supplies a sandboxed version of those libraries and the underlying location requests don't go to Google.

[–] loganb@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

I believe you can... I have google maps installed and disabled (frozen) by default in case I absolutely need to use it.

[–] disguised_doge@kbin.earth 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I don't know if you can or not, although I can confirm you can use Google Maps in a web browser if you grant the google maps website location access, and it's pretty one to one with the app I believe. It does require you burn through mobile data if you don't have unlimited since you can't download offline maps, but the web version has gotten me out of a jam when open source map apps fail and if you don't worry about data it might be worth trying.

[–] rc__buggy@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 months ago

I think Firefox with maps.google uses Firefox location, because I've used it like you, to supplement the open source maps. I don't have google location on my phone at all.

The thing I need is street addresses, which OSM doesn't really have yet for a lot of streets.