Nice read.

The entire smartphone ecosystem is designed to be used almost exclusively through Google or iOS services: government apps, banking apps, prepaid health-insurance apps, and countless other examples. Even though a phone is a handheld computer, it’s far from being a computer in the sense of giving users real control over the software they run.

That’s for me one of the biggest problem.

DeGoogling Android is no longer sufficient. Google has made it abundantly clear that the openness of Android itself is over.

Good article. Have used e/OS for quite some time and it’s excellent, just as IodeOS is. Not perfect for all, but every app I needed worked without issues, while blocking most if not all of known trackers.

Using these phones is also just as importantly about educating ourselves & changing some of our habits. Using the privacy tools, Exodus and such, find yourself making better educated decisions in all things privacy, almost instinctual over time. And across platforms.

Was quite infuriating to see one of my banking apps use so many trackers. But at least now they are blocked. Other apps you begin to weed out and switch to FOSS alternatives as you can. For some apps infested but service occasionally needed, switched to just using a browser and DNS filtering service like NextDNS.

It’s of course a cat & mouse game, Davids against the bigtech Goliath megabucks with effectively government power & policy control.

Appreciate the great work of Gael and others, they are all needed as we find our new way forward.

This man is a lyer. /e/ os is not degoogled but tgey keep saying it. They ignore critique regarding their very slow updates. They introduced OpenAI but labeled it as a Murena feature, so that user could think, it is a valid service but data is sent to USA. Critique was ignored and labeled as personal harrasment. Wtf.

Yes, /e/ has much less Google integrated but their service, their communication, their promissises and their security is a laugh.

After his last response to the AI integration, I realized that he is not willing to accept valid critique and they will go on what we usually call ‘enshitification’