I’m using a Pixel 6 Pro right now, and I’m looking around to see if there are any good phones. However, I have heard that there are ads in the newer flagship phones (Samsung, Xiaomi). I am willing to spend around USD$750 on a new phone, but I just don’t want any crazy ads or preinstalled apps like Facebook. Are there phones that don’t suck nowadays? I can buy a phone that is sold in the US, Canada, or EU.
(I don’t want to go through menus to disable ads (Xiaomi), and I’m currently looking at phones other than the Pixel lineup to see if there’s a better option for me)
(I also don’t want to mess around with custom bootloaders/systems, I rely on Google services way too much)
EDIT: If it wasn’t clear enough, I am not looking for things like GrapheneOS or LineageOS or others, I am looking for a phone and judging based on the stock system on it.
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Q: what’s a nice phone to buy? I don’t want to go through menus
A: flash graphene os
Cmon lemmy
Sounds pretty sweet to me… got a dialer with built in call recording.
I can install a 3rd party app store without moving to the EU and waiting 4 more years.
You can Dee-Google it by hacking the matrix with some ASOPs and pay $7 a month for a proton mail account while crying into your open office.
Run some McAafs
feey antivirus for that hit of early 90’s nostalgia, or Norton if you’re really old and miss the 80’s ;-)Firefox with a real uBlock plugin would be pretty sweet? Do they have that working yet?
I’m thinking pay-as-you-go burner but… oh right, android smart phone… I’m old and forgot what I was doing for a second.
I really can’t tell if this is a joke or not (I’m not mad), but don’t third-party app stores have almost all of the features as of the Play Store? F-Droid has the ability to automatically update apps silently, I think.
Samsung completely blocking the ability to record calls in their US phones really annoys the shit out of me. Outside of rooting and installing a custom rom they just didn’t leave a way to do it.
I live in Canada and screen recording a phone call with audio doesn’t work, and the option that seems to be in the phone app for India isn’t on my phone, even though Canada is a one-person call recording policy country.
So gay.
Too old to know what a telemarketer is?
The nice lady who plugs the connections at the post office would give a telemarketer a stern talking-to and that’s that.
Why do you feel the need to change phones? Pixel 6 Pro should still be plenty good enough.
If its stock ROM bothers you, you’re in luck because Pixels are surprisingly hackable and it’s very easy these days.
See i.e.: https://grapheneos.org/
No need to worry about Google services, they work: https://grapheneos.org/usage#sandboxed-google-playYep, Pixel is the best phone to get the most Google free experience for those that seek it.
Depends on your usecase and your country of living. Why do I say so? I will name my 2 points:
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Lack of sd card. Yes I need my sd card, I don’t want to upload stuff online on a 400kbps connection or download on a 16mbps connection. It’s not a good experience.
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Not officially sold in my country, only available rarelly in resellers for 200+ euro more than normally.
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Google Pixel with GrapheneOS.
If you are actually, really, honestly low on money, you may get something with DivestOS or LineageOS.
GrapheneOS is the gold standard, every Google certified Android is full of tracking and will show ads in places
I’m on a pixel 6a, I swapped out my DNS server to dns.adguard-dns.com and now I don’t get ads on any app or game I use, excluding YouTube (which I use very rarely).
Just taking the YouTube app off my home screen and replacing it with a Firefox shortcut has done wonders for my sanity. It’s really disorienting now, when I follow a YouTube link that opens up the app. All of a sudden it’s all ads and shorts and sponsors.
The easiest way to get rid of ads it’s a DNS level AdBlock, you can simply use the private DNS option of Android(with AdGuard or Mullvad free DNS resolvers), next step use alternative frontends for YouTube(NewPipe x SponsorBlock) and Music like Spotify and YT Music(xManager or ReVanced), there will be some apps what will keep showing ads like Facebook but at least it will be a minor amount.
If you want to be more sophisticated about Android AdBlocks I will suggest you to root your phone, but with these non-root options 90% of people will do pretty fine.
Where’d you hear about flagship Samsung phones having ads?
As far as I know, the only Samsung models that feature ads tend to be the lower end series that get sold in markets like India.
Their ads are mostly self promotion and bloatware apps. In my device I had to turn off notifications for most of the pre installed apps.
A pre-installed app is not an ad, though.
Plus pretty much of of them can easily be disabled.
What if the pre installed app is netflix, hulu and bunch of useless things i do not use? Its not a bloatware for you but for me it is. Yes, i can disabled but not all of them. Some just outright disable the disable button. Bunch of services running in the background. Samsung is notorious for this kind of behaviour.
I received a budget galaxy tab from a lucky draw. Shit is disgusting with how many useless stuff in there. Planned to give it to my mother but i cant stomach how laggy it is with android 13. It is not a good experience at all. I had to use adb to remove all of them.
I have the Xiaomi 13T Pro, and I haven’t noticed any ads. You can buy wallpapers and ringtones, but there are also tons of free ones, and it doesn’t pop up advertisements for it except once to show the function is there. The new HyperOS although it looks the same and has similar functionality on the surface as MIUI, is way way better IMO.
Security and game center are gone, 2 of the top annoyances with MIUI IMO. HyperOS feels way snappier too. With MIUI the 13T Pro was slower than my old Motorola to turn pages in an e-book quickly. Now it’s super snappy. HyperOS just feels better somehow.
I installed Firefox with uBlock Origin, and chose it as default browser. I also uninstalled “Community Center” I think it was called. An app to use various Xiaomi services.
There are a couple preinstalled apps, I don’t recall if Facebook was among them, but they are easy to uninstall, it literally just takes a minute to uninstall.But maybe Motorola would be more to your liking, they use almost completely vanilla Android, with only an app to configure Motorola specific features. I did get some ads for printing services on my Motorola, but it seemed to be more a Google thing than Motorola. (Haven’t seen any such things on my Xiaomi 13T Pro)
And AFAIK you can still remove the search widget from the desktop on Motorola, something that apparently is no longer possible in completely vanilla Android. Reason enough for me to completely avoid Google Pixel phones. Why would they even want to do such a stupid thing?Fairphone 5 is still on my list but unfortunate it does not support QI charging.
I can definitely recommend getting a Fairphone. I quite happy with my Fairphone 4. Bloatware is limited to Google stuff and they even give instructions how to easily install a custom ROM (have not tried that yet though).
The specs are not great, but good enough for me. But the main advantage for me is that it does not break that easily. I drop my phone all the time. My Samsung phones and Pixel phone I have broken within the first few weeks. Usually I dropped it and the screen cracked, even with a protected case.
I have had this phone for a lot longer now (maybe years by now) and I dropped it like a 1000 times and it is still fine. The screen has not cracked, it still works. Only the side is a little chipped. I don’t even use a protective case. And even if it breaks, I can just buy the broken component from their website and easily replace myself using normal tools. So that is really nice.
Nice to read your experience with the fairphone. We’re looking at it as well. It’s expensive, but can at least be repaired when something breaks. I’m curious aboutt the custom roms though, as they are my main requirement, next to costs of max €100 per expected year of usability. (And as phone, it should be usable for a while)
I currently own a S23+ and had a OnePlus 6T before that and Nexus 5X before that. I wouldn’t be bothered by the Samsung bloat. You can uninstall nearly everything. Set the default apps you want to use and hide the rest. You have this configured quickly and then you will never be bothered by it again.
The default Pixel 8 launcher doesnt even allow you to remove the huge Google search widget, which bothers me a lot more. I find One UI pretty vanilla feeling to be honest. Don’t notice that much difference from my OnePlus 6T which had a fairly vanilla OS.
The S23+ is my dream. Big screen and flagship Snapdragon. The S23 ultra is overkill for me. Of course, if 1 needs the features that only the Ultra has, he should buy the Ultra.
I’m excited re the upcoming big phones but I won’t be :o if the S24 ultra will be the best big phone of 2024. It seems Samsung knows how to make 👍 big phones.
No ads on my Samsung a70 but there are preinstalled 3rd-party apps. I just disabled those that I haven’t needed.
There are some Samsung apps that I haven’t needed like Radio and Tips. There’s a not-so-easy way to remove those. But those never annoyed me so I won’t bother to remove those.
You should keep your phone and install GrapheneOS. It’s not hard, you just have to reboot your phone and press few clicks in your browser. You can install Google Play and every Google service should work (except Android Auto and you can’t use NFC with GPay).
This. People with Google Pixels wanting to switch is something I dont get. You literally own the most secure phone on the planet, with the best OS.
I just want to see if other phones don’t suck nowadays, I’m not switching to a different brand just yet (I own too many Google things).
