Indeed. Simple Dialer is I think the only FOSS dialer app that is actively maintained. And Simple Gallery Pro is fairly advanced for a FOSS app, even having a video editor!

I had recently gone to India and Magic Earth and Organic Maps both had pretty weak coverage. Outside major cities, even roads aren’t mapped. Works better in Europe and US imo.

Getting a Pixel 7 and installing GrapheneOS on it was another option but I just don’t like the low performant and inefficient Tensor G2 chip. 8+ Gen 1 is an excellent chip, both in terms of power and efficiency.

My experience: I got a Nothing Phone 2 recently and decided to degoogle it. Using ADB commands, I removed every google app from my phone, from the Dialer all the way up to the PlayStore, apart from just 2: Play Services and Maps. Both work fine without a Google account. I did take away all permissions of Play Services and it still works fine. Without this app, you will stop getting notifications from most of your apps so it is necessary.

Open source alternatives that I turned towards:

1. Google Dialer -> Simple Dialer
2. Google Contacts -> Simple Contacts
3. Google Photos -> Simple Gallery Pro
4. Google Play Store -> Aurora Store and Droid-ify
5. Google Messenger -> QKSMS
6. Google Calendar -> Proton Calendar
7. Google Drive -> Proton Drive
8. Google Chrome -> Mozilla Firefox
9. Youtube -> Youtube ReVanced (Not FOSS, I use a throwaway account here with Vanced Microg)
10. Google Translate -> Translate YOU
11. Google Files -> Material Files
12. Google Docs/Slides/Sheet -> Collabora Office
13. GMail -> Proton Mail
14. GBoard -> OpenBoard fork with glide typing

Everything works fine :)

Same thing different branding. Also there’s GS Connect for Gnome which is again the same.

KDE connect is pretty good for that. May not be as fast though.

Time to go back to our “roots” then.

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Then it should stop being an introvert and communicate more. Signal my mouth more often to bring that thirsty feeling.

Major one for me is their software. No matter the cost, I don’t think an Operating System should be crafted in a way that sneakily consumes user data and delivers ads to the user by default. Not on the lockscreen, not in the notification tray, not in the system apps like the file browser. Also, transmitting requests in incognito mode to their servers by default, can you really trust them?

https://thehackernews.com/2020/05/xiaomi-browser-history.html?m=1

I’ve tried all the clients that I could get my hands on and Voyager (vger.app) is what I’ve settled on. Awesome UI, lightweight web app, frequent updates.

That’s right. When you get this big, you can create problems and then sell solutions! It’s a shame that MicroSD card support is dying, really now. They’re so damn cheap and make switching phones so easy as well.

You can use it just for 2FA if you want.

Authenticator Pro is quite good and looks beautiful with material theming. I’ve recently completed shifted to Proton Pass though, which is a complete E2EE password manager having support for 2FA as well. It’s synced with Firefox on my desktop and laptop.

There’s a fork of OpenBoard that enables Glide typing, in case you’re in interested in that:

https://github.com/erkserkserks/openboard

And the development on it is just remarkable, we’re getting updates almost daily (knocks on wood)!

LG Wing.

Love the dual screen functionality of course but what’s more impressive is the fact that the 2nd screen is concealed beautifully such that on first glance, you can’t even tell that it’s not a normal phone! The primary camera is also excellent.

The software is pretty shit. LG sacked their mobile division 2 years ago and while they have kept their promise of giving this phone Android 13, they’ve done the bare minimum effort to support it. You couldn’t even tell it’s android 13, has the same UI and features that they shipped with Android 11. The settings app is also inconsistent, some screens have that stock android feel others have the traditional LG UI. And bugs are plenty. The processor is another weak point, it’s not able to keep up in 2023.