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Smartphones with "pure" Android (lemmy.kde.social)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hello! My smartphone is dying, so I'll soon have to buy a new one. I'd like my new phone to have pure Android, without all the apps that manufactures install. Ideally I'd like to remove the majority of Google services too, but there are some that I can't replace yet, so I'm still dependent on, like google maps. What smartphone do you suggest me? In your opinion, would it be better to buy a smartphone with already stock android or to buy any smartphone, and then replace the OS?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I'd make a shortlist of phones based on price and hardware, then check the XDA forums to see which of the models on that list have good AOSP-based custom ROMs available. Generally, you'll have better luck with flagship models, but there are custom ROMs available for many, many smartphones - some even get updates for longer than the official firmware.

Another option is to use adb to uninstall bloat and crapware from the official images, which can be done with varying success depending on the phone's make and model. For example, I have a Samsung Galaxy A53 and was able to uninstall or disable most of the several useless or redundant apps it came with, but several I could not get rid of without breaking needed functionality (that shouldn't depend on them, but does for some obscure and probably illegal reason).