AndrewZabar

I’ll tell you I think with this specific device it’s just poor planning but there are plenty of bottom rung devices that suck because yeah, they’re made to be worse than all the other devices by that manufacturer in that product line. Manufacturer ABCo wants you to buy their product. They want everyone to have their product and no one else’s. But there’s a price level that’s below anything they make, and so, in order to still get you to buy their brand, they market this bottom of the barrel quality product for just this kind of scenario. They can’t make it good because then why would anyone pay for the next tier up? So they make it appealing-seeming, but sucky enough for you to eventually want something better. And then they’re hoping you’ll buy one of their better products.

But with this device even without multitasking, just browsing the web in Firefox is sometimes so bad that I tap the address bar and it takes like 5 seconds for the keyboard to come up.

So yeah… when I bought this I had in mind that I would mod it in whatever way possible.

Yeah the weird thing is it can run smoothly on occasion but when you start doing things it slows down to a crawl in seconds. I stripped so much out of it via ADB and still the simplest things do such awful weigh-down, like even keeping zoom level at minimum the settings app won’t even paint itself and you have to use shortcuts to go to a settings page specifically.

I want an Android that is as minimal as possible. I don’t need gaming hub or game optimization engine running but it seems to sometimes cause a problem if it’s disabled. Like they cross-referenced all these modules within the base elements of parts of the OS so disabling some things that are totally unnecessary can still break things in the foundation because from the development standpoint they always assume it’s all there. I’m not entirely positive of this, I could be mistaken, and I hope I am because it seems extraordinarily sloppy.

This unit is an exercise in unrealized potential because of being bloated down by an unreliable overcoat.

Yeah I’m not really disagreeing with you it’s just I don’t run anything that’s as privacy-necessary as you. My actual phone is iPhone and all the Android stuff I experiment with are lab systems for tinkering, rom mod testing etc. If I had anything that was being used for any really private or sensitive data, hell yes I would use something completely detached from anything google.

I don't want Lineage on this thing anyway.

Well, it may be ideal, but that is not the same as absolutely necessary.

That’s one approach but far more limited than just using a Google-free Android build like Lineage.

I mean, nothing is forcing anyone to use any specific product, and there are certainly smartphones with neither Android or iOS.

Personally, at some point I will switch from iPhone to an Android device that can work with something independent like /e/ or one of the other decent ones.

I offer an alternative ElementaryOS. It’s beautiful aesthetically and it runs basically an Ubuntu derivative.

I de-google everything I can.

You didn’t even mention storylines that continue across five different titles!

It’s all to keep people buying multiple books. It’s purely a sales thing.

I would maybe suggest looking into trade paperbacks, which are larger, bound books that are collections of all titles and issues that comprise a full storyline. Also, look into graphic novels, which are stand-alone books that are the equivalent of a dozen issues or so. There are tons of them out there with many types of story genres and styles.

When I used to collect comics, I more followed the artists and the art styles, being an artist myself, rather than following mainstream story arcs. There were some titles that I followed regular issues but those were ones that didn’t gimmick across the gamut of titles purely to sell more.

Also mini-series are a nice option - these usually can be found as TPBs later as well.

One more thing is maybe look at some other publishers too. I was extremely fond of Dark Horse, as well as some other smaller outfits. DC and Marvel are the two giants, and so they will always be going the mainstream route and that’s all built around massive sales. They’re still fantastic - but with some smaller publishers you might find a lot more gems that are easier to manage start to finish.