At this stage of the game, myself i don't worry too much about the 'tracking'.   That i'm using cell towers, means i'm tracked anyway.  The rest, just feeds the ad machine and i block that anyway.

And for me, losing google services would be bad.  I moved over to google voice when they bought out that VoIP company some 15+ years ago.  ( i forget the name, something 'central' i think ) I went VoIP back then just for the sake of convenience, so i can change carriers and not have to fight them to keep my number.. All i need is data and i have a 'phone', plus other options it opens like using my computer.. bla bla.  For me, that its now google running it, i have not seen any 'real' impact for me. ( tho now its free for personal use. it wasn't before.... )

Now that said, battery life, that would be nice. But doubt i could pull that off and not lose to many features. Poor battery is why i ended up getting a stand along mp3 player again. ( tho now it sits collecting dust, since i'm not in the office hardly at all. along whit a set of expensive headphones i got.. 2 days before we got sent home in 2020.. doh! )

And ironically i DO have a pixel. I used to get Chinese phones. ( xiaomi branded, basically the LG of china ) They were 1/3 the price for the same thing you get here plus no bloat ware, often times dual sims, etc.  But they have one issue.  Their radios are weak.  When i was in town all day, it didn't matter, but now that i'm home most of the time, it does.   ( as a backup for when internet goes out due to trees, and VoIP dies ).    Back when i was forced to get a new phone due to carrier rules ( something about requiring some stupid high definition voice protocol when i didn't even have a voice account.. grrr )  i went ahead and got the pixel.  Better radio, and lesser evil than carrier phones.  But fewer features ( like no SD card... )   I have since then found a carrier that does NOT require that stupid nonsense, but now its hard to get xiaomi phones that works here, due to a variety of reasons.  ( and i dont trust the no-name brands for quality )

 Continuing discussion from the Digital Currency thread:

Tue Jun 10 2025 18:13:57 UTC from Nurb432

At this stage of the game, myself i don't worry too much about the 'tracking'.   That i'm using cell towers, means i'm tracked anyway.  The rest, just feeds the ad machine and i block that anyway.

 

 This isn't for just me. I said in a previous post:

Great! I was hoping to make an I2P encrypted phone using degoogled Android as a base. The one thing communist dictators and Islamic mullahs have in common is propaganda warfare that can only exist in an echo chamber.

I need something that's safe to use in the Middle East and communist countries as well. Everything going out or in to such a phone must look like untraceable data so that illegal speech is indecipherable from regular politically correct speech.

Moving off-topic replies to Mobile Madness.

Mon Jun 09 2025 18:47:39 UTC from darknetuser Subject: Re: De-googled android

If you ever do some tcpdump on a network while your regular Android phone is connected to it, you'll get to see the ammount of crappy traffic it generates on its own. Removing that is enough to save battery.


GrapheneOS also claims to do baseband isolation, which is not perfect but it is better than what you get from regular phones.

In fact the policy for userspace crap is to isolate it in GrapheneOS. Say you really need to install a crappy banking app that requires google services. In GrapheneOS you can build that within a sandbox so the banking and an google services can't break into the rest of the phone. In fact thouse might not get turned on until you so require.

I am not familiar with driver specifics, you should bring your concerns to the GrapheneOS people.

I just looked up GrapheneOS and right on the second paragraph of their roadmap at https://grapheneos.org/faq#roadmap they say that they are looking for a way to use a microkernel architecture with a Linux user-mode compatibility layer. Just like that other link I had pointed to! I guess I should be communicating with them after all! I'll keep you posted!

Just read this morning that GrapheneOS's days are numbered. 

Google has announced they will no longer release DTB's for pixel devices. And i suspect ban extraction and use after that.  They claim they are not killing off AOSP, but i bet that is on the road-map and they are lying. 

Thu Jun 12 2025 11:43:43 UTC from Nurb432

Just read this morning that GrapheneOS's days are numbered. 

Google has announced they will no longer release DTB's for pixel devices. And i suspect ban extraction and use after that.  They claim they are not killing off AOSP, but i bet that is on the road-map and they are lying. 

GrapheneOS devs are in discussions with OEM phone manufacturers to find a suitable replacement for new-model Pixel phones in the future.

I guess that is one way out of it, tho it wipes out their original goal of 'unrestricted' pixels. 

But with other generic android projects out there, will be a tough road. that they targeted pixels i think is what made them special.

Thu Jun 12 2025 23:19:31 UTC from SamuraiCrow

 

GrapheneOS devs are in discussions with OEM phone manufacturers to find a suitable replacement for new-model Pixel phones in the future.

xiaomi is a good company.  I used thier phones for a long time, until i moved to a pixel ( for reasons i have explained before, some due to carrier problems, others it was getting hard to get a replacement here, and some radio issues.. bla bla )

Problem these days is getting one with a radio that will work with US carriers.  And getting it here in the first place is a pain... as a lot of places no longer will sell their products to us.. even tho they were never black listed, like some other brands. Last time i had to go thru gear-best.. not my normal retailer that i used for some 20 years. 

Fri Aug 01 2025 02:31:51 UTC from IGnatius T Foobar

I would like my next handset to be a white label phone with an open source operating system. (And yes, I trust the Chinese government more than I trust Google ... as if there were a difference.)

Along the lines of above. was going thru some stuff to get rid of ( still purging. i took a break. Laziness )

One of the things i pulled out of a drawer was one of my older xiaomi phones. Was actually my favorite phone i ever had to that point, and since then. Liked it even more than my Note 3..

• Was the perfect size, not tiny, and not the size of your face.
• Had enough power to not be pokey, and do HD video.
• Camera was at the level of flagship phones at the time. 
• Battery life was great ( still is.. charged it up and played with it some, its still doing better than my pixel )
• Actually had 2 sim slots AND an SD slot..   Don't see that anymore
• An actual audio jack..  ( they were starting to vanish at the time i got it )
• AND to top it off, an IR transceiver so it could be a TV remote control too.  ( or an old printer, if i still had one )
• Oh, and it didn't cost an arm and leg either. perhaps 200 bucks.  
• It also ran Android One, so was pretty minimalist..  Rather pleasant to use. ( tho i will say the pixel isn't as bad as carrier's phones, or some other brands, but its still not the same )

Why don't i still use it?

Well, aside from it being out of support so no updates ( not end of world.. apps i use, still work surprisingly, they all updated when i had it on ) carriers at the time decided i wasn't allowed to use it. Same sort reason its successor was replaced .. damned carriers trying to force you to buy new phones when you dont need to.   Now, my current prepay carrier may support it, but being a 4G radio, who knows how much longer. Its successor is 5G, but didn't support some stupid HD audio, when i had a data only plan in the first place, and mainly why the pixel was purchased ( then i moved on to the new another carrier ).

Frustrating really.  I understand some things like bumping up the radio frequencies and such as tech does move on, but all the other stuff, planned/forced obsolescence should be illegal.

And yes, both would work fine as WiFi based VoIP phones and 'media devices'.  I actually have a 3rd old one that does just that. ( another 4G only )  And its all it does, its only purpose in life is to ring in case something at the office melts down. Thing will run at idle for 3 weeks in the bedroom having to plug it in..  far better than my pixel.

I guess i should add that most Chinese phones don't have the greatest radio reception. If you live in a good coverage area, you wont know the difference and they are fine. But i don't, and now that im home all the time and not up in town with towers everywhere, it matters a little.  So it was also a factor in the pixel purchase. Still not great reception, but enough i don't have to go outback, or to the park. Battery life was starting to go down a little too, not bad but noticeable.  All factors into my choice to move away from another Chinese sourced device, but mostly driven by the carrier being a dick.  Pixels seemed like the less troublesome of the options out there when it was 'time to move' since it doesn't have any of the carrier or 3rd party vendor crap, but i do miss having a SD slot.

Battery life is also why i picked up a tiny mp3 player to use at the office. The thing runs for days..  And now with the pixel, cant put much on it. Need room for the camera storage so that worked out well to already have it. ( but again, now that i'm mostly home, its mostly collecting dust )

Not that i'm trying to sell anyone, but i did leave those pieces out.