Simple question really! Are any of you running a Custom ROM? Furthermore, are any of you running a De-Googled ROM?
Why do you run your custom ROM, and what are the drawbacks?
VoidUI (not de googled) because:
- the main reason is so I can keep using my phone beyond the official SW support period, I would be stuck on A10 if I stayed with stock
- The phone started to feel a little bit slow after 2 years
- Unlocked some of the performance that was left on the table with more to be unlocked!
- No bloatware
The drawbacks:
- The camera experience is orders of magnitude worse
- Goodbye iris scanner :'(
- Goodbye S-Pen features
- Goodbye Samsung notes
- Goodbye to the much better split screen and floating window implementation
I run degoogled LineageOS
I have a lineage phone I keep on dial and I was using graphene OS for a minute but
The thing is that I live by my phone. Passwords, banking, pretty much the entirety of my actual life daily. I think graphene OS is great! But I also don’t have time or a the ability to have an AI review the codebase to validate that what I’m putting on my phone is safe. The truth is that these are unpaid strangers making a great product who’s work Im not a subject matter expert in. Android is a large codebase. I’m friends with a guy who works on it full time and even he feels lost sometimes. So I reversed my phone back to stock Android for my daily driver.
If I’m doing better financially in a few months I’ll likely buy another pixel phone or try fair phone with graphene. I just can’t justify the purchase right now and my phone works fine.
Just a reminder if you like these projects, donate to them!. I dropped about $1000 on open source stuff over the last year to include joplin, EFF, vueJS, graphene, lineage, and quasarJS. Every one of them does great work.
Yes, I’d rather fuck around with custom ROMs than endure the user-hostile crapware that most vendors bundle. I’d also rather try to make an app work despite safety net or whatever not passing out of the box than not have any defenses against the dumb bullshit software vendors put in their apps. I’d rather go back to a feature phone than live with a walled garden full of spyware and ads.
Yes, AlphaDroid (Android 13)
Honestly the names mean almost nothing, custom ROMs with new names come out all the time and get discontinued all the time. Just need to find the stable one for your specific device and with the features you want. I use custom ROMs mainly because I get much better battery life and performance compared to stock ROMs which are bloated and slow in my case.
The drawback is mainly you should be tech savvy and be willing to do trial and error/tinkering a lot. But once you find a good ROM you’ll probably stay a long time and if the dev is good you’ll get consistent updates.
There’s also the banking apps problem some people have. With most new ROMs these days, banking apps should work out of the box. Now if you root your phone that’s what apps try to detect but it’s pretty easy to get around after research (again tinkering). It’s a cat and mouse game. If they change something you’ll have to update your method of hiding root or Magisk. At the moment I’m using banking apps just fine without them detecting root.
Running Pixel Experience with Android 13 on my Xiaomi Redmi note 10 pro. Very smooth sailing.
Yo same. It’s pretty great. Hated the process of installing it though. Having to wait like two weeks before you are allowed to use that shady as shit proprietary windows-only program with terrible localization and idiotic error messages was… rough. Well worth it because the stock OS was a buggy, intrusive piece of shit. The logs of my pi-hole were full of blocked DNS requests made by my phone during those 2 weeks.
Hah, yea. I had to go through the process of installing windows in a Virtual Machine and passing the USB connection through(I’m a Linux user). Was kind of a hassle but ended up working okay(was worried about bricking it).
But dang: Monthly security updates and a much better and faster UI.
Yes, I bought a Pixel 6 specifically to run GrapheneOS. I can proudly say that every single app on my phone is open source, no GSM and no Google. I don’t really mind paying a company like Google for the phone, I just don’t want to hand them my data.
Sounds neat. But what all the services that require proprietary app? Like banking, Uber, reviews on Google Maps etc.?
you can use web apps for banking, uber
although uber and most banking apps work on grapheneos, check this community verified list https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compatibility-with-grapheneos/for reviews, you can use gmaps webview https://f-droid.org/packages/us.spotco.maps/
for navigation maps, you can use openstreetmap like magic earth and organic maps
if you think osm doesn’t have enough data of your area, then you can use herewego maps, its another proprietary map, but is a bit better than google on privacy
I am running Paranoid Android Topaz 4 on my OnePlus 7T. No fancy features, but very stable. Just like Roman Empire.
Yes, lineage OS without Google. Everytging still works fine, even playstore with Autor store frontend
Yes, running crDroid on my Redmi Note 10 Pro
Works for me without any issues and I even got the banking apps to work using magisk delta
Magisk Delta? Been away from the custom ROM scene for too long now, is Magisk Cloak no longer a thing?
I run GrapheneOS without any Google Play Services. I don’t want to be locked into any software and I selfhost all my backups except having encrypted backups in one cloud provider for very important things to keep them off-site.
Most of the things people generally would consider drawbacks like lack of google assistant, chrome, play store, youtube etc. I consider to be a positive thing. I am in mostly full control of permissions and I have a siloed work user when I do need to access Slack and other apps for company use.
Sadly not anymore because I need my banking apps to work reliably. Making them work isn’t the biggest problem, but I’ll never know when an update blindsides me and breaks something.
On a sidenote, I’d really like to know why banks think that an ancient phone that hasn’t seen a security update in years is somehow more secure than an up-to-date Lineage or GrapheneOS.
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I would love to run Graphene OS, but their stance on root (“REEEEeEEeeEeEeEeEEEE iTs nOt sEcUrE aNyMoRe wHy WoULd yOu dO tHaT” Jesus fucking christ I’m aware of the risks now stop being a little bitch about it) drives me up the fucking wall.
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I don’t see enough DivestOS here. It’s basically LineageOS, but actually more private and secure. Though it explicitely doesn’t support any way of emulating Play Services, which can obviously be a dealbreaker for some.
I really want Motorola mobility to allow relocking the bootloader but until then I’m stuck with lineage os
Which device are you using with DivestOS?
I am using all of the DivestOS applications on my CrDroid. I am thinking to switch on my Poco F3 but I am skeptical due to removal of many blobs.
I’m running it on a Poco F3, and in general I’ve found DivestOS to be more stable than crDroid. Also, it makes it easier that it comes with a system webview replacement built in.
Edit: I haven’t tried locking the bootloader, mind you, but that doesn’t really interest me so much.
As I read on the documentation, relocking the bootloader seems broken on Poco F3.
Okay, thank you for the info, you tempt me more to install DivestOS on Poco F3 hahah. Have you tried any wireless earpods if they work flawless and with the same sound quality? i have read the code from the blobs that they have been removed and I noticed that they have remove many of them related on wireless soundspeakers.
Haven’t had any issues with any bluetooth devices. Headphones, speaker, car, all work as normal.
Okay thank you! Next week, I will flash DivestOS and I will text you back!! (i translated several DivestOS applications in Greek for now)
I just recently joined the DivestOS clan! I do kind of miss a few of the customisation options I had in my last ROM, crDroid, but overall I’m finding it a little more stable and I’m generally very happy with it. In particular, I like the inclusion of Mull for the app browser and Mulch for the system webview browser.
Even Mike Kuketz likes it, which says something. He’s a german cybersecurity expert who’s been looking at several custom roms over the last months. This is his article on DivestOS:
https://www.kuketz-blog.de/divestos-datenschutzfreundlich-und-erhoehte-sicherheit-custom-roms-teil5/
Well, if you can read German
CyanogenMod user since the 6.x days, currently running LineageOS 20.
I like my phones to work and be usable. I stayed on the stock ROM for my OnePlus 8T for 2 years and went right back to LineageOS.
Manufacturers just can’t make ROMs that work correctly without bullshit.
Apart from not relying on manufacturers…
What are the advantage of these OSs?
I mean, features etc
No. I recently tried a couple of custom ROMs, but I went back to using stock MIUI12.
In my case, I don’t think the custom ROMs were the issue though. I think Android 12/13 have bluetooth issues.
