Why are we still fighting smartphone bloatware in 2025?
Why are we still fighting smartphone bloatware in 2025?
I was excited to dive into my new smartphone only to once again waste precious time uninstalling bloatware before I could enjoy it.
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The problem is that most phones don't support ROM's like Graphene or Linage, as people installing custom roms is a relic of years past. Next time you get a phone, think about if you want this option for yourself. Also, do keep in mind that some phones have HW backdoors on them, so even installing a stock rom/graphene does not save you from privacy.
They made it very hard to install roms.
There is this orange warning on boot.
Then banking apps don't work.
With a rooted phone you can install Zygisk (magisk + zygote) and then a bunch of modules that simulate system integrity.
What you need are "play integrity fix" and "playcurl_NEXT".
The first module lets you bypass the google play integrity check, the second one will download updated integrity fingerprint files every 5 minutes to ensure that the bypass never fails.
If you know how to install custom ROMs, this part is not a big challenge.
Thank you. Yeah I was aware that there is magysk. Problem is - it's becoming too many hacks to deal with. And I bet it probably breaks from time to time and one has to hack/fix it again?
With playcurl next I didn't experience any issues yet, it's polling a new device fingerprint every couple minutes to make sure your device never ends up on a blocklist, and you can trigger this manually in the magisk app as well.
Can't guarantee it's never going to be blocked if Google changes the algorithm, but that would just mean they have to adjust the fingerprinting as well.
That's true. Graphene is majorly Pixel limited, I guess. And even Lineage has a small set of devices when one considers the nos of OEMs and variants they manufacture per year.
HW backdoors
Tell me more!
And lil papa google now forces GPlay Integrity so custom Roms are fucked
Nah you can easily bypass play integrity on a rooted phone, see my comment above.
I'm using Grapheneos and rooting the room will make it less secure 🤷♂️ and I don't see why root my phone
My primary use case was magisk to enable taking screenshots from otherwise protected apps. Was living in China for almost 7 years, and even though I speak it quite alright, reading is a whole other level. And there are quite a few apps there that I had to use on a regular basis that had this damned flag_secure enabled so I couldn't otherwise take screenshots to run them through a translation app.
The second one was system level adblock, since the alternative is for adblockers to install themselves as local VPNs routing traffic to 127.0.0.1; however being in China meant I actually had to use a real VPN to access the free internet, and I certainly didn't want to choose between ads or privacy. The latter still applies; I'm using a VPN on most days.
Lastly, being able to use magisk also gives me access to some advanced security apps such as Hibernator (freezes apps, meaning they are basically uninstalled and reactivated on press, so they can't use data, don't get updated etc.), Storage Isolation (lets you configure on a per-app basis which folders it might access), App Ops (advanced permission management, which also includes an ignore function that acts like as if a certain permission was granted, but would feed random data or zeros to the app).
Being able to uninstall everything including system apps is also nice, though that can still be achieved with adb. Browsing root folders when looking for specific data is also nice, but I used that twice in about 5 years, so it's probably not essential.
I'm gonna look into getting Huawei os
Why Hauwei OS?
It's android but without google . Given how much google fucks with me, I'm willing to say fuck u to google
Google fucks with everyone, now more than ever with this "recommended" (forced) play integrity. Look at the recent ban from Uber, Authy (thank god I switched a few days ago) and some other apps
I was curious why Hauwei and not LineageOS, GrapheneOS, Calyx, etc
tbh recently I just don't have time to futs with roms.
Ive used lineage for many years. And would love to use it permanently but banking apps is a problem for me and having to hack things too much is a problem for me.
Obviously some linux mobile distro would have been ideal. but There isn't anything usable.calyx/graphene - the model selection is just too limited. And I would never buy a google or apple device.
lineage os doesn't support oneplus 12R I use now (well there is unofficial rom).so I would like to try huawei, the hope is - it's like android but naturally without google because its designed like that.
Well its known that SoC's have backdoors on them. Usually it calls home to China, so you can guess what that's for.
Honestly I don't really give a shit if China invades my privacy I have nothing they'd care about anyway. I just don't want American corporations doing it to try to sell me more shit.
With u on this sentiment
I do. fuck china.
Fuck em sure. But they can't reach me , us corporations that block US gdpr legislation year after year - they want to use my data and fuck me over
fuck the CIA and fuck PRISIM
So phone like Xiaomi? Sorry, I'm kinda dumb in this
Xiaomi is the biggest offender, but all of them do it.
Fair. Didn't know that
why do you think richard stallman doesn't use a smartphone?
Even pixel or Fairphone is fairly free of bloatware compared to Samsung and shitty Chinese brands as long as you are not privacy paranoid about Google services.
I am privacy paranoid.
And that's fine, but first people like you (and me to some extent) are in the vast minority and that's also not an issue of bloatware per se.
yeah the only problem is that i have to participate in this hellhole capitalist society. Im trying to figure out what the best VPN is to use, along side if tor is worth using.