Title says it all. I want to get control back of my phone but live paycheck to paycheck and not exactly well. I don’t have the money right now to buy a new phone. Is there any alternative to graphene that would work on a Galaxy A14?
Best you can generally do with Samsung phones is run the Debloat tool.
Get the Universal Android Debloat Utility, it’s pretty good at letting you know what can be disabled.
I have borked a phone with it, not permanently just annoyingly. But I also went past the warnings so it’s all my own fault.
Just don’t disable things that tell you it may cause boot loops.
Thanks, that’s a really good idea. It’s a good compromise while I’m saving up for a new phone. I’m definitely using this
If you would accept custom roms in general, there are GSI ROMs available that you could try, it works (sometimes with some problems, it’s good to read a little bit about GSI ROMs) even if there isn’t a official ROM built specifically for your device.
Edit: It seems RestlessOS and VoltageOS have some unofficial builds in there, I heard that they’re trying to be grapheneos, but for every phone (and because of this, some less security features)
Thanks! Like even If I don’t find one for this phone, if I find a dirt cheap phone somewhere it gives me options
Sadly no that I’m aware, if LineageOS doesn’t support it, probably no alternative Android distro does
I would wait until you maybe can afford a phone that is supported in the future
So I’ll take one for the team and be the guy that breaks it to you. If you’re looking for privacy, no. If you’re looking to degoogle as a layman, also no. If you’re looking to degoogle as a fellow poor, even more no. If your phone isn’t listed on the options for Graphene then your just fucked unless you feel comfortable making a fork of an existing OS and doing 100% of the work yourself.
I myself was here asking the same question about 4 months ago and while plenty of people pointed me to maybe options, they all boiled down to "don’t do this unless it’s your passion project and you have a phone to spare. " Ultimately I managed to turn a few old projects around for parts and make enough to get some used pixel 8s off back market for an almost painless price so that I could get my family off the corpo list in one go.
If I come off as bitter or harsh, I apologize. I came into this with the hopes that I could make the leap and found that the leap involved doing literally everything I’ve avoided about the phone market since the galaxy 3 mini. Why the anticapitalist effort for free phones wouldn’t base their system on a reliable and dirt cheap product instead of the branded icon of the enemy is beyond me.
Why the anticapitalist effort for free phones wouldn’t base their system on a reliable and dirt cheap product instead of the branded icon of the enemy is beyond me.
Why has been explained time and time again. They’re the most private and secure hardware, bar none.
https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices
Most OEMs don’t even let you unlock the bootloader, so that instantly disqualifies like 98% of the market. ARM is not like x86. You can’t just make a spin and then that spin basically just works on any old hardware, it has to be tailored to the hardware. And that takes time, money, and energy. Something GOS has limited amounts of.
Most cheap phones are cheap because they’re subsidized by spyware.
Quite the opposite. I appreciate you being frank about it. I’m actually extremely bitter about this world. If I didn’t have friends and family who care, I would have left it behind already.
Save up and buy a pixel it is then. Thank you for your honesty.
https://swappa.com/buy/unlocked/google
Make sure to buy a Pixel that is supported (Pixel 6 onwards) and carrier UNLOCKED.
What you want is both Carrier and OEM unlockable.
Carrier means you can use it on any cell service, OEM means you can flash Lineage or Graphene.
I have 3 Pixel 5’s right now running Lineage, I hammer on phones big time, and they run great.
Paid about $100 for each of them on ebay.
Thanks, I’ll take a look when I get home
I second this hard. The first pixel I picked up for this was “unlocked” version which meant it was locked harder than any other device could be. The second was DOA and it wasn’t until the 3rd that I got it to work.
