So, I just learned about this the very, very hard way.
After buying a second hand S10 and finding american ones can't be unlocked, traveling 4 hours to buy another one after much research, much annoyances to unlock it (samsung requires you to be online, which I didn't know) and testing multiple ROMs, I finally read this page more properly https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/beyond1lte/ which says "known quirks: IMS". I thought it was just something like dolby sound.

What it means is that it doesn't suport VoLTE and most currently used phone systems. Samsung made their proprietary mess, unlike most other developers, which means it will probably never have an open source version.

And that applies to ALL modern samsung phones. I had samsung phone before with a custom OS, but didn't realize because VoLTE wasn't mandatory back then. Now it is here in Australia, and many countries. So if you ever plan to buy a samsung phone to degoogle it, know that it won't make phone calls. SMS and mobile data also doesn't work.

I don't know how I missed this. It should be talked more often given how popular samsung is. There should always be a warning "YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO MAKE PHONE CALLS IN THE FUTURE IF YOU CONTINUE".

S10 was the last decent phone ever made (for me). Not too big, SD card, headphone jack (one of the most important things for me), good camera, etc, etc... That's why I was so persistent to find one to degoogle.

So I'm stuck with my amazingly shitty pixel 5 (and other ones are even worse for me). And considering the possibility of a life without smartphones at all, since this is a losing battle. Mainstream doesn't care and evil companies have every incentive to kill freedom. It has been getting really bad and it will just get worse. But anyway... this post is not about this.

Be warned, if you care about freedom don't ever buy samsung again. Not because they are evil (they are), but because you won't be able to make phone calls on your "phone".

Who makes phe calls anyways nowadays?

But yes: The best phones for degoogling are the Google phones.

And how do you people talk to other people? Whatsapp? Apparently that's how it is in brazil, even to call companies or support.

About the second line, "best" is being generous. I guess you mean better supported. Although for some very odd reason the internet seems to love pixels. While they are the worse phones I've used for the price after apple phones (for similar reasons).

But above all, the fact that other phones support for open source is even worse than google is why I'm considering to learn to live without smartphones. If we have to rely on google for our freedom and privacy, we are well and truly fucked. And we deserve to be if that's the case.

I vowed my Last Samsung phone would be A55 (or A56 if you also count my house hold)

Technically, the brands that offer already degoogled android (fairphone) or Linux directly (jolla) are better.

Have you dismissed Fairphone for some reason?

unlock wall of shame

Pixels are "loved" because they can run grapheneos and others. Not because they're technically superior phones.

They're the opposite of fucking samsung. In that one single regard though.

Attach phone, click install, wait, google gone.
All others are getting harder and harder to even root.

It's very, very expensive for what it is. But I guess I just meant "mainstream" androids.

Going on alternative land there are options, like I used to have a phone with sailfishOS. But they will never have the adoption of mainstream phones, and it will probably be less and less with time as google tries to make people's life harder. And that means they will never have the same finance and support.

It's nice to support those companies, but like I said, I think it's a lost battle and I probably should focus my energies on learning to not rely on smartphones. Then it doesn't matter what feature apple or google remove, it won't affect me.

Good on you! Let's spread the word and help samsung die! (It won't make any difference, but I want to pretend it will)

Thanks for letting us know. I was thinking of getting a used Galaxy S9 or S10 for a degoogled Lineage OS phone. Now, it looks like the Pixels are the only modern phones that are compatible with this. That’s a pretty sad state of affairs, I’d say.

New hosts/adblock/pihole/adguard filter/rule:

#GOOGLE===============================  
0.0.0.0 google.com  
0.0.0.0 googleusercontent.com  
0.0.0.0 googleapis.com  
0.0.0.0 gstatic.com  
0.0.0.0 android.com  
0.0.0.0 google-analytics.com  
0.0.0.0 googlehosted.com  
0.0.0.0 googletagmanager.com  
0.0.0.0 googleadservices.com  
0.0.0.0 pki.goog  

Phone now degoogled.

Instead of whatsapp, I use signal. I explained to my friends that I moved to it. Some installed the app for me. Others didn't. I accept that.

I bought a fairphone 3 last year for £100 with e/os pre installed which works fine for me. I changed to the Lime booter for a better interface. It's not very fast if you want to game & the speaker isn't very good, but otherwise does all the basics I need or find handy asides from internet banking. Could be good if you want a basic smart phone for occasional use?

Please never reccomend google phones for de googling ever again

In addition to this, anything on One UI 8 and above does not allow the bootloader to be unlocked, regardless of region. Fortunately, I had already rooted my S23 and have stayed on One UI 7 ever since.

I had a A53 5G which only supported outdated Android ROMs like TrebleDroid support.

Get a used one if you don't feel comfortable giving your money to Google (a good idea IMO)

Do you use this yourself? I wonder how much stuff breaks if you use it.

Also YouTube URLs are conspicuously missing...

It was so miserable I just gave up and bought a Fairphone. Much happier.

As someone that has a similar list but not exactly that... A lot. A lot of stuff breaks but! You don't see ads in shitty mobile games anymore.

Another thing you find is how many links go through a google analytics or seems to be sponsored

Ethically, yes.

Technologically, no. By magnitudes.

what are the fairphone and Jolla phones lacking?

Motorola is coming in soon, fortunately

GrapheneOS hardware requirements, for starters.

And by buying used Google gear You increase the value of used market making them a better deal for people looking to buy new because they will keep in value more than other phones

Sorry man, I feel for you.

I am seriously hoping to be able to ditch Android entirely for something like post-market OS, Linux, in the future. And we'll be taking a look at what phones are supported when buying my next one.

It really is time for serious linux phones

You don't sign in to your phone, like straight lineage with no microg?

I call my wife everyday on my way home from work.

Also I have to make phone calls to get ahold of doctors and such

For security and privacy (by extension), Graphene is king.

For freedom, Graphene has some lacking things.

Unlocking instantly and permanently breaks Knox too which destroys any chance of resale without being shady or flat out lying about it. I learned that the hard way, thankfully, with a cheapo A50 I was using as a secondary device back in heavy Pokemon Go days. That was my first Samsung since my Nexus, and my last, ever.

Dunno how it is over Australia, but in my country, finding information is hard if the problem it solves isn't on the nose of the population already. So if Australia's anything like that, your failed quest may not even be your fault to begin with.

Still, failure is just another form of confirmation, so even if you yourself went through it, sharing it as a cautionary tale is extremely helpful. 🙏

Indeed it breaks everything. I've only it tried it for a couple of days.
It's just an extreme example of degoogling. But if you wish to really degoogle, this would be a small part of the effort.
The list is mostly what I picked up of google apps calling home in the background in my phone. I didn't include youtube because I don't have the youtube app installed on my phone, so it's not calling home.

How's the phone performing so far and what was your previous phone? I've got my eye on Fairphone whenever it's finally time to upgrade (hopefully not for another few years)

Not OP, but for me, yeah

Almost all apps come from F-Droid, with two apps from Aurora that I needed for work

Why would I sign into a proprietary network for a computing device?

This right here is how i knew about my nothing phone to be relockable, good stuff

I hope we'll have next-gen linuxphones before 2G gets fully phased out in the EU....

Yeah, technology enshittification as a whole has definitely picked up the last few years, and I find myself compromising more and more as the field of reasonable options gets narrower.

Like you, I used to only go for phones with SD card and headphone jack support. Now, I'm on a (new but not bought from Google) Pixel 9 Fold with GrapheneOS using a DAC adapter to still have wired audio and a more deliberate storage management system to compensate for not having SD cards. (Unlike you, I need a big screen for spreadsheets and such.)

I purposely bought the newest phone I could within my budget, because I'm planning for Android to be completely unviable the next time I need to upgrade, and I want to give Linux phones as much time to mature as possible before I inevitably migrate.

It seems offline tech is going to be the last bastion of safety sooner rather than later, so I'm in various stages of migrating my digital life offline. Linux over Windows. Keepass, LibreOffice, Obsidian, etc. + Syncthing over cloud options. Keeping off-site backups with friends and family instead of in the cloud. Keeping local DRM-free media. It's time-consuming but rewarding. I should have done it all way sooner.

fairphones also support it, and a few other relatively popular ROMs

I was just checking, I think a lot of ppl forget how tightly integrated the google+android thing is.

I hope mine lasts me at least another 7 years before I have to buy a new phone, but yeah, this will be my last Samsung phone. Hopefully, by the time I have to switch to something new, there will have been enough changes made that I can get a non-american phone and still be able to use important apps without having to use Google play. Cautiously optimistic.

And honour to them for sharing the knowledge here others won't fall for this shit.

https://fairphone.com/

https://jolla.com/

Dumbphones are just better IMO

I had a Note 3, Note 4, S9+, S21u, S24u, My wife/kids have Note 3, s9+, s23u, A series and a tab 4.

I've had Samsung 360 cameras, tv's, galaxy watches

It stops here.

The biggest thing i'm going to miss is a decent camera. I don't feel like carying around a 5x camera everywhere I go and most of the phones i'm looking at are kinda crap for cameras

Samsung has always been hostile af

An One UI 8.5 locks down the bootloader

I've always loved Notes and Ultra flagships, but I don't want to rep such a lousy OEM

Yup. I bought a camera after google play killing my s21 ultra.

Paid 800 dollars for the camera. It's inferior to the old s21 in almost every way, and I could get one for 300 dollars. Inferior as in a camera, not even considering how the s21 is great as a gaming phone, computer, etc. Plus the camera is fragile and bigger, so I never carry it, so it's never there when I need to capture something nice.

It's weird how hardware wise we reached such an amazing point, but the software has enshitified to levels I would never even imagine.

We have to choose between being a slave of samsung/google or let go of amazing hardware. But they can only afford to make such amazing stuff precisely because of their evil practices. So it will get worse. Hardware will become more amazing, the more evil these companies get.

I have been on the offline open source route for many years. I don't even see it as time consuming. It's so much better than relying on cloud services that it pays off. I lost count of the situations where needing cloud would have been bad. But maybe I trained myself that way, because I never liked the "cloud" idea, my data out of my control.

But the hardware to run that and the options to do that will become more and more impossible. At least on mobiles.

There will come a day when Syncthing won't work anymore on android, because of "security" (the terrorists could send files to your phone and kill children!).

You are lucky. Here not even 3G or 4G works anymore. If it doesn't have VoLTE it doesn't work. It started this year.