There are a lot of really good free software Android apps, like, almost enough to have a usable phone with only free software.
I use
- Firefox as my browser
- Signal for messaging
- VLC to play media
- OSM for maps
- Twidere for twitter.
I still need (feel free to suggest one!)
- a camera with nice filters (I use B612)
- a fast and good UX wrapper around the nextbus API (I use the Transit app)
- email, calendar, etc... but my accounts are with google, so, meh
@aufbaugegner I've used it, it's okay. It's kind of ugly and a lot of interface actions seem more complicated than they need to be. but yeah it's definitely a flower in the bouquet
@morganastra fair enough, I didn't investigate much further after K9 (beats using Gmail, I figured). I'm with you on the other ones, though
@morganastra if you think you could handle a phone without google, check out copperhead os. it's hardened android and as open source as possible, with no google services.
@fxck is that the one where there's no way to install third party apps? lmao
@morganastra nope there's fdroid built in! and you can manually install apps just like in android - it's an android fork.
@morganastra Chromium is FOSS, right? I think I use mostly free software too.
@ashkitten chromium on desktops is. Chrome is not open source even on desktops because they include a bunch of proprietary codecs and stuff, and the Android Chrome build is full of proprietary gunk
@morganastra There are plenty of Chromium builds on Android :)
@ashkitten oh my bad I see there is a way to build chromium for android, yeah if you use chromium not chrome that's free software :3
@morganastra I use Chrome on Android though, because I use the Google tab sync features :(
@ashkitten ah, yeah. that's fair. you can get that feature in free software if you use firefox (on both desktop and android) though!
@morganastra Firefox is nice... I can't remember the specifics on why I left it, probably because of Hangouts.
@morganastra K-9 Mail for email. Supports openpgp, if you're into crypto
@infomorph I'm into crypto but PGP is terrible and doesn't result in encrypted emails in practice haha. Yeah I should have mentioned k9, it's a decent app, I find the UI a little clunky to use and ugly though
@morganastra I wholeheartedly agree that pgp is just ... ugh.
@infomorph right now my favorite messaging app and protocol is Signal - it's passed a crypto audit, it's really easy to use right and hard to use wrong, and the UI is really pretty. I wish the desktop app supported keyboard shortcuts though, having to use a mouse for it is pretty bleh
@morganastra Agree, Signal is pretty great, and I've been impressed by how many of my non-crypto-nerd friends have hooked up with it lately, that says good things about its usability.
@infomorph yep! all my friends are just, on it, so most of the time that I'm just chatting with friends it's encrypted. That's so good!
signal has many pros, but it's not federative and it uses google play services.
I have my favorite alternative (XMPP + OMEMO), but it doesn't use the mobile phone number that might be not user friendly
@allilengyi @infomorph yeah that's not a solution at all. no one has an XMPP app and even if they did no one wants to configure it to use some other encryption scheme. also XMPP is basically impossible to use on mobile because it has to keep the connection open, rapidly draining battery :/
i use it on android (conversations) and chatSecure is available for iOs, so I use it on both laptop and phone, and messages go to all clients that are online
@morganastra For your calendar and contacts, you can host NextCloud.
Is very effective! :grin:
@DelToon hosting a bunch of my own micro-cloud services is a pretty tedious solution...
@morganastra
for email there exists K9-Mail, I guess you know?! It also features PGP-encryption. Do you know the f-droid app store?
@morganastra when I used Android I liked K9 Mail a lot!