Originally this was going to be a more in-depth article but I have just done a search and found that there are already some steemit entries on the subject (i.e. https://steemit.com/android/@habib.salhi/life-android-without-google), so I'll just explain my experience and findings.. :)
So to crack on, my initial motivation was to have an Android phone without Google. The reasons were that I am concerned about my privacy and we all know about Google's practices with our data. Furthermore, one day I was using my Nexus 4 and Google Play displayed a message telling me about a terms of service change that I would need to accept to continue using it. After reading the Google Play Terms of Service and the Privacy Policy I got really concerned about the sort of paranoia that was creeping into Google's mindset.. And I simply refused to accept their Terms of Service and stop using their services..
On top of that, Android was originally developed by Android Inc. (bought by Google afterwards). Google, as well, leads the Android Open Source Project (AOSP - https://source.android.com/). So theoretically it was possible to have Android without Google.
On terminology, Android is the os (Linux) that runs on our (Android) mobile phones and Google has developed a suite of apps and services that build on top and extend the Android base software (Stock Android)..
My set up ended up, after some time testing and using different alternatives, being the following one:
- Phone: Fairphone 2
- OS: LineageOS
- Apps store: F-Droid and APKUpdater
- Email: ProtonMail and K9 Mail
- Browser: Orfox, Firefox Klar and Firefox Nightly
- PDF reader: Document Viewer
- Chat: Telegram, Slack and Skype
- Search Engine: searx.me, duckduckgo.com and startpage.com
- Maps: Maps & Navigation (OsmAnd) [openstreetmap.org]
- Backup: Titanium Backup
- File Explorer: Ghost Commander
And now I'll give a bit more of detail..
Fairphone 2
I try to be a conscientious and responsible consumer and I learnt about the Fairphone initiative some time ago, so I was eager for my phone to break to get hold of one.
It is basically a normal phone with average specs with ethically sourced materials. On top of that, it has an open and modular internal design, so to facilitate changing its modules separately in case of malfuntion. This includes the usual supects like the battery, the screen, and others..
When I went to buy it online there was a waiting list but in the same page they redirected me to local distributors and I bought there it without any problems..
Lineageos
I have been a user of custom roms for some years already. I started with CyanogenMod and later on I moved to LineageOS.
LineageOS is a custom rom that gives you the chance to fiddle with the OS.. It is free and open source and it has some additional features that I like..
https://lineageos.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LineageOS
Apps store
F-Droid and APKUpdater
When I started thinking about the Google agnostic Android experiment I realised the Google Play app store would be the most delicate point.
We use it to download apps and it gives us some reassurance that we are not downloading viruses and etc.
We got used to this paradigm, though in our computers we download and install applications from the original developers' page; so why was it so difficult to do the same on Android?
Well, the answer is that Android developers got lazier and they were uploading their apps to Google Play so it got to a vicious circle.
The first thing I noticed is that there are alternatives to the Google Play app store (when I did my research I found F-Droid, Aptoide, Amazon Appstore, Uptodown and others).
F-Droid is a repository for open source and free apps. It has an alternative app for almost everything, and after trying the apps they do what it says on the tin and very effectively.. so now I am chuffed to bits with them..
F-Droid gives one the ability to use other repositories, so that one can activate The Guardian Project's repositories and get Orfox and Odroid (the Tor project apps for android) from there..
After trying some of the other mentioned store apps I found APKUpdater.
It gives me a bigger selection of apps and it gives me the reassurement and transparency that makes me feel comfortable when downloading them.
The downside is that one needs to download the apps onto one's mobile and install them from there. But I have been doing this all my life in my computers.
APKUpdater uses different sources and it provides the developers' certificate hashes (to double check that the apps haven't been tampered) and the files checksum hashes (to double check that the files are the ones the web page says and that there are no transmission errors).
I must confess it is a bit more demanding but it is still ok for my skills and gives me a huge set of common apps.
I use Checkey and Ghost Commander, both open source, the former to check that my installed apps are the original and they have no viruses, and the latter to check the integrity of the files after downloading them.
https://f-droid.org/en/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-Droid
https://guardianproject.info/
https://github.com/rumboalla/apkupdater/releases
So, if I was to move away from Google I would need to open a new email account.
And so I did. I chose ProtonMail for personal reasons and I use their app, that I must confess uses one of the Google's functionalities to fecth the new email notifications and it doesn't work (so I need to manually check for new mails) but they have stated they will eventually use open source alternatives.. So I am ok with that.
And for my Gmail accounts I use K9 Mail.. And it works pretty well..
Browser
And again, Chrome is highly integrated with Google so..
..I decided to give a try to the once best browser for laptops and desktops before the release of Chrome, Firefox.
Orfox is the version of Firefox with enhanced security that runs on the Tor network. I use it for everything that can work (there are pages that are very sensitive on having javascript disabled). This way I can stop my ISP from piling up on my browsing metadata. This is my everyday browser.
Then there is Firefox Klar; a Firefox version for the German and Austrian community (they are more privacy sensitive) so that I can open a link from any app and it does it in a private browsing/incognito tab, clearing any session data afterwards.
And finally I use Firefox Nightly for al the rest of browsing needs..
Other apps
The rest of the apps that I use are very straightforward..
I could probably mention that I opted out of Google Maps for obvious reasons and I started using openstreetmap.org and their app Maps & Navigation (OsmAnd).
I does the trick and its is, guess what, open source, yes...
On the front of search engines there are plenty of different options. My recent "acquisition" is searx.me that it is open source, privacy aware and works pretty well. It is a metatag search engine, so it searches on many other search engines and gives back the results..
And then there are the other ones I have been using for a long time now such as duckduckgo.com and startpage.com. These last two use the Google search engine but they protect our privacy.
Conclusion
The conclusion to this experiment is that it is possible to have a fully functional Google agnostic Android. Laziness have brought us to this point where we are so dependent on single agents like Google, so that when we want to opt out it seems very difficult or impossible; and more so when everyone else is onboard of the same single agents. As common sense dictates, the more we diversify the more resilient we become; then we wouldn't find ourselves in a bad postion and we would have more alternatives, not to say that we promote healthier competitive markets..
I hope this experiment can give you some insights and reassurance in the case you are concerned about your privacy and want to lesser Google's influence in your life.. It is all a matter of balancing benefits vs risk, and exercising the common sense :)