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Joined 11 days ago
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Cake day: August 17th, 2025

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  • I’m a huge fan of Pine64, but I wouldn’t expect the PinePhone to be a great replacement for an Android smartphone. Personally I have quite extensive experience with PineBook Pro, PineTime and PineBuds Pro. I haven’t had the chance to try the PinePhone, but I’d definitely go for the Pro.

    Even then, prepare for a junky experience and forget about lixuries such as good camera, nice screen, smooth UI/UX. Their devices are great, and the ideas behind them more so. But unfortunately they rarely work well, perhaps with the exception of PineBuds Pro.


  • As of right now, it’s looking like GrapheneOS will be unaffected, and Google has yet to lock down the bootloader. So this should remain a valid option for at least 2 years.

    Other than that:

    • Any smartphones with an unlocked bootloader + any ROMs without gapps
    • Chinese smartphones with non-Google Android builds
    • Linux smartphones
    • Bonus: Huawei is about to release their own non-Android OS, but I wouldn’t expect it to be privacy-friendly

    Honestly there probably isn’t any good, long-term solution. Personally I’m somewhat shocked we’ve gone this many years with reasonably open smartphones. Next step is probably closing bootloaders in new laptops, as part of the switch to ARM (which is already undergoing).