Installation & Setup
In my previous post I told that I would be switching to a google free setup on my phone. So today I started the project by downloading one of the recently updated custom rom for my device which is the Redmi 5 Plus (Codename: Vince).
The custom rom which I went with was Syberia OS which is based on android pie and does not support signature spoofing which is required to install microg (Alternative to Google Play services) but I decided that I would not install microg and installed the rom with magisk and my migrate backup which contains only 6 non open source apps.
After installing and setting up my device the first difference which I noticed was how quickly I completed my setup it took me almost 5-8 minutes to configure my nextcloud account to sync my contacts and other misc. stuff. The second major difference which I noticed was in storage space previously whenever I installed any custom rom the storage space avaialable after setting up all of my apps was around 1.8-2 GB but after cutting of non open source apps and google services my storage space avaialable increased to 3GB which is amazing considering I didn't install more 20 apps which I normally do. The third difference was in performance and battery life. After using open sourced apps my battery consumption reduced. I could now watch YouTube (not using YouTube app) videos for more than 4 hours without thinking of battery drain.
| Apps | Replacement |
|---|---|
| YouTube | Newpipe |
| PlayStore | Fdroid & Aurora Store |
| TickTick | Tasks |
| Google Docs | LibreOffice Viewer |
| Poweramp | VLC |
| Google Sync | DAVx3 & Nextcloud |
| Solid File Explorer | Default File Manager |
| Google PDF | MuPDF |
This were the apps I have replaced with their open source alterantives. But still I use 6 non source app which are:
I would be replacing Lithum with an open source ebook reader and would be uninstalling Phonepe since it is giving me some errors during payments. But for time being I can't replace or uninstall Whatsapp, Camscanner and Spotify but I would be uninstalling PUBG a weeks before my board exam.
So this is my sought of open source non google setup. I Would be using this is setup for atleast a month to notice if there are any more differences beside the ones which I have told.