I don’t like so called smartphones (flashy devices to mine your data and other reasons) but my regular no touchscreen phone’s microphone is no longer working as it should, making conversations difficult.
Enter a smartphone I received as a present, my phobia (for lack of a better word) to smartphones and my (misguided?) obsession with privacy: I don’t want to use this smartphone as my default phone because I’m scared the carrier, ISP or google are going to mine my data and trace my calls.
Which might be an overreaction, because each time I use my regular cell phone, the carrier knows when I’m calling from, who I’m calling and how long the call lasts.
So I ask you: how much more data would I be leaking if I use my new smartphone for calls only, compared to a regular, no touchscreen phone?
Probably your best option now is getting a pixel phone and flashing it with graphene os.
If you can’t get a pixel phone you may want to use something like lineage os and make sure you don’t add any Google services to it.
100% this is the best choice for op IMO.
A big pro is that they literally don’t need any Google services whatsoever by the sounds of things
If you can’t get a Pixel, look for a phone on the DivestOS list (or the Lineage list, it can be way better than stock Android since it lacks Google anything).
DivestOS is Lineage, with some more work done, kind of between Lineage and Graphene. I really like it, actually prefer it over Graphene for my use-case (it can run MicroG as a user app in a work profile, so kind of a stepping stone for getting away from Google).
That’s amazing. Never knew about this phone.
And then install your main Apps from F-Droid (all Open Source and reviewed) and put eventual proprietary apps (get them from Aurora instead of Play) in a Shelter/Insular profile.
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F-Droid replaces some proprietary bits and adds warnings and all.
DivestOS would be closer to what Graphene provides for more devices
As a lineageOS fork it has good compatibility, but the maintainer regularly updates the OS and maintains it with their own hardening patches as well as patches from GrapheneOS