What to put on new phone?

Fudoshin ️🏳️‍🌈@feddit.uk to

Android@lemdro.id – 32 points – 10 months ago

Yes this is partly to show off I got a new phone because I'm so fucking happy to be rid of my water damaged Samsung!

Also to show off my amazing meme skills using a meme generator app. 🤓

Bye seriously... I've been living in a cave for years. What apps do you recommend?

I installed, so far:

Photo editor pro
Mi Remote
Meme generator

What else? Recommended ebook reader? Anything else?

That app where you tilt your phone and it looks like you're drinking a beer. Maybe a soundboard app. Paper toss. The lightsaber app. Definitely set some custom ringtones and show those off, those always impress.

@ivanafterall the right suggestions.

@Fudoshin

1 more...

Revanced: removes ads from youtube
zedge: ringtones and stuff
c:geo: geocaching
signal: messaging
firefox: browser

More like Newpipe, Libretube, Simplex chat and Mull.

(Go to F-droid as it is better long term)

Revanced works with youtube music too. I hate big brother but he's pretty good at knowing my music taste ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

If you like NewPipe, there's also Tubular, a fork of NewPipe with sponsorblock integration.

How's Mull's stability recently? I prefer it over Firefox too but switched back six months ago due to bugs cropping up here and there

I've never had an issue but your milage may vary.

I'm surprised no one uses DNS66. Is there's an alternative that's better?

Better is subjective but the last time I had tried it (2022) I switched to personaldnsfilter. It's available on both Fdroid and playstore.

F Droid

Start with F-droid and maybe end with custom ROM without google.

Install a browser with adblock like mull.

Koreader an ebook reader from f-droid.

Use ADB to remove everything else you don't need.

Install aurora store, it is basically play store without the telemetry

Install rethink, it's on fdroid. traffic blocker for apps. Gotta stop those xiaomi apps from getting telemetry.

Rethink looks fantastic! Seeing up now. 👍

Usually the first thing I put on a new phone is a case.

Good idea! It's already slipped off the sofa once! Ordered one off ebay. 👍

Go through any and all available privacy and permissions settings and make sure you're not sending a bunch of info you don't want to be to xioami and google (and any app you download)

I know where you're coming form but I've always thought this about government spying: I'm more worried about my own government's spying than a foreign government because my own government is very capable of fucking my life over but what can the CCP do to me? Nothing! Think about it! When you use a VPN you choose a foreign country. But remember if it's part of 5-eyes you're fucked cos your browsing logs can be grabbed by an ally and fed to your country. Choose a VPN that ends in Russia or a non-allied country - what the fuck can they do?

Snowden already showed that the UK spies for the Yaks and the Yanks spy for the UK cos the 2 countries laws hinder spying on their own. But who wouldn't spy for the Brits? The Chinese, for example. Or Russians. Which is why I'd feel safer with Russian or Chinese email servers for example.

There's a slim but definite possibility that if you use a Dutch VPN for piracy that the alliance between the UK and Dutch could mean you're caught. Less so with a less-allied country.

Xi Jinping doesn't give 2 shits about my life or what I pirate. I don't care if my soul is sold to Chinese data brokers- doesn't affect me!! And the chances of the Chinese giving that piracy/anythng data over to the Brits? ZERO!

My comment had nothing to do with xioami being Chinese, a corporation is a corporation and they're all trying to collect as much of your data as possible, I guess you can let them if you want lol ¯\(ツ)/¯

Oh no, no worries. I just saw an opportunity to soap box for a sec! 😃 Thanks though! I'd love to install a firewall but I don't wanna root the phone. I use mobile-only banking (Monzo, Revolut, Monese) and they refuse to run if you're phone is rooted. :(

Ha, fair enough..

It's just the first thing I do with a new phone is make sure privacy is as tight as I can get it (without rooting since I'm not confident enough to do that), so that was my recommendation to you.. I also have an older xiaomi, and a newer honor (from after their split with huawei), neither are amazing but they do the same job for so much cheaper, I really can't see why people insist on spending thousands when you can spend hundreds for pretty much the same thing..

Copying another comment I made: I'd love to install a firewall but I don't wanna root the phone. I use mobile-only banking (Monzo, Revolut, Monese) and they refuse to run if you're phone is rooted. :(

On top of that I really like the MIUI interface tbh. 👍

You can install firewall apps which work via localVPN. Like Netguard(some features need pro/donation), adguard(not foss, available on adguard website), trackecontrol(less comprehensive compared to Netguard)

Afwall. U need root for that, but its worth it, still wondering why android dosent come with a own firewall app smh.

Letting you disable or limit internet access to apps would go pretty strongly against Google's interests - how would they get their ad money if half the users were running most apps offline?

Some vendors provide a way to do this (Xiaomi has an internet access toggle per app, or at least it did in the KitKat era), but it's never making its way into stock Android until Google integrates AdMob into the system.

You can toggle internet access per app on stock Android tho...

Only if you consider ROMs like LineageOS to be stock Android and ignore the many things they do to make the user's life easier.

AOSP never had internet access as a toggleable permission, and it never will as long as Google is calling the shots and wants ads to work the way they currently do.

Mobilism
Aurora

The least annoying reader on Android I've found is moon reader pro. It feels a lot worse to me than maple reader on iOS though.

A lot of people seem to recommend KOReader (it might be because it can be installed on a lot of readers that don't have Android though), and actually reading is fine, but browsing your library is awful. It's completely free without anti features though (on fdroid if it isn't on the play store).

The least annoying reader on Android I've found is moon reader pro. It feels a lot worse to me than maple reader on iOS though.

Try Librera from F-Droid. I only wanted a pdf reader, and got that and an epub reader/ebook manager too. Apparently it's also good for music manuscript too but I haven't used it for that.

It's crazy how different different apps render the same text in the same font.

I ended up having to force roboto thin to get something close to how moon reader displays regular roboto.

I'm giving it a shot now, though. I do like that nice side bar that gives you fine control over how your library is displayed, with different profiles for different things.

Awesome - thank you! You also gave me the idea to install F-Droid (which lead me to Droidify too!).

Thanks!