41–50 of 78 posts
G play services sucks phone battery
I actually don't use my phone much, and not at all for entertainment. Consequently my battery usually lasts three or four days. (Motorola G4). Vaguely within the last week or two, no change in behavior, no new apps, that's been cut at least in half. One day it lasted less than a day. I've got things like location and bluetooth turned off. I haven't been able to track it down. I'm wondering if it's a recent google or…
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Yet on geek kingdom, bad Microsoft pushing W10 telemetry on us, but Google is cool and doesn't do no evil.
To be fair though, it is important that we continue to pressure Microsoft about their telemetry practices as well. Microsoft's business doesn't depend on data collection, and they could very easily return to not mandatorily collecting it, but our voices on the issue have not been loud enough yet. (And actually, as I recently discovered, Microsoft won't allow you to submit feedback about their apps unless telemetry is…
I use an Android phone without any Google services or a Google account. When I got the phone, it brought up a demand to sign in with a Google account. But there's a "Later" option to bypass that temporarily. Disabling "Google One Time Setup" made that go away. Mail is the built-in IMAP client. Browsing is with Firefox. Apps come from F-droid. Maps come from ZNavi. It's OK.
Sure, but sometimes you want app that's only in play store - maybe Signal (if you trust the creator), maybe e-banking app, or local transport app, or Waze, or whatever. Some bigger apps are on apkmirror.com, but smaller ones aren't uploaded very often, so this might be a way to get them.
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I actually don't use my phone much, and not at all for entertainment. Consequently my battery usually lasts three or four days. (Motorola G4). Vaguely within the last week or two, no change in behavior, no new apps, that's been cut at least in half. One day it lasted less than a day. I've got things like location and bluetooth turned off. I haven't been able to track it down. I'm wondering if it's a recent google or…
it could also come from the hardware.
Or you can just install Yalp Store from F-Droid ( https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=com.github.yerio... ) and download the apps from the Google Play Store directly to your device. You can also easily update your apps with Yalp Store. Another possibility is to use the Java software Raccoon on your Desktop, available here: http://raccoon.onyxbits.de/
I use https://apkpure.com
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> * Optional completely offline geo location service via an on-phone database which often preserves battery and even works when no internet access is available. Online backends using e.g. Mozilla Location Service are also available Sounds really cool! > * The often unavoidable Push notifications via Google Cloud Messaging while only sending minimal identifying data Can you elaborate, please?
> Can you elaborate, please? Are you asking how it is unavoidable or how it is sending only minimal identifying data?
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it could also come from the hardware.
Possible, sure. You mean like the battery getting old? Capacitors getting arthritis? It's less than six months old. And it was a vaguely sudden change.
What is the worst thing about G Play Services you can't turn off?
I blocked mine from using body sensors, microphone and camera and it now complains that it needs them whenever I fire up the gmail app. It doesn't. Gmail works fine. It still whinges though.
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> Can you elaborate, please? Are you asking how it is unavoidable or how it is sending only minimal identifying data?
I'm asking more about what "Push notifications via Google Cloud Messaging" are and why they are unavoidable. I think I will be able to infer what minimal identifying data is required from that.
It is unavoidable, I assume, because otherwise you won't get notifications, which defeats the purpose of several apps, and they can't provide a fully independent alternative server because it would require integration on each app developer's backend side. "Sending minimal information", probably means they proxy the requests to avoid giving geoip info to Google about you.