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Right, Android trades ads for system wide tracking and that's rotten for the user. Moreover, Android's tacking mechanism is brilliantly effective—one has to admire Google's ingenuity for its receiver/signalling system. It's so integral to Android that one can view the O/S as built around it rather than it as an addition/add-on to the O/S. Essentially, Android is an O/S built around an ingenious spying system. It's ju…
> It's just not possible to use an Android phone as Google intended (and as the vast majority of users actually do) without that tracking mechanism taking center stage These things are not as tightly woven into the OS as you make it seem. It is very much possible. GrapheneOS, CalyxOS, roll your own AOSP-based image. A completely degoogled Pixel series is even practical and realistic for casuals. As you say you miss o…
I know that but try and tell it to the average user. Even many of my techie colleagues aren't game to make changes to their phones for fear of losing some beloved feature. Frankly, I'm amazed at how tolerant people are to this level of surveillance.
That said, much can and does go wrong, resurrecting bricked phones seems to be a pastime of mine. As you know, whether one can decouple Google's spyware subsystem easily or not depends on the phone. If you can't gain access to the OS then it's not possible to roll one's own ASOP-based image or use some other one.
These days, many manufacturers are making it harder and harder to bypass security features, unlock the boot loader and install custom ROMs. Nevertheless I won't buy a phone without first checking whether I can install a custom ROM and it's definitely harder now than it was say five years ago.