Things that make me angry about my current smartphone Samsung Galaxy S21Ultra on a Verizon plan is the mandatory software updates in which they install WITHOUT MY PERMISSION stupid apps like Netflix and addictive gambling games and stacking block games and Candy crush. God knows what else they install without my permission. I don’t want any of it!
Next phone I buy I want to start with a clean slate, I’m not going to affiliate with any conglomerate like Verizon or AT&T or Sprint or T-Mobile etc, I prefer to go rogue somehow,
which smartphone do you recommend that has no bloatware and it’s customizable?
Maybe a fair phone? https://shop.fairphone.com/fairphone-5
Short summary:
Addition:
I have the fp5 and flashed e/os myself. Im very happy with it. You need to flash it back when you want to sent it in (they have the instructions on there own page). Build Quality is nice. Repairs are simple. The price for spareparts is reasonable. And they really try to make a difference here and that is why i support them. Are they perfect? No? But who is? And you need to start from somewhere i think.
Does it come without GApps? Most people don’t need half of those
It is google Android but they do not pay for the name so they call it ‘FairphoneOS’. It comes with all the standard GApps.
Now for the important question though:
Do they allow the user to uninstall those apps like any other app?
That’s not how that works, they call it FairphoneOS because they added their own customizations. Default Android is pretty barebones nowadays so nobody uses that. You dont have to pay Google to use the Android name
They really need to sponsor graphene to get it officially supported on fairphone. Cant recommend fairphone when you are stuck with google tracking everything you do on stock android.