Mercè’s smart phone screen broke recently. Luckily I was able to get a screen replacement for her old OnePlus 3T. Putting everything back was a challenge in itself, but thanks to this YouTube I was able to succeed. I tried to re-install the factory defaults, but I found out that there was additional damage on top of the screen andn some features were unusable. I decided to give Lineage OS a try, keeping my focus on privacy. Using the guidelines of this video I was able to put everything together. I had to pivot in some cases to make things work for my case. I didn’t feel I knew what I was doing, yet I succeeded. At some point I was cleaning up bloatware and I deleted too much, so I had to star over. It is very hard to brick a device when doing these things, so I think that if you are one the fence with this, you should give it a try.
The only puzzling issue was to find a way to have fast localization services. I need it mainly for Osmand~, my maps app. I was able to configure it using Mozzilla’s localization service for UnifiedNlp.
The result is a phone that can install all the regular apps you are used to in Android. I am even able to install them anonymously using the anonymous account in the Aurora App Store. And my phone is (almost) free of Google spyware. However, I did have to create an anonyomous account to maximize compatibility with some apps’ push notifications. For now I am good for that.
Have you tried Lineage OS? I am curious about your thoughts about it.