Comment by Animats 21 hours ago
I run an older Android phone without a Google account. All apps are from F-Droid. Google services are all turned off. Mail is Thunderbird, browser is Fennec.
Is it still possible to initialize an Android phone without a Google account?
Yes, I do this routinely.
Check devices supported by 3rd party distros like LineageOS which out of the box have no Google services. Ironically Pixel phones are very well supported. Xiaomi, OnePlus, too. There are quite a few:
It should be said though that only Pixel, Fairphone, and maybe some Motorolas support relocking the bootloader with a custom OS.
Without that ability, anyone can plug in to your phone and write whatever they want to the internal flash and your phone will be none the wiser.
The OnePlus6T supports it, it will still display a warning but it will be locked.
Happens to me all the time. Also on laptops, secureboot is such a life saver any time you're out and about
...it's sure nice this exists and is available to anyone but it's not seriously a risk if you're not of interest to people who are willing to physically show up and bug your hardware in a way that requires quite a bit of preparation
> Is it still possible to initialize an Android phone without a Google account?
Totally, get a Pixel phone and put GrapheneOS on it. You get state of the art hardware and the latest Android hardened for privacy and with optional Google services. That is, you can install and remove them anytime like any other app.
Recently picked up a Moto G Power 2024 as a cheap way to play around with Android. Never signed in with Google. Use Thunderbird / Firefox. Mixplorer for files. Most Google services & apps disabled. Use Obtanium as my main way to install apps, with a few from F-droid too. Have Aurora for anonymous Play if I need it but so far have just used it for Dropbox.
At the heart of this is Netguard. I'm using this firewall as a whitelist. Blocking network for everything except for the things I approve. So far, this seems to be working well.
It's been a great experience. Have ended up using this device more than my iPhone. Still has the stock ROM but, with the bad stuff disabled, it hasn't gotten in my way. This feels like it's truly my own device in a way that's rare these days. Main drawback is the lack of future updates.