Comment by wishfish

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.