Like I don’t have space in my life right now to do a whole lot of actual tinkering but google is pissing me off and I just remember in middle school just being able to change the boot order in the bios and plug in a usb stick and a few hours later having mint installed. What’s the easiest way to get a clean de-googled os on my phone?
Since it keeps coming up, I have a unihertz atom, a moto g 2022 and one of these monstrosities
Extra bonus question, if I do wind up buying a new phone in the future what brands should I look out for? (But I’d like to keep using what I have until the hardware breaks if possible).
You are absolutely and completely out of luck, all three of the devices mentioned use Mediatek processors. Mediatek is widely known as having the absolute worst support for custom roms due to no open source drivers being available and generally no support for developers.
As a rule of thumb if it runs android and it doesn’t use Snapdragon or Tensor it doesn’t support custom roms. If it uses Snapdragon and specifically has an unlockable bootloader than it might support custom roms. Finally if it runs a Tensor processor (with the exception of Pixel 10 due to being too new) than it is guaranteed to either run custom roms or eventually run custom roms (no guarantee for future tensor devices).
So if you want my reccomendation for phone brands it would be in this order:
Custom roms/custom OSs (excluding forks and custom builds):
LineageOS: The largest and original custom rom, as the evolution of CyanogenOS it is the #1 custom rom that nearly eveyone thinks of when they think of custom roms. It supports 559 devices however keep in mind only 44% (247) support LineageOS 22.2 or up (Android 15) and only 23% (132) support LineageOS 23 (Android 16). Due to complications Android 16 QPR1 is not included in LineageOS 23.
GraphineOS: As the unofficial evolution of CopperheadOS, GraphineOS is newer (initially releasing in 2019) and widely considered the most secure custom OS (the devs insist the term “custom rom” is outdated and does not apply to GOS). Its also the most polished custom rom receiving regular updates and security patches significantly faster than any other mobile OS (even stock PixelOS). It focuses purely on security features and in that regard it succeeds. However keep in mind that means no microg (instead a secure sandboxed implementation of google services), almost no additional customization features, and especially no root. Also keep in mind only Google Pixels are supported for now (an unknown and unnamed OEM will start supporting GOS soon) and only as long as Google supports them (for security purposes). This means it supports Pixel 6 and up currently.
I always had garbage luck with MTK devices in the past with performance.
Right out of the box, all blazing fast, but just a month later they’re down to 1/3 of their original speed. It could’ve just been me, but I went through a “buy cheap devices to dick around with” phase in college and this happened with all of them (8-10 devices maybe?).
May not be an issue now, but definitely was then.