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Comment by inigyou

11 hours ago

On a Pixel phone you have only Google spyware. On another brand's phone you have all the same Google spyware, plus the spyware from that brand and a permanently locked bootloader.

You can remove 3rd party spyware/bloat in 15 minutes with Shizuka/canto and a usb cable and you won't notice anything changed in the phone. Unfortunately the Google spyware is so deeply integrated that you can't really do that unless you accept a ton of things not working - not just Google apps but also lots of third party apps that require Play services.

  • Yes, if you want full degoogling you need a custom ROM like Graphene on Pixels or Lineage. The main issue these days is that bootloaders are locked. Phone manufacturers mostly refuse to give you control over your own hardware.