Hello!
I am a big fan of private mobile solutions, I was a big DivestOS user - but since it is now discontinued, I am checking /e/ as an option. Previously, I chose DivestOS over /e/ because of articles by Mr. Kuketz, a renown German IT security expert in early 2023. According to them them, DivestOS was more degoogled than /e/, because /e/ made one connection to Google, to firebaseinstallations of googleapis website. Does /e/ still do such a thing? I am very googlophobic, so this is relevant for me in choosing a mobile OS. (removed link for the article, if this was the issue and not overall content. I consider the article valuable and worth sharing, though)
Hi, thanks for the reply. The page does not mention firebaseinstallations connection, so I think that my post is still relevant. In my opinion, there should be user freedom to completely cut all connections to Google, even if it would degrade performance.
Use GrapheneOS as a radical alternative. You have no Google pre-installed, but also lower usability.
Greets
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I did some referencing when that post came up first and another that relied on the kuketz review - follow this:
I was considering it, but buying a google-produced phone to de-google is… too contradictory for me to go through with it 
… of course Android itself is made by google, but bypassing that is not possible - and it is open source at least, unlike mobile phone firmware.
@tcecyk thanks for this reference! More user options during installation would indeed be very nice.
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You can try installing TrackerControl which makes you able to cut of but also cripples apps making them not useable.
Thanks! If a user can cut that connection off, then I’d be happy enough. In the case of TrackerControl it says that “other VPNs or Private DNS are not supported” - so, probably I won’t be able to use it with my VPN set to route all traffic through it, which is unfortunate. Additionally on old phone apps can crash - and if TrackerControl would crash, the traffic would come again… so disabling some system app outright would be a more robust solution - a guide on how to do it would’ve been nice. Thanks for the recommendation though!
Yes it does seem rather contradictory to buy a Google produced phone to run a system that avoids interfacing with Google servers. However their phones support alternative ROMs better than other makes. Nobody is a hundred percent bad. In recent years more and more manufacturers have made it impossible to run an alternative ROM and I expect the trend to continue.
I’m actually planning to buy a Pixel 9a in a year or two once it’s supported. It should be easy and trouble free to run /e/os on it. In fact you don’t see many posts about people having trouble with Pixel phones and /e/os on the forum here.
Looking at that doc posted top of the thread, it’s all MicroG making connections to Google. It looks pretty trivial to go into MicroG settings and disable those connections. Personally I don’t run any apps that rely on Play Services so it shouldn’t be a problem for me. In fact I avoid the Google store and install from apk when possible. Of course I’m not a big phone user and I don’t run very many apps.
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I currently have a couple older OnePluses running DivestOS, and since it is no longer supported, I have to eventually switch to something else. I am looking into maybe buying a new Fairphone or Murena and installing /e/ as a new OS. MicroG is indeed not a problem, as I understood - the connections can be cut. But that one firebaseinstallations connection was mentioned as connecting as a part of a separate app (Carrier App) - so I now wonder how could I turn it off without breaking something, and so far I don’t have a clear answer. Maybe, once I’d buy a new phone I’d experiment a bit, but the big plus of DivestOS (may it rest in peace) was that I did not really have to think much about it connecting to google apart from finding it and learning about it, since it clearly only made 2 connections to Google which were easily switched off in the settings (connectivity and SUPL). With this firebaseinstallations I do not have a clear recipe on how to deal with it so to speak…
Multiple things need an update in this series of articles about ROMs, maybe one day he will do a new test because the last one start to have dust on it
Mr. Kuketz said among other things , bootloader relock ( that means verified boot , right ? ) + faster and complete ( proprietary components , too ) fixing security vulnerabilities are important .
Yes , he should perform a new test with an official device / bootloader relock , for example pixel 8 with the latest U official .
Mr. Kuketz opinion is still relevant as is more based on principles. Murena is still a compromise between compatibility, security fixes, comfort and privacy. That in itself is no problem per se, but you should be aware of it and if you are able and willing, you propably should look into GrapheneOS as it is the most secure and privacy centric ROM of all Android ROMs. Its less a case of Murena is terrible (I think its great), but just how much better Graphene in terms of security and privacy is.
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