Does anyone know of any Android phones that are not tied in with bloody Google? I'm not a 'smartphone' user so this is somewhat less than intimately familiar territory for me, although a couple of acquaintances have Android ones, and they were completely tied up with the ugly Google from the start, apparently. They had to sign up to a Google account and get Gmail - plus the damn things came with Chrome pre-installed and other junk - and give Google cart blanche to install not only updates but any apps from their Google Play app store they see fit willy nilly. All that before they could even set up their phones properly and install safe browsers and a VPN!

The reason for my query is that I'm preparing a series of articles on online privacy and security, including also for phones and tablets (inc. both Android and iOS), and it would be nice if I could highlight any such phones (and tablets) that are not completely enslaved by the big ugly G.

Thanks in advance for any info.

Looks like everyone here only uses iPhones or standard Google-tied Android phones. From all that I know and have seen/heard/read it certainly seems that iPhones are the lesser of the two evils. I know there are or at any rate were a few smartphones not using Android in any way, shape or form, mainly ones using adaptations of one Linux distro or another, including Ubuntu, but what is hard to come by is user experience of any of these.

When I did a quick web search, it appears that it is possible to divorce Android from Google, and there are actually Android distros available that have done so. That said, I have zero experience with Android phones, and while I do have an Android tablet, it was provided by my physical therapy program because it came loaded with their app, which is not available in the Play store. I think a major issue you might have with a Google-free Android phone would be getting apps for it, but that's just a guess on my part.

Yeah, I came up with similar results. There seem to be quite a few post-market OSes also, many Linux-based or Linux distro based even. The Android based ones, if compatible with Android apps, not really a big problem re: apps. Obviously, you wouldn't want to use GooglePlay to d/l them, but all apps that are really important are available from the developers' websites also - free of Google's added-in spy shite.

Still, overall it's a pretty grim picture for the average consumer - slave to the 'Big G'! No kidding, having just seen an acquaintance starting up a brand new Android, I have to say I'd sooner deal with the Rotten Fruit from Cupertino! And that's saying something. Fortunately, personally I have zero use for any kind of 'smartphone' (or tablet) - calls and SMS do me just fine - but if I did, I'd go for one of the Ubuntu based or compatible ones. And all I'd have on them would be my VPN, TOR browser, and Firefox browser. What else can anyone possibly really need?