Hi all, ultimately I’d like to experiment with a whole new os, but I gotta save up a little to buy a pixel. I’m currently working with a galaxy s21 ultra.

I never quite understood the reason to root and so I never really researched it. But now that I’m venturing more into the foss world and learning a bit more about tech, I’m realizing it might be useful for utilizing certain apps that require root and possibly helping to get rid of google and such services for good, but again idk the extent of what root offers and I also read it can be dangerous, so I’m lost to say the least.

My recent interest in rooting is purely because I have some foss apps that require root for me to use the full capabilities that I want. I also heard about adb and that it may be similiar to rooting but without actually rooting?

I’m just quite not sure how I should approach this and what things I should be aware of or NOT to do, to ensure I don’t end up bricking the thing lol

Thanks for reading

  • @sirfancyEnglish
    2•1 year ago

    Fair enough. Here are three ways I can see this going:

    1. Get a privacy focused phone like PinePhone or Librem. I can’t speak much for them since I don’t use them, but I’ve heard good things. This is the “all-in” approach. Depending how focused on privacy you are, you may want to go this route if you want a completely stripped down Android experience without any of the Google parts.
    2. Get a Google Pixel. Pixels are a very clean Android experience. No bloat from vendors or carriers since Android is Google already. Plus. Android 13 already has a lot of focus on permissions and such, and it’s only improving with the upcoming Android 14. Routinely apps’ permissions will get disabled when the app hasn’t been used in a while. You can also disable ads tracking in your Google account and in the Android settings.
    3. Root a phone. I saw in another comment you likely won’t do it, but leaving it in for fairness. If you are going to, make sure you know how to root it, what it’s doing, and if that root method will work for the phone you’re going to buy. You can search “how to root xyz phone xda-developers” to get info there. XDA-Developers is the name of the forum that is home to the rooting community. I don’t recommend this path for reasons I suggested before, and if your end goal is more privacy, typically it’s either “go big or go home”. Rooting and doing a couple small things for half-privacy is just not worth it.