Honestly, Android is hopelessly so much worse than that. You need to disable/adb uninstall tens of apps because, you have no way to actually remove them. Some o

Honestly, Android is hopelessly so much worse than that. You need to disable/adb uninstall tens of apps because, you have no way to actually remove them. Some of them cannot be disabled (Google Play Services for instance). Additionally, you cannot have a secured up-to-date WebView (rendering library for Android apps showing web pages) without signing in with a Google account and updating Google Chrome. I found out while trying to remove as much spyware as possible from my Xiaomi A3 Android One phone. As suggested in the blog post, I didn't sign in with a Google Account. But the WebView [0] is updated via the Play Store which requires an account. So I said I'll just compile Chromium and provide my own WebView. But the system has a whitelist [1] of WebView implementations that excludes everyone but Google to render webviews. So I'll root my phone and find my way into the whitelist? Well it seems (at that point I'm discouraged to look) that will break future OTA updates because the diffs they send assume the system partition is bit-for-bit unchanged. So I'll compile Android (AOSP) and flash it? Well, I should have bought another phone, because although my Xiaomi Mi A3 has its kernel on Github, binaries such as the radio firmware aren't available [2]. So I'll just install a precompiled ROM from XDA forums? Well, I'm still reluctant honestly, I'm sure the devs are great but they're still anonymous people on the Internet. Maybe I should have bought a Sony, AOSP support is better [3], maybe I should have bought something supported by Lineage but then I'd depend on the branch developers. I should say, it looks like there is some progress (more granular permissions, Android One, Treble, Mainline...) but it's regressing at the same time (removal of the Internet permission, Google Assistant, Play Store distributed system updates in Android 10...). I remember Larry Page ranting about MS Windows a few years after he started Google. Well, my phone spies on me, is full of uninstallable Google-made bloatware, is locking aftermarket alternatives out with some gotchas and is nowhere close to the freedom I get from a commodity computer (which is far from perfect still). I remember the early Android team promising you can replace every app but a decade later and there are these whitelisting shenanigans. By the way, I'm open to suggestions if anyone can help. [0]: Technically, for Android 9, the fallback WebView is updated over the air but Google Chrome is updated with the Play Store [1]: https://github.com/bromite/bromite/wiki/Installing-SystemWebView https://github.com/bromite/bromite/wiki/Installing-SystemWeb... [2]: Technically, they're already on my phone but I wouldn't get updates anyway. [3]: https://developer.sony.com/develop/open-devices/#overview-content https://developer.sony.com/develop/open-devices/#overview-co...