this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2025
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So root and flash your phone today!
Is that a quote from the article? I feel compelled to add that, wrt mobile devices, it is possible to live without Google Play Services.
i dont bother spoofing google play services, all my apps work without it, infact you can just disable google play services on android phones stock rom (or at least that has been my experience so far) and thats what I have done, sure gmaps embed now doesnt work but i havent needed it, my bank app works fine, whatsapp will throw a random "please enable google play services" notification once day but it works fine without any issues
Got a pixel? Check out calyxos, it's a free system upgrade that rips out anything google but allows almost everything to work, even the play store and all your usual games and bank apps.
Calyxos.org
E: nevermind. It was great while it lasted.
If you have a Pixel, then GrapheneOS is the sensible choice. Not least because it currently only works with Pixels anyway.
I absolutely do not want to run Google binaries on the phone, graphene doesn't support microG and instead want you to run Google's binaries on your phone, just sandboxed.
I hate that idea.
You don't have to run any Google stuff at all, if you don't want to.
Literally dead for now.... Had chaos with leadership
Soon of a bitch 😓
Well, that was fun.
I really hope one day these alternatives will run on non-Google devices. I really don't want to give them money.
What moron is willingly still purchasing pixels? Might as well put a livefeed camera for Google HQ in your home lol
If you tear out the parts that talk to Google, then the phone hardware isn't spying on you. It's just hardware.
The critical piece tying your phone to Google every 3 minutes is called "play services".
Calyxos was an OS for the pixel hardware that replaced play services with a FOSS library (called microG) which tricked regular apps into thinking they were talking to and getting responses from Google, when it was actually all happening on your phone.
I bought a Pixel 9 with the sole intention of putting Graphene on it. I wasn't massively down with giving Google money, but my provider offered it to me for £30, then £30 a month on contract. Can't argue with that.