Here you can find reviewed, impressive and comprehensive European alternatives for digital products and apps if you wanna break from American (big) tech companies.
Have a look, you'll be impressed...
this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2026
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So no smartphones.
Nokia is Finnish and I'm not sure if t hat's considered European. It's not American though. In fact the only American company left making phones is Apple. The problem is, the rest of them uses Android, which spies on you. Counterpoint: Apple won't let you install apps your government doesn't approve of. Counterpoint to the counterpoint: Android. Fucking. Spies. On. You. Counterpoint to the... you get the idea: Apple still hasn't shipped a working software keyboard. Pick your poison. Spyware or a broken keyboard and you can't use a few apps you may not care about... but you're buying from an American company whose CEO kisses Trump's arse and literally gave him a solid gold participation trophy.
I want to see real Linux phones that don't run Android and are somewhat competitive with Android phones, at least in the mid-range space. No one expects them to compete with the iPhone, or the equivalent Android phone that comes out 3-5 years later and stops getting updates while the iPhone it matches on performance is still getting them... but it shouldn't have to. We kinda hit a plateau a few years ago.
Otherwise, definitely worth a look.
Not all android spies on you. Have you ever tried GrapheneOS? It's very secure and pro-privacy. Technically it's not android (if you really want to nitpick), but you need a Google Pixel to run it.
Yes, GrapheneOS is Android (it's AOSP without Google Play Services and GApps, with open source replacements). It's like what CyanogenMod was back in the day. I haven't used Graphene; I've never owned a Pixel. And Graphene is only on Pixels.
I've used a ton of Android custom firmware... from around Ice Cream Sandwich through Lollipop — back when Android was named for desserts. My favourite CFW was LiquidSmooth based on Jellybean, based on AOKP, which was an AOSP fork that tried to be "cool." It wasn't quite as cool as Paranoid Android (which was fucking awesome), but it was way more stable. And CyanogenMod was the most stable but "boring" by comparison. I mean it wasn't flashy. But LiquidSmooth was rock solid. So no, I haven't used Graphene, but I've used forks/ROMs like it.
If Google Play Services is running on it, and you're not blocking it with a firewall (not sure if you even can, but I suppose it isn't impossible), then yes, it's spying on you. (I do not think GrapheneOS runs Google Play Services.)
Yeah. Before OneUI 8, you could set up a custom ROM on a Samsung phone too. Short of that you can disable google services. Use non google apps from F-Droid or Aurora Store. You can also use ADB to uninstall system-level APKs. Though the only way that I know of to fully de-google is to install a different OS.
The label "Android" explicitly includes the ability to spy on you. GrapheneOS is not Android certified.