Living without Google 2.0 - A Google free FP2

I never tried encryption but I always thought you could set it so everything is encrypted even when the phone is just locked. Indeed if it’s only encrypted when the phone is turned off then plucklock is no use.

No, that’s not the way full-disk (or full-partition) encryption works, see this post.

Well, at least plucklock locks the screen. You could hope that this hurdle is big enough for the random thief stealing your phone. :slightly_smiling:

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Now we just need another app that powers down the phone if the wrong PIN is entered a few times.

Thanks for the info, guys, even if there’s no readily available complete solution yet. I guess I’ll just try not to lose/have my FP2 stolen for now :wink:

Next question: I’ve been using K-9 Mail, but I can’t get it to push/poll and notify me when I have new messages. What works is opening the app and refreshing, then it also shows a little notification, but of course I’d like to be notified BEFORE I open the app that there is a new message. I’ve played around with the settings (push/poll) various times, but I can’t seem to get it to work. I have a posteo account, in case that matters.

Has anyone gotten this to work reliably and could let me know what settings you have?

Thanks!

In “Fetching Mail” I have the following settings (I believe they are standard as I don’t remember changing them):

  • Fetch messages up to 32kb
  • Folder poll frequency: Every 15 minutes
  • Poll folders: Only 1st class folders
  • Push folders: Only 1st class folders
  • Advanced:
  • Poll when connectiong for push :ballot_box_with_check:
  • Refresh IDLE connection: Every 24 minutes

Nice idea, but then you could also just have an app like plucklock which immediately shuts down instead of locking the screen. :wink: Btw, I think it will then need root access or be a system app (if it’s not already needed for just locking).

But then you’d often power down your phone by accident.

Okay, just changed my settings to match those exactly (I think I had them like that at some point already, but like I said, lots of playing around in an attempt to get it to work.) Just sent myself a test e-mail again, so far nothing, but I’m going to give it a bit of time. I have poll frequency set to every 5 minutes for testing purposes, but I assume that shouldn’t matter much. Will report back in a little while…

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Yeah maybe. I don’t know how sensitive plucklock is. But at least, I guess, it would be more secure, cause: If the thief will not enter any PIN (cause he knows this is hopeless) but try to connect it to a PC and hack the data from there (don’t know how easy that is), then the plucklock + shutting down after wrong PINs protection does not help.

However, I guess, this discussion is going off-topic too far and is quite abstract, as well. Anyway, my approach will also be to just not lose the phone. :wink:

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Nope, sadly not working with those settings. Any other ideas what I might have to change?

Did you check already:
K9–>General Settings–>Network–>BackgroundSyncronisation–>don’t choose “never” (try “always” for testing)!

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@therob thanks! That was it! I had it on the “When Auto-Sync is checked” setting, so not never, but also not always. With always it works.

So what’s the difference between “Always” and “When Auto-Sync is checked”? I don’t see Auto-Sync at the moment in any of the settings, but haven’t gone back tko look through every single category…

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Nice that you solved it in principle.
I asked myself about the difference. I guess “Auto-Sync” is related to the google/accounds/android sync-settings and “Always” is not dependend of this and provides the own k9-sync-service, which triggers the event.

But I did not check this at the FP2, maybe some others can help out.
Same question I have for e.g. DavDroid, as they also do only update, if the Android-sync-setting is enabled…

I did the same. I have a rooted FP2 and froze the APP “pictures (Fotos)” with Titanium. After that I was not able anymore to replace a photo in my contact by another one. So I had to defreeze the APP again.

I was going to post this in another thread after my most recent call for help, but it seems better placed here, since this is a much more commonly read thread:

Have I mentioned that you guys are awesome? @therob, @paulakreuzer, @tphysm, @Stefan and many others who help so regularly :slight_smile: I think it’s absolutely amazing that I can post a question to all sorts of “non-standard apps” here, ones which I can’t find tons of information about online, and get useful answers that solve my problems within a few minutes. Just one of many, many advantages to being part of the Fairphone Community I guess :smiley: THANK YOU, seriously, you guys are the best support crew a complete newbie like me could ask for!

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Another question regarding K9-Mail:
Is it possible to “lock” this app, i.e. I would like to always be required to enter a PIN or password before I am able to use the app (cf. Threema)?
I did not find this option in the settings, but maybe there is a ‘workaround’ :wink: or maybe there is an alternative app?!

A lot of apps exists to make this, although I never used one. K9 itself doesn’t support it, AFAIK.

But you really should use the simplest google search, to find lots of helpful links in PlayStore or general overwiews, at a first look I did not find any in F-Droid (sorry, as this thread should link to google-(playstore)-free apps)…

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Although I do not have root, this forum thread has inspired me to experiment living without Google. So I have followed the instructions by @paulakreuzer above and reinstalled my system, not logging into the Google account and disabling everything Google. This went well until I started my first installed app, one that is vital to me and do not want to do without (Strava): it would not work because the Google Play Services were not enabled/updated. I therefore had to log in to my Google account and re-enable the Play Services. Most Google apps are still disabled: Calendar, Chrome, Drive, Gmail, Google app, Contacts Sync, Play Movie, Play Music, Hangouts, Maps, Photos and Youtube. This is satisfying enough but not I was hoping for. I am also worried that some apps might not work without Google Maps? Are there any alternate map services I can install, which ones and how?

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There is OSMAnd on F-Droid but if an App really needs Google Maps to work than OSMand won’t help. Marvin from the microg project is afaik working on a way to use OSM to fully replace Google Maps but it doesn’t work yet.

Some Apps only claim they need Google and with root and XPosed these claims can be bypassed.

The easiest way is probably to replace the Apps that need Google Maps with free Navigation-/Transportation-/…-Apps from F-Droid.

I can highly recommend OSMAnd, also available on F-Droid. It is not intendet to use it as an Android-“MapService” but as a nearly to perfect offline-navigation stand-alone programm (esp. for hiking and biking, quite OK for car).

For a real service maybe you can check Unified NLP for GAPPS-free devices (which I never tried and only hardly know how to use…)

And why do “Strava” need Google-Services? For the GPS signal? Or only to install it (then you can download the APK by the well working java-programm raccoon at a PC).

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