I’m on for open OS since distributed. It’s my main and only phone. Because I also have paid for apps and using Google’s push service I installed opengapps nano.
Some paid for apps need the Google infrastructure to check their status. Also, one should definitely use some mechanism to have ones (trusted!) Apps updated
That said: I don’t know whether microgms also support the push mechanism. In this case, f-droid may be the way to go, if you want to stay as Google free as possible.
Whatsapp --> yes, even updates without google. Get the APK directly from WhatsApp
Firefox --> yes, get it from F-Droid
k9-Mail --> should
Youtube --> I use WebTube
But for how long? No one knows. There is a depreciation notice since a long time but the app is still regularly updated. Anyways I use the recommended IceCat Mobile and it’s great.
I think most of them should work, except for the Google based ones (Youtube, GoogleCast), you can try using micoG, but if you depend on these apps to work everyday, you will need GMS from Google.
But as soon as you (=your apps) use Google’s infrastructure … you depend on Google. One way or another. Most people cannot see this, because it’s the programmers making this “choice”, not them. And Google optimizes everything to “help” the programmers to choose their services. The “Google Play license check” as an example could make it impossible for you to use some paid apps, I fear. But I’m not an expert, maybe it will just work?
A good website to understand how the apps and the store work together is maybe http://blog.onyxbits.de/
“Please do not use Raccoon as a tool for piracy. Paid apps commonly perform license checks through the official Google Play app. Don’t buy apps that request the com.android.vending.CHECK_LICENSE permission unless you are willing and able to allow this.”
Because F-Droid doesn’t build it, they only distribute the official APK.
Firefox APK can be downloaded from ftp.mozilla.org. Beta and Aurora (former nightly) versions autoupdate themselves (Aurora daily). The process can be somewhat automated with FFUpdate
My main repo is F-Droid, but I installed the Amazon app store for the payware / closed source apps I use. This apps store is not digging itself into the guts of the system like Google Play. All my apps seem to work although some complain about missing Google Play services. I just click the warning away and they still work:
Skype
Mobile Observatory (an excellent Astro App)
DB Navigator
ODB Fusion (to read and reset my cars ECU)
Important: Amazon offers two app stores, one is called “Amazon Underground”. It’s a huge file, they offer free versions of paid apps, but you pay with your privacy! I recommend the original Amazon App store. Strangely they advertise the much smaller app store “for tablets”, while they recommend the “Underground” bloatware for phones - maybe they want to track you via GPS…
Thanks for the information.
But I’ve been reading and the documentation suggest to install microG project, so can you share the link tto download the opengapps nano?.
By the other hand I cannot install the open source OS, it says in the bootloader "CAnnot install this pakage over newer buid it supposed to be easy. Any clue?
Yes.
If you have 1.5.1 installed, it is newer than the latest Open OS. You will either need to flash an older version, or wait for the next Open OS update. See also here:
Hey Guys. At the end I could isntall the Fairphone Open OS thank you very much. I have to say that I had to install openGapps, I tried microG but at the end some applications I use need the framework of Google
Did you actually try the microG Services Core as described in this step by step guide or just the unified NLP? With the whole microg set installed correctly, most/all apps that “need” the Google framework should work.
Hi. Sorry for the late response. I just used NLP.
By the other hand, I have a problem with the last update. The phone is now in loops. It says optimizing applications, then restart, then optimizing applications, then restart, and so on.
I have my phone encrypted. and cannot save the data because the bootloader don’t have the ability to mount an encrypted data¿?¿?
it seems Etar + offline calendar are not working anymore - “Der Kalender konnte nicht hinzugefügt werden! Wenn du Cyanogenmod benutzt: Stell sicher, dass due Privacy Guard für diese Anwendung deaktiviert ist um Zugriff auf den Kalender zu gewähren. Wenn du Android 4.3 App Ops beutzt: Stelle sicher, dass diese Anwendung Schreib- und Lesezugriff auf den Kalender hat”
(translates roughly as: calendar can’t be added! if you use Cyanogenmod: make sure to deactivate Privacy Guard for this application to enable writing access. If you use Android 4.3 App Ops: make sure the application has writing and reading rights for the calendar.)
Any ideas what to cahnge and where to change it?
Or a recommendation for another calendar system (where I can run a 2 in 1 calendar - private, work - importang one (manually is just fine)
In case this helps, I’d like to mention that if you have an ‘old’ phone or tablet with GAPPS on it (and a Google account), and you install F-Droid on it, you then can EXCHANGE any app between it and your FP (assuming you also installed F-Droid there).
This is something I did recently (although not with an FP2*), because I happen to have a very good raw image processing software paid on Google apps, that I wanted to move onto a ‘non-Google-registered’ new tablet.
(Although any app can be transferred, some won’t work, when they require a specific GAPPS support. But in my case, mostly all of the apps I transferred this way did work, including my precious raw editor.)
Hervé
(*) I only have an FP1 : I didn’t switch yet to FP2 given the poor confidence given for root support in the beggining. Do I understand now there is an easy way to get a rooted OS?
(by ‘easy’ I mean not spending a day, not installing plenty of things on a separate computer, not downloading files from some unknown place other than Fairphone, not issueing long series of commands on a terminal… -ideally, as many said, some checkbox to tick in a simple installer like the original FP updater…)
Well, I use