Chosen applications on Android
(Resume the blog from the beginning 1-Motivation and approach )
On an Android smartphone, and it’s the same for iPhones, data collection is all over the place, so to remedy the problem at the base, you should ideally abandon the iPhone and buy a phone based on the open-source version of Android like Murena, or Iodé, or a Linux phone.
Alternatively you can reinstall on your existing phone an open-source version of Android, such as LineageOS or other, but this is not possible for all phone models, requires some technical knowledge and comes with some restrictions.
Personally, I have installed LineageOS on my Galaxy Tab S5e tablet and I am very satisfied with it. But since there is no LineageOS version for my phone (Samsung S20 FE) yet, I was forced to leave it under the Android provided by Samsung, but I did some cleanup.
So, on my Android phone I started by evaluating the trackers that are embedded in the applications I use. I did this using the Exodus app on GooglePlay.
Then I set about replacing the following applications:
Changing the Application Launcher
Instead of the standard launcher of Samsung, Microsoft or Google, I found Nova, an open-source launcher and quite functional and configurable
Choice of the Browser
It’s Firefox by default, but also Tor if needed.
Change of the Virtual Keyboard
It is the OpenBoard keyboard, it is open-source and very ergonomic.
Choice of messaging tools
Signal is my favorite tool for messaging. In the past, Signal also allowed to manage SMS, but they just announced that they will stop this function. So for SMS management I chose QKSMS, open-source and very practical.
Choice of conferencing tools
There are many open-source solutions. I chose Jitsi, and Elements which implements Matrix
Choice of navigation tools
The two open-source apps I recommend are OSMAnd and Organic Maps. Both are based on OpenStreet Maps but add features like public transit.
Cloud storage client
The pCloud client can be used to both automatically store images taken on the phone, and manually store any other documents. It provides access to photos, videos and music with remarkable speed.
Access to my personal library
It is by using Calibre Campagnon. This application allows you to connect to an extract of your library that you can keep on the cloud.
Federated Social Networks
There are many clients available for federated social networks (Mastodon, Friendica, Diaspora, PixelFed, HubZilla and any other Fediverse application). My favorite mastodon client is Megalodon, because it presents content in a way that makes it easy to read, something we do on Mastodon much more than on marketing networks.
Linking the phone to the PC
On Ubuntu, GSConnect allows you to connect to the phone and receive notifications from the phone on the PC, for those that this can help.
Podcasts subscription tool
After testing about ten applications, the most known ones, I ended up adopting “AntennaPod”, an open-source application, full of useful functions. It also allows you to sync your playlist to the NextCloud server of your choice, which is fine by me, since Nubo, my ethical cloud provider, offers it.