Using this phone, I can see how hard it is to give up Google

A non-Google Android phone. No Google apps, no Google Play Services, no Google Assistant. No worries about being tracked and extracted by Google, no targeted advertising, and no feeling like your privacy is just a vague and meaningless concept. Some companies, like Huawei, have been forced to design such devices. Others try because they want to ensure privacy for customers, and at the same time, it is a move to respond to the hegemony of the Big Tech group. But so far, no solution has really worked.

Murena is the most notable name looking to kick Google off Android phones in the past few years, specifically since 2017 when Gael Duval created an operating system called Eelo. “Like millions of others, I have become a Google product” – Duval wrote in 2017. He said he wanted to create something as good as Android software, but not track users.I needed something that I could recommend to my parents and children. Something that is both attractive and guaranteed to offer more privacy. Something that we can create in a reasonable amount of time, and that gets better over time“

The operating system called /e/OS has been present on a few devices before, but now, Murena has officially launched it with version /e/OS V1 and the company’s first smartphone, the Murena One. , priced at 369 USD.

As a debut hardware product, the Murena One is quite impressive: it owns a tempered glass design, a 6.5-inch screen, an octa-core MediaTek processor, a side fingerprint sensor, and 3 convex cameras on the face. back. This camera cluster is equally impressive, including a 48MP main sensor at the back and a 25MP pinhole camera in front for selfies. The camera seems to be a feature that Murena has been promoting quite heavily, with COO Alexis Noetinger saying it’s something to definitely do well. “People are willing to make many sacrifices when entering a privacy-heavy environment, but we’ve found the camera is something people can be very picky about.“

Overall, the Murena One’s camera is pretty good, but not as great as on recent phones from Google, Apple, or Samsung.

In order to get rid of every possible remnant of Google, Murena was forced to build a lot of things herself. /e/OS’s software comes with: a custom messaging app, so you don’t need Google Messages anymore; an alternative to Chrome; a mapping application that uses OpenStreetMap data instead of Google; an email client, calendar, file storage system, contacts, and pretty much everything else you can find in the Google Workspace suite; and applications for notes, reminders, music, and recording. Murena is even planning to launch her own virtual assistant named Elivia, so you can say goodbye to Google Assistant with peace of mind.

Murena also built a cloud platform as a backend for the aforementioned services, allowing you to check email in /e/OS’s email client and use the /e/ email address instead of gmail.com. All your online services will be on Murena Cloud instead of Google or Microsoft services. In a sense, what you’re really doing is moving from one vendor to another, but Murena insists all of its products are designed with the same set of privacy standards around anti-aging. track like its smartphones.

It’s a commendable effort, but it’s all Murena can do to wipe out Google. Every company that has ever tried, from Huawei’s Harmony OS to doomed projects like Ubuntu Touch and Firefox OS, has bitterly realized the same thing: without an Android app ecosystem, its phones you will die in the infancy. So Murena decided to be self-sufficient: it replaced Google’s Play Store with its App Lounge, a place that lets you install all the important Android apps – including Google ones – but there is no sign of Google.

However, in order to use the App Lounge, you must agree to its service agreement, which right at the top will give you two options – sign in with your Google account, or browse the Lounge anonymously – but how Either way, you’ll have to download the app from…Google only, the only difference is that the app store interface is different now. App Lounge will pull information directly from the Play Store (without telling Google who you are, according to Murena) and use Google to make all payments.

The App Lounge has some apps that don’t appear on the Play Store, and you can go into the settings to choose to show only open source and web apps (PWAs), but then the number of apps will be extremely high. limit!

This connection to Google is like a bucket of cold water on Murena’s promises, making many users test the product for the company, but in fact, Murena has no other choice. “A smartphone that is not tracked by Google” is an attractive idea to many users, but “a smartphone without any apps you want” is what turns everyone away”. Noetinger says that Murena can make a Linux phone that meets everyone’s privacy requirements, but it won’t be interesting because it has no apps. And no one will want it. Murena tries to satisfy both, but the truth is it can’t. You can’t get the complete Android experience without Google’s presence.

Instead, when you sign in to Google or use its services, Murena tries to minimize the amount of data Google can collect. They rely on a project called MicroG, which is essentially a more private copy of some of the libraries that Google requires in order to run its apps, so you can use the The app requires Google Play Services without actually using Google Play Services. This solution works almost perfectly, although you will have to “dig up” Settings to log into your Google account on Murena One. Sure, many people who buy /e/OS devices will immediately install Google Maps with Chrome, but it’s still an annoying bug.

Murena’s direction to improve privacy is not with a strong focus on preventing data collection, but mainly on enhancing security. If you enable Advanced Privacy in /e/OS, the system will use a VPN to hide your location – either by choosing a random place in the world, or letting you choose where you want to go. – and even hide your IP address from the websites you visit. It also tries to block trackers in every app you download, and it seems to do so with great success.

Advanced Privacy also comes with downsides. First, it’s very difficult to use weather or map apps, when your phone thinks you’re in Singapore when you’re actually in Vietnam! A lot of apps are also geo-location dependent in one way or another, so you’ll have to accept turning this feature off with apps like Netflix or YouTube TV. Murena wanted to make privacy protection software easy to use, but it ended up causing users more headaches than before.

Of course, /e/OS is still based on Android. Murena One runs a fork version of Android 10 based on Lineage OS, an Android version derived from the old CyanogenMod project (i.e. /e/OS is nothing more than a fork of a fork! updated to Android 12, /e/OS remains on Android 10). And its interface and functions are still… very Android. The company says it intends to tweak the notification system and other changes related to the way Android works, but for now, /e/OS is simply a simple iPhone-style launcher that runs on a single version of Android. Android is pretty old.

Murena One is an ambitious device, and /e/OS is an even more ambitious operating system. But so far, they show us just how deeply Google has infiltrated our digital lives, and how the company has taken control of a seemingly open source operating system. The only way to get Android without Google is to make it a little bit worse. And the only way to make it better is to rebuild it from scratch. An extremely difficult task for anyone, no matter how much they believe in it.

Reference: TheVerge

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