For a while now I’ve been trying to keep my work flow as clean as possible using FOSS only, but I didn’t notice that I was focusing only on my computer and totally forgot about my phone, but tbh you can’t blame for that since I really don’t use my phone that much. The main use cases I use my phone for are:
- music
- hotspot
- reading
These are the use cases I can think of for now, I would add communication to that list but honestly I mainly chat on my computer and I don’t receive that many calls. So yeah I’m not that social which drops when of the main point of having a phone in the first place, but still, I’m a huge fan of music even though recently I’m considering quitting music completely for many reason I’ll talk about in other upcoming posts. But still, even I’ll end up dropping music I’ll most likely replace it with a useful audio content such as podcasts and audiobooks, which means I’ll still need my phone for a third major reason. Knowing that I felt like I should give the ARM FOSS a shot, and that exactly what I did.
I Tried Moving to a Custom ROM, and Failed. Link to heading
Paranoid Android was the only proper custom ROM I found that does support my device, so I want ahead and did my research about it and ended up deciding that it is what I’m looking for, the dev was still working actively on the project and I even emailed him to make sure I’m not rushing into this. After all the risks of fking up my phone are kinda high since I’m so new to this. However, do to many stupid limitations from Xiaomi I couldn’t unlock the boot loader, it’s not impossible or anything I can’t do it’s just that it has so many steps I felt like I’m breaking into a bank or sth. For example you can unlock the boot loader with a WiFi connection for some reason, why does it have to be this complex ffs I just want to root my damn phone.
I Tried FOSS Android Software, This One Went Surprisingly Well! Link to heading
Call me lucky but I found everything I needed in Fdroid, I didn’t even need to install any other store. The only problem I had was with Discord since I couldn’t find a good way to get it but other than that… I found amazing alternatives to what I had before and I have no idea why I’m doing this just now, here are the apps I enjoyed the most:
| Usage | FOSS Alternative | Replaced | Rating (out of 5) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Web Browser | Mull | Chrome | 4 |
| Prayers Tracker | Al-Azan | Athanotify | 3 |
| File Manager | Material Files | ZArchiver | 2 |
| Note Taking | Markor | Obsidian | 3 |
| Communication | Element | Discord | 5 |
| Music Player | Symphony | Musicolet | 4 |
| File Synchronization | Syncthing | / | 5 |
| Media Player | MPV | MX Player | 4 |
This list is gonna be much longer in the near future when I move fully to FOSS on my phone since for now I’m still using some non-free software, and to be honest Google Maps is gonna be such a pain in the ass to replace since there is nothing in this world better in tracking ppl than google and it’s shit, I’ll be talking about one other problem I have with google in another post cz for now I’m getting kinda sleepy XD. Take care friend, see you next time.
Seth.