F-Droid - Open Source Android Apps

-
Recently I started feeling a bit tired of Google. Then a took a look at the amount of data I'm feeding google via my phone and I was shocked! There's record of every search I have performed, my app usage, my web activity, my location activity. I just thought that I need to decrease this info sharing. 
So I started to look for alternatives to the google ecosystem. While ecosystem-wise there is just no replacement. Junking google from my smartphone will probably take out the smarts too. I mean I can minimize the google apps usage, but I can't get rid of play services, the many android apps that I use are very critical to my smartphone experience. 
I use google maps/ Here We Go for navigation. I use MX Player for movies, BlackPlayer for music, use WhatsApp for chatting. These are some necessary apps. And if I remove GApps and play store services then I lose all of these. So these are going to stay. But I also need to find some replacements and then start removing some of these. 
So I went ahead and trimmed apps and kept only necessary apps on my phone. That means I got rid of Google photos (which I never use these days...), Hangouts(another never used app), search (also never used), and couple of other Google apps. Then I got rid of some other unnecessary apps that we collect over time - trials etc. With this I installed F-Droid App using it's APK. 
After browsing through I found following apps to be of use:
1. OsmAnd~ - Offline/Online maps and navigation. 
2. ClearList - list manager
3. VLC - VideoLAN Player
4. Firefox - Browser (Already installed which F-Droid recognized)
5. AnySoftKeyboard - OpenSource Keyboard.

With these I am able to slightly decrease my Google info sharing. I'll try more in due time. Let's see. 

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Morning Quotes

-
Image
Source: www.brainyquote.com   I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly. Winston Churchill   Prayer is the key of the morning and the bolt of the evening. Mohandas Gandhi   I look upon death to be as necessary to our constitution as sleep. We shall rise refreshed in the morning. Benjamin Franklin  
Read more

QCalendarWidget CSS Stylesheeting

-
Recently I had to implement a calendar for a TouchScreen application. I resorted to css to modify the calendar widget's appearance so that it would be more accessible. Following is the code that enabled me to get a proper calendar. calendar->setStyleSheet("QMenu { font-size:20px; width: 300px; left: 20px; }"     "QToolButton {icon-size: 48px, 48px; font: 20px; height: 70px; width: 100px; }"     "QAbstractItemView {selection-background-color: rgb(255, 174, 0);}"     "QToolButton::menu-indicator{ width: 50px;}"     "QToolButton::menu-indicator:pressed,"     "QToolButton::menu-indicator:open{ top:10px; left: 10px;}"     "QTableView { font: 30px; }"     "QSpinBox { width: 100px; font: 20px;}"     "QSpinBox::up-button { width:40px;}"     "QSpinBox::down-button { width:40px;}");
Read more

Selecting new phone plan

-
I use a Reliance Jio SIM as my one and only cellphone number. I used to have another, but I found little use for that. So I discontinued that other SIM card. It was a Vodafone SIM and I had bought it thinking I would be using it when I visit my hometown. Turns out it's not usable there. So adios. Coming back to Jio, it was working so far so good for a while. And it was quite cheap. Then they increased the fares about 4-5 months ago. And it was costing ~Rs 7 per day. This was for unlimited Jio-Jio calling, ~300minutes free to other telcos, and 1.5GB daily cellular data. Now I got home internet, so I thought to cut costs on this. The current plan goes for INR555 for 84 days. This includes 1.4GB 4G cellular data per day, 300 min calling to other telcos, and jio-jio free. That's Rs 6.6 per day. Now I'm not even using 30minutes calling per day. And due to home internet my cellular usage has gone down. So I decided to go for some other cheaper plan. This one is INR1299 for 336 da...
Read more