Getting rid of Big Tech

Seppo

— 3 min read
Person on a dark background with projected numbers over their face
Photo: Matias Mango

So I recently switched from iOS/iPhone to /e/OS on the brand new Fairphone 6 and decided to ditch the last remaining big tech services I was using along with this change.

Here are some of my major takeaways:

  • Installing /e/OS on a Fairphone (or probably any device) is straightforward, just watch out for the Android Security patch level
  • Migration went smoothly except for Threema
    • Most of my stuff like Calendars, Contacts, Photos, Files, etc. was synced to my Nextcloud anyway, so no trouble there
  • I did lose all my messenger history (Signal/Threema)
  • Upside: I can finally purchase stuff through the Bandcamp app, yay! (You can't on iOS)
  • eSIM registration with my provider worked flawlessly

Setup

I bought a stock Fairphone 6 and decided to flash /e/OS by myself since it was 50€ cheaper than the version with pre-installed /e/OS.

There are official install docs which cover various installation methods. I went for the command line method and had no troubles. For other devices there's even a web application which can handle the installation for you.

So after flashing the new ROM to the device I was left with transferring all my accounts from the old device to the new one.
I will go into detail for the ones I find noteworthy

Banking

I was a bit worried about this one to be honest but since /e/OS is using microG to connect to the Google-Play API you can install pretty much any app from the Google Play store through Aurora or /e/OS's own App Lounge. App Lounge has the nice feature of combining the F-Droid repo and Play store though it lacks the feature of integration third party F-Droid repos, e.g. the Guardian Project repos, which is why I still use F-Droid to manage some apps.

Turns out my worries were meaningless since installation of my banking app went without any problems.

Threema

I said I did lose all my chat history but setting up Threema proved to be more than just logging in with my existing account.

There is a feature called "Threema safe" which you can use to transfer all your data (excluding chat history!) across devices and operating systems. Most notably this includes the trust level you have set up with your contacts.

I chose to install Threema Libre through F-Droid and purchase a license at https://shop.threema.ch to avoid using Google Play to make my payment.

What is nice is that Threema also offer their own Push service - making you independent from the usual Google push service to receive notifications about incoming messages and so on.

I did struggle a bit however with setting up the app since you need to tweak your device configuration to allow Threema Libre to bypass power restrictions and run in the background. There was no apparent way of setting this but a quick chat with the support led me to these articles which fixed the problem.

Choosing a launcher

A thing I wasn't prepared for coming from a closed ecosystem was choosing a launcher. Sure there's the /e/OS default BlissLauncher but I found it to be a bit lackluster and sluggish. After having tried out some different options I ended up sticking with Kvaesitso, which happens to be a nice FOSS project aswell.

Choosing a keyboard

Same as with launcher you also get to choose your favourite keyboard if you desire. Since the default AOSP keyboard felt a too basic for me I looked around and stumbled upon HeliBoard which sets a nice focus on being privacy oriented and open source.
You can also install swypelibs to enable the swipe feature on HeliBoard but this does mean you have to get the swypelibs from Google. As HeliBoard advertises itself as being 100% offline this is a feature I will definitely try out.

German weather app

I'm a fan of having an accurate weather report and most weather apps you get these days do shit. Even the 'good' ones only do okay-ish since local weather can be quite unforeseeable.

In Germany there's the Deutsche Wetterdienst (German Meteorological Service) which is a state authority in charge of weather and climate services. They do provide an App (Warnwetter) but due to some stupid law/regulation they cannot offer their weather forecast service for free. This means the app is restricted to some very basic feature of sending you warnings about sever weather events in your area.

Currently there's no official way of obtaining the app outside of Google Play and paying for it. But luckily there is an API and some nice person on the internet made a FOSS-App for it which is available via F-Droid so I've got that covered for me.

What's left

That covers most of my basic digital needs and after all it wasn't a hard decision to make.
There's still some things left to migrate - mainly the iCloud+ hide my email feature I've been using heavily. So I have to go over every login and set a new E-Mail address pointing to my own domain. But once this is done I am finally truly free of big tech.

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