1y ago

What's a good phone now that doesn't force ads on me?

I'm using a Pixel 6 Pro right now, and I'm looking around to see if there are any good phones. However, I have heard that there are ads in the newer flagship phones (Samsung, Xiaomi). I am willing to spend around USD$750 on a new phone, but I just don't want any crazy ads or preinstalled apps like Facebook. Are there phones that don't suck nowadays? I can buy a phone that is sold in the US, Canada, or EU.

(I don't want to go through menus to disable ads (Xiaomi), and I'm currently looking at phones other than the Pixel lineup to see if there's a better option for me)
(I also don't want to mess around with custom bootloaders/systems, I rely on Google services way too much)

EDIT: If it wasn't clear enough, I am not looking for things like GrapheneOS or LineageOS or others, I am looking for a phone and judging based on the stock system on it.

164 comments

Q: what's a nice phone to buy? I don't want to go through menus
A: flash graphene os
Cmon lemmy
- Or Lineage, or DivestOS (a fork of Lineage).
- Sounds pretty sweet to me… got a dialer with built in call recording.
  I can install a 3rd party app store without moving to the EU and waiting 4 more years.
  You can Dee-Google it by hacking the matrix with some ASOPs and pay $7 a month for a proton mail account while crying into your open office.
  Run some McAafsfeey antivirus for that hit of early 90’s nostalgia, or Norton if you’re really old and miss the 80’s ;-)
  Firefox with a real uBlock plugin would be pretty sweet? Do they have that working yet?
  I’m thinking pay-as-you-go burner but… oh right, android smart phone… I’m old and forgot what I was doing for a second.
  
  I really can't tell if this is a joke or not (I'm not mad), but don't third-party app stores have almost all of the features as of the Play Store? F-Droid has the ability to automatically update apps silently, I think.
  
  Samsung completely blocking the ability to record calls in their US phones really annoys the shit out of me. Outside of rooting and installing a custom rom they just didn't leave a way to do it.
  
  Try librewolf for browsing it's a privacy oriented fork of firefox and I have ublock on it also I suggest nextdns for ad and tracker blocking on your whole phone and even router

Why do you feel the need to change phones? Pixel 6 Pro should still be plenty good enough.
If its stock ROM bothers you, you're in luck because Pixels are surprisingly hackable and it's very easy these days.
See i.e.: https://grapheneos.org/
No need to worry about Google services, they work: https://grapheneos.org/usage#sandboxed-google-play
- Yep, Pixel is the best phone to get the most Google free experience for those that seek it.
  
  Depends on your usecase and your country of living. Why do I say so? I will name my 2 points:
  Lack of sd card. Yes I need my sd card, I don't want to upload stuff online on a 400kbps connection or download on a 16mbps connection. It's not a good experience.
  Not officially sold in my country, only available rarelly in resellers for 200+ euro more than normally.
- I have already said that I don’t want to deal with custom bootloaders/systems. I'm also just looking at phones (and by extension phone companies) to see whether I should stay with Google in the future, or switch to a different brand.
  
  How about phones sold preinstalled with a custom rom?

- Too old to know what a telemarketer is?
  
  The nice lady who plugs the connections at the post office would give a telemarketer a stern talking-to and that's that.
  
  Too isolated to have used a modern phone that receives dozens of spam calls a day? They give telemarketers a run for their money.
  
  My friend's parents still have the same landline they had when we were kids, and the phone is always off the hook now. They said it rings all day long with calls from telemarketers. Pretty lame that's legal.

I'm on a pixel 6a, I swapped out my DNS server to dns.adguard-dns.com and now I don't get ads on any app or game I use, excluding YouTube (which I use very rarely).
- I've got a 6a and I ended up rolling my own DoT server so that it would adblock, but also resolve to servers in my own country.
  I also moved to GrapheneOS. The only Google stuff that broke was Google Wallet's tap payment thing. Reportedly even Android Auto is supported now.
  Oh - my kid just got a Motorola G84. It was a very cheap handset for 12GB RAM and no ads so far. Very close to stock Android too.
  
  Is it really? The hold up for me switching to Graphene has definitely been android auto compatibility. That's huge.
  
  Motorola seems to be a good choice for me, then.
- Just taking the YouTube app off my home screen and replacing it with a Firefox shortcut has done wonders for my sanity. It's really disorienting now, when I follow a YouTube link that opens up the app. All of a sudden it's all ads and shorts and sponsors.
- ELI5 swapping the DNS? (I know what it is, but thought that wasn't possible on the device.)
  
  I believe you just add that to your network settings for private dns.
  Go to settings - network & Internet - scroll down to see Private DNS and add a DNS of your choice like dns.adguard-dns.com.
  Worked for me so far as I use pihole on WiFi at home but now not seeing adds on mobile data like I used to.
  Update, this will override all DNS settings it seems. Just did a test at home and it now points to this DNS vs my pihole. If someone knows a better way, please lmk otherwise I'll poke around more.
- You can also block ads on YouTube by using Firefox Mobile + uBO. Mobile browsers are good enough now that there's no reason to have the app anymore.
- Do you use the Stock operating system? If yes, I highly recommend you to check out GrapheneOS.

You should keep your phone and install GrapheneOS. It's not hard, you just have to reboot your phone and press few clicks in your browser. You can install Google Play and every Google service should work (except Android Auto and you can't use NFC with GPay).
- Android Auto works by now. GPAY not so much sadly.
  
  I got tired of gpay breaking on crdroid. I just ended up getting a credit card that works with Garmin pay for my watch instead.
  
  Where I live some banks have their own contactless payments app which can be set as default in Settings. Sadly many banks only support Google/Apple Pay.
- This. People with Google Pixels wanting to switch is something I dont get. You literally own the most secure phone on the planet, with the best OS.
  
  I just want to see if other phones don't suck nowadays, I'm not switching to a different brand just yet (I own too many Google things).
- I have already said that I don’t want to deal with custom bootloaders/systems.

Fairphone 5 is still on my list but unfortunate it does not support QI charging.
- I can definitely recommend getting a Fairphone. I quite happy with my Fairphone 4. Bloatware is limited to Google stuff and they even give instructions how to easily install a custom ROM (have not tried that yet though).
  The specs are not great, but good enough for me. But the main advantage for me is that it does not break that easily. I drop my phone all the time. My Samsung phones and Pixel phone I have broken within the first few weeks. Usually I dropped it and the screen cracked, even with a protected case.
  I have had this phone for a lot longer now (maybe years by now) and I dropped it like a 1000 times and it is still fine. The screen has not cracked, it still works. Only the side is a little chipped. I don't even use a protective case. And even if it breaks, I can just buy the broken component from their website and easily replace myself using normal tools. So that is really nice.
  
  Nice to read your experience with the fairphone. We're looking at it as well. It's expensive, but can at least be repaired when something breaks. I'm curious aboutt the custom roms though, as they are my main requirement, next to costs of max €100 per expected year of usability. (And as phone, it should be usable for a while)
- I needed a new phone last year just as the Fairphone 5 was launched so I went with that. Very, very happy with it. I really don't miss wireless charging: the main reason I used it on my old phone was to extend the range of it's ageing battery. Having a new battery removed that problem - full day of heavy use, no issues at all - plus it takes all of twenty second to replace the battery once it starts to age.
- I'd get a falcons in a heartbeat if it was smaller. Don't mind the thickness but I'm sick of large phones. I'm probably just going to get the jellystar
- I might consider the Fairphone much more highly when the software is more polished and Qi is added. (I use a Framework laptop, so the Fairphone is really fitting for me)

I don't see any ads on a non-rooted Samsung.
If you're seeing ads, its because you're using apps that deliver ads.
Google services still work on Graphene, Lineage and DivestOS. With Graphene they run in a sandbox, with DivestOS they run in a user context.
I've done all of them. My google stuff works fine.
- Or the phone's been infected with adware.
- I don’t see any ads on a non-rooted Samsung.
  If you’re seeing ads, its because you’re using apps that deliver ads.
  Wow, that's interesting, I've actually been avoiding Samsung, because I'd heard there were sooo many ads even on top models.
  I can see you have a decent amount of upvotes, so I guess that means it's probably true.
  But does no ads include not nagging about Samsung services? AFAIK Samsung has many Google equivalent services they advertise.

GrapheneOS yo. You even already have a pixel for it lol
- I have already said that I don’t want to deal with custom bootloaders/systems.

I bought the Zenfone 10 for those reasons and I'm pretty happy with it. I'm not going to buy a Samsung again.
- The Zenfone looks really nice. I'm going to have to skip it though, because it's just too small. (Hopefully they make a 6" screen version)

Where'd you hear about flagship Samsung phones having ads?
As far as I know, the only Samsung models that feature ads tend to be the lower end series that get sold in markets like India.
- Their ads are mostly self promotion and bloatware apps. In my device I had to turn off notifications for most of the pre installed apps.
  
  A pre-installed app is not an ad, though.
  Plus pretty much of of them can easily be disabled.
- On my note 8 a few years back I would get push notifications advertising from Samsung
- I've got a GS22U and I've never seen an ad.

You can disable all the bloateware on any phone using an universal adb/fastboot debloater script on xda.
Does not need root access.
My recommendation is FairPhone. Check specs before buying. It’s only a mid range CPU.
- The mentioned debloater script is found here:
  https://github.com/0x192/universal-android-debloater#how-to-use-it
  This is the list of apps the debloater script uses:
  https://github.com/0x192/universal-android-debloater/blob/main/resources/assets/uad_lists.json

Google Pixel with GrapheneOS.
If you are actually, really, honestly low on money, you may get something with DivestOS or LineageOS.
GrapheneOS is the gold standard, every Google certified Android is full of tracking and will show ads in places
- Is this a US thing? I've never seen any ads within Android itself, or any Google app.
  
  No me neither. But if you use ISP DNS, Google Chrome, Youtube, Google blablabla you might see ads.
  This is not the biggest problem though, as all apps will gather data in you to improve those ads, no matter if you block them or not.
- This. The only google service which doesn't work is google pay, and you can literally just put an NFC card in your phone case if it's that important to you
  Even android auto is supported.
- I have already said that I don’t want to deal with custom bootloaders/systems. I know that stock phone systems are full of tracking, but I just want to know which ones have the least tracking that are not from Google.
  
  Get an iPhone or a dumb phone.
  Androids purpose is to generate ad revenue for Google. Everything else is there to server that goal. To get away from that you have to degoogle the phone. Phones using android without Google services are likely even worse for ads like fire os.
  
  GrapheneOS really isnt comparable to LineageOS. The install literally is
  In the phone unlock the bootloader (just requires internet access if not already available) and enable usb debugging
  Plug in device using a reliable usb 3.0 cable
  Windows: install drivers, Linux: setup adb group stuff
  Open chromium, go to grapheneos.org/install/web
  Click a few buttons, on the phone press a few buttons to accept things
  Click another button
  Start your phone, set some preferences, install apps
  Have a look at Veronica Explains' video, i recommend to use F-Droid Basic though. Thats it, it just works.
  And you can revert back to stock Android without a problem too, why not give it a try? This "I am looking for stock android without ads" is pretty half baked, stock android is a tracking platform, everywhere. No fairphone (or Murena with their insecure "private" OS) or ANY other brand will give you a reasonably private phone, all are basically a tracking instrument.
  We really need a googerteller Android App. Stock Android sends everything to Google

I've read that the FairPhone comes with a standard, vanilla Android OS on it, no bloatware. I cannot say if it's true, but you could have a look at the FairPhone forums and see what people think of the OS.
I know you don't want to tinkle with the bootloader et al., but if you're willing to try a different OS without the hassle: it is posible to buy a FairPhone with /e/OS or iodéOS preinstalled.
- As the owner of a Fairphone, this is indeed my experience. The only non-standard app is the Fairphone app, which is easily ignored or might even be useful.
- I've read that the FairPhone comes with a standard, vanilla Android OS on it, no bloatware.
  So does the Pixel.

I'm currently using a Moto Edge 30 Ultra it's basically completely AOSP Android the only stuff that's pre-installed are the Moto Apps that are actually useful for the phone which also don't have any ads and the phone has way better performance than all my stupid Samsung Exynos phones. So Motorola would be very good for what you're looking for. If you don't want to go with Motorola though I would recommend Sony or Fairphone.

Depends what you mean by an "ad" but going by the usual definition no phones have ads except cheap chinese ones and some phones in amazon's program.
- I would consider an ad to be an ad like on Youtube, and also things like popups to download an app when connecting a device, or deals from the same phone company as a notification. I don't care if the "ad" is from the same company as the phone, I still think of it as an ad.

I'd say stick with the Pixels, especially since you're already invested in Google services. You wouldn't be gaining much from switching to Samsung, unless you want to use the S-Pen, or some of the advanced multi-tasking features or customisation options (Good Lock stuff).
But FWIW, I've had the Galaxy Fold 4 and now on a Fold 5, and I haven't seen any ads on my device, nor do I recall seeing any third-party bloatware (besides Samsung/Google bloat of course). But your experience might be different if you buy a phone from a carrier, since it's usually the carriers who load crap on your phone (with the exception being most C*****e phones, which come with thirdparty bloatware out of the box).
- What would be some examples of Samsung bloat? Are there ads in those apps?
  Side note: What is the C*****e company?
  
  Examples of Samsung bloat: AR Emoji, AR Zone, Bixby, Bixby Vison, Samsung Global Goals, Galaxy Wearable, Samsung Kids etc.. there's a whole bunch of them. I've disabled/removed all of them though.
  The only Samsung apps I use are the basic ones such as the phone dialer, browser, camera, clock etc, and the system customisation tools part of the Good Lock suite. There aren't any ads in any of these.
  What is the C*****e company?
  I'm talking about phones made by that country, such as Xiaomi, Huawei, Redmi etc. They usually tend to have ads, unwanted popups and third-party bloatware.

As far as I know Motorola and Pixel are the only OEMs with no ads or bloatware. For samsung you need to debloat and turn off notifications.
- Motorola seems good, I'll check it out.

Sony Xperia 1 II, III or V can be flashed to LineageOS
https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/
- Are they good without LineageOS? I have already said that I don’t want to deal with custom bootloaders/systems.
  
  I guess it depends on your order of priorities?
  I think they're good as they are the last flagship that has a 3.5mm AUX port, MicroSD 1TB for $100), and the camera is pretty decent.
  I typically am not pro-sony but they have a lot of their devices under ASOP open source https://developer.sony.com/open-source/aosp-on-xperia-open-devices
  You can literally reflash a II or III using only XperiFirm and ADB in 30-60 minuets I was surprised, there is a V image I saw on XDA dated january 24 and the device was open souced in December 23.
  I think they got their tweaks in the mainline Linux kernel IIRC which was notable to me for potential Linux distro testing some future day.
  Stock version comes with crapware like all other major vendors, to me this order of priorities is a peak annoyance, with other vendors not on a part of the ASOP open source I think they're not worth the hassel of buying and without MicroSD if the device bricks your data is lost.
  YMMV only you know what is best for you, LineageOS is so much nicer than stock Android. Not having all that crap installed. Google apps installation is "optional", I too am reducing my reliance on their services.

I recently bought a Pixel 8 and put grapheneos on it. Pretty happy with it but quite the learning curve.

Pixel 6 Pro+GrapheneOS is my choice. Finding apps that dont need google play services is tough, but doable. Its insane how much of the android app ecosystem relies on google play services, especially for push notifications.

Well...since Google is primarily an Ad company.....
I just plug into the Private DNS settings dns.adguard-dns.com and run ad free. As for bloat- mine was infested with Facebook and other apps preloaded by Samsung, but it was easy enough to remove by long pressing and deleting it. They fortunately didn't make them system apps.
With that said, if you are handy with android-tools such as ADB, you can place your phone in debug mode and issue adb commands to disable system apps. Pretty easy once you get the hang of it.

Any with good hardware as long as you can switch to stable and community-made ROMs.

Upgrading from a pixel 6 pro... I'm still on a pixel 3 and the only thing that's making me want to get a new phone is my battery, but even then I'm still apprehensive. It's not like I NEED a new phone.
- You're probably not missing out keeping your 3. I traded my 4a for a 7 a while ago, and while the 7 has better specs and whatever, it's not so much that you can really feel a difference. It actually kind of feels like a downgrade because I lost my headphone jack and the fingerprint sensor absolutely sucks now. I would have been perfectly happy to keep my 4a for a good while longer if it weren't for the battery.
  
  Sadly the 3 also doesn't have a headphone jack so I've had to deal with a dongle for ages. But also it's the battery that is making me consider getting a new phone. But I'm probably not getting a flagship. I don't need the power anymore. I've even thought about getting a feature phone, like the kind that still android. But most of them are still chonky as cause they make them for the elderly and disabled as the primary market.

I've been happily running cheap Nokia phones for the last couple of years. It's vanilla Android with very little bloat, no ads and years of security updates.

I am still loving my Pixel 6 Pro. Other than installing AdGuard, or just change your DNS, I pretty much use it as is. I turned off all the Google home or whatever that thing was to the left. Take a minute and go through your installed apps and turn off notifications for things you don't want or just uninstall. I don't think you could ever convince me to buy a Samsung again.
My only gripe is the size and how the camera sticks out. The battery life is great, I have plenty of space locally, and I can wirelessly charge my earbuds with it if I want.
- You want your Pixel 6 pro to be bigger or smaller?
  
  A little smaller as it is a little "tall", but I otherwise love this thing. The uneven back (or something else?) makes it difficult to consistently work with the wireless charging pad in the car.

I have the Pixel 7 Pro and there's no ad forcing. Some apps can push ads, but just block them or don't use those apps. I'm using the Nova Launcher though. Idk if that matters.
- The Pixel 7 pro is 👍. No ads. Are there preinstalled 3rd-party apps like Facebook or Spotify?
  It's 👍 that tester1121 isn't focused on Pixel and considers other phones. But if his Pixel 6 pro is still 👍, I suggest using it for minimum 2 more years. If he needs to replace it now, I suggest the Pixel 8. USD 641 on Amazon.
  
  Mine didn't come with anything pre-installed. I bought it directly from Google though. Idk if that changes things.

I have the Xiaomi 13T Pro, and I haven't noticed any ads. You can buy wallpapers and ringtones, but there are also tons of free ones, and it doesn't pop up advertisements for it except once to show the function is there. The new HyperOS although it looks the same and has similar functionality on the surface as MIUI, is way way better IMO.
Security and game center are gone, 2 of the top annoyances with MIUI IMO. HyperOS feels way snappier too. With MIUI the 13T Pro was slower than my old Motorola to turn pages in an e-book quickly. Now it's super snappy. HyperOS just feels better somehow.
I installed Firefox with uBlock Origin, and chose it as default browser. I also uninstalled "Community Center" I think it was called. An app to use various Xiaomi services.
There are a couple preinstalled apps, I don't recall if Facebook was among them, but they are easy to uninstall, it literally just takes a minute to uninstall.
But maybe Motorola would be more to your liking, they use almost completely vanilla Android, with only an app to configure Motorola specific features. I did get some ads for printing services on my Motorola, but it seemed to be more a Google thing than Motorola. (Haven't seen any such things on my Xiaomi 13T Pro)
And AFAIK you can still remove the search widget from the desktop on Motorola, something that apparently is no longer possible in completely vanilla Android. Reason enough for me to completely avoid Google Pixel phones. Why would they even want to do such a stupid thing?

What ads are you referring to? I gave Galaxy S 23 Ultra and I've never seen any ads in the OS.
- It seems like there are ads in apps like Game Center, and I have heard that plugging in an Xbox controller shows a Samsung popup to download a Xbox app.
  
  I have an S24 and I don't use the game center myself, in fact I un-installed it. I paired up my Xbox Elite controller to test it and did not see any kind of ad or pop up, but I do have the Game Pass app installed. I was using LG phones for the last several years and was going to get a Pixel 8 since LG stopped making phones, but read terrible reviews on the Pixel 8. I was worried Samsung was going to be a terrible, locked down ad ridden experience, but honestly it's been fine. Lmk if I can help any further, and good luck!

It is easy to turn off ads on Xiaomi. I am using Poco X3 pro for more than two years and never seen one. Bigger problem with Xiaomi is media selector app and that they disable auto unlock Android feature (you can't unlock your phone automatically when at home or some BT device is detected).

I'm using a pixel 6 non pro, and found that the pixel 7 and 8 were both a downgrade in terms of performance. Sticking with the 6 for now

Either keep using your current phone and install GrapheneOS or get a newer Pixel and flash Graphene. It's the best mobile operating system you can find. It doesn't come with any ads, trackers, bloatware, or any other annoying shit. It's just pure Android with many privacy and security improvements.
- I have already said that I don't want to deal with custom bootloaders/systems.
  
  It's really not hard, it takes 10 minutes and the entire installation process can be completed from nothing more than your web browser. https://youtube.com/watch?v=L1KZWjZVnAw

Oneplus
- That one does seem to be getting a lot of attention lately. I just wish more phones offered on-device subtitles for phone calls and anything played through the device. Until another phone offers that I'm sticking with Pixel.

I currently own a S23+ and had a OnePlus 6T before that and Nexus 5X before that. I wouldn't be bothered by the Samsung bloat. You can uninstall nearly everything. Set the default apps you want to use and hide the rest. You have this configured quickly and then you will never be bothered by it again.
The default Pixel 8 launcher doesnt even allow you to remove the huge Google search widget, which bothers me a lot more. I find One UI pretty vanilla feeling to be honest. Don't notice that much difference from my OnePlus 6T which had a fairly vanilla OS.
- The S23+ is my dream. Big screen and flagship Snapdragon. The S23 ultra is overkill for me. Of course, if 1 needs the features that only the Ultra has, he should buy the Ultra.
  I'm excited re the upcoming big phones but I won't be :o if the S24 ultra will be the best big phone of 2024. It seems Samsung knows how to make 👍 big phones.
  No ads on my Samsung a70 but there are preinstalled 3rd-party apps. I just disabled those that I haven't needed.
  There are some Samsung apps that I haven't needed like Radio and Tips. There's a not-so-easy way to remove those. But those never annoyed me so I won't bother to remove those.

The easiest way to get rid of ads it's a DNS level AdBlock, you can simply use the private DNS option of Android(with AdGuard or Mullvad free DNS resolvers), next step use alternative frontends for YouTube(NewPipe x SponsorBlock) and Music like Spotify and YT Music(xManager or ReVanced), there will be some apps what will keep showing ads like Facebook but at least it will be a minor amount.
If you want to be more sophisticated about Android AdBlocks I will suggest you to root your phone, but with these non-root options 90% of people will do pretty fine.

I'm in the same boat, the issue is my pixel 6 pro has a big smash on the screen so the Graphene option isn't possible. I used to have a Xiaomi and actually really liked it but I hear they're changing the os/UI? Also I dunno about ads, that sounds crap.
- I have a friend that uses a Redmi phone, and the ad situation is horrible. You have to manually go into the settings for each app and disable ads, and some apps only disable them for 30 days.

They will hate me but iPhone has BSD/XNU/openSTEP. Of course it may feel like a prison after Android. Either that or a Linux phone with Waydroid

Agree a lot, Google Pixels are stupidly huge.

Dunno. I'm still rocking a OnePlus 7 pro with crdroid 10.2 (Android 14). Nice rom, no nonsense.

iPhone.
- I can't use an iPhone because no sideloading, no filesystem access, you need iTunes to upload music (really?), etc.
  (I'm asking in an Android community because I want an Android phone, not an iPhone.)
  
  Sure, makes sense. But the title was “what’s a good phone that doesn’t force ads on me.” None of the things you listed were mentioned in the post. I stand by my answer 😎. Come, join us in the land of good-user-interface.
- I consider Weather telling me to open Apple News last weekend an ad… there are ads every time I try to search for something in Maps, and when navigation ends (or soon will be).
  I agree with you, I’ll buy another iPhone until it gets worse. But I feel like were starting to lose the moral high ground here, how about you?
  
  Is Apple that bad nowadays that they need News ads in a weather app? I thought Apple was the almost ad-free and privacy-focused company.

164 comments