Android OS Alternatives

ANDROID ALTERNATIVES

Android is, at one level, open source. This allows other companies to use it and modify it. However, the process is difficult and there are not many alternate versions of Android. The big reason to consider any alternative version of Android is to avoid being spied on.

TOPICS BELOW
Light Phone, Fairphone, /e/OS, Linux Phones, Graphene OS, Shift Phone, Assorted, See Also

LIGHT PHONE top

The Light Phone is not just an Android alternative, it is a smart phone alternative. There are no installable apps. It is just barely smart. There is no access to social media, the Internet or email. There is no web browser. The screen is black/white. It does not run a version of Android, it has its own Operating System called LightOS.

The Lightphone II is $300 as of April 2025. It is smaller and far more limited compared to the III model. It does phone calls and texts.

The Light Phone III is $600 as of April 2025 (considered a pre-order). Initially it was expected to be released in January 2025, but as of April 2025, it is expected in August 2025. In June 2024, you could have pre-ordered it for $400.

In addition to phone calls and texts, the III model has: Alarm clock, Timer, Calculator, Calendar, Directory, Map and Navigation, Hotspot, Music player, Notes/Voice Memo, Podcasts. Not sure what Hotspot is. Most of these apps are optional and not pre-installed. There is also a low end camera and an embedded NFC chip for making payments. The screen is a black-and-white OLED.

April 17, 2025: This New Dumbphone Is a Lot Smarter Than It Looks by Christopher Schaberg for Slate. Quoting: "Trading in a smartphone for something slower, quieter, and a little weirder changed how I live." The author has used the II model for a couple years and the III for a couple weeks. The phone has "simple map directions", whatever that means.

April 6, 2025: Can Using a Dumber Phone Cure Brain Rot? by Brian X. Chen for the New York Times. Mr. Chen's conclusions, experiences and opinions are useless drivel because his life style is not yours. For example, he felt that no one's job would let them use the Lightphone III as their only phone - ignoring children and senior citizens which are probably the target audience. He used it only for a week. No Uber app might be a big deal to some, but a Lyft app is planned. The maps app works. If you take mass transit, there may be a system that requires a smartphone. Maybe?

June 11, 2024: Light unveils a new minimalist phone with a black-and-white OLED screen by Lawrence Bonk for Engadget.

FAIRPHONE top

Fairphone is based in Amsterdam and their phones are only sold in Europe (last checked June 2024). They sell phones that run regular Android and they also sell one model that runs /e/OS. The big selling point on their Android phones is that hardware is designed to be easily replaceable. Also, they promise bug fixes for a long time.

As of June 2024: The Fairphone 4 was 500 Euros, and the Fairphone 5 was 700 Euros. The Fairphone 4 with /e/OS was 550 Euros.
As of June 2024: The Fairphone 4 with /e/OS was sold in the US by Murena at prices ranging from $550 to $620.
September 2023: Fairphone 5 review: could this be the first phone to last 10 years? by Samuel Gibbs in The Guardian. The new model is thinner, lighter and more refined compared to older models. It is also a big step up in terms of longevity, repairability and quality. It costs about $750 US, more than older models but offers up to 10 years of software support. It runs Fairphone OS which is based on Android 13 and includes the Play Store. You can install another OS such as Linux or other versions of Android.
September 9, 2022: A Smartphone That Lasts a Decade? Yes, It’s Possible by Brian Chen in the New York Times. About the Fairphone 4 running vanilla Android software. At the time it was $580. The battery and camera can both be easily replaced and it implies the screen can too. As for bug fixes, the Fairphone model that came out six years ago (as of Sept 2022) was still getting Android updates when the article was written. The norm at the time for Android bug fixes was only two years.

E/OS top

A company called /e/ (yes, a miserable name) sells smartphones running /e/ OS, which is Android with Google stripped out of it. As of June 2024, they are available in over a dozen countries, including the US and Canada. There is no Google Play Store, instead there is a variety of free and/or open source applications. You can download Android apps to the phone from F-Droid or from the /e/OS app store, which is called the App Lounge. See their Murena phones. You can also install /e/OS yourself on a handful of supported phones. One supported phone is the Pixel 6a.

May 22, 2024: /e/OS Is Better Than Android. You Should Try It by Scott Gilbertson in Wired. The author exclusively used /e/OS for six months before writing this article. He felt that the real difference between /e/OS and other versions of Android is the privacy-first design inherent to /e/OS. For example, the App Lounge (their app store) provides privacy information about each app, grading it on a 1 to 10 scale. There is an Advanced Privacy app and widget that lets you block in-app trackers. He found it depressing to see in stark detail how many apps are constantly transmitting data back to servers. But, /e/OS blocks it all for you. The system can also hide your IP address or geolocation. LineageOS allows the Google Play Services layer, but it has to be installed which is difficult. You can buy a Fairphone preloaded with /e/OS and have an excellent, Google-free mobile experience.
As of June 2024, in the US, the Murena Teracube 2e is $330, the Murena Pixel 5 Refurbished is $400 and the Murena Fairphone 4 sells for $550 to $620.
October 3, 2023: Murena 2 is a de-Googled Android phone with a privacy kill switch that disconnects mic and camera (crowdfunding) by Brad Linder for Liliputing. About the Murena 2 phone. It has a hardware kill switch that will physically disconnect the microphone and camera. So, even if your phone is infected with malware, it cannot record your voice or image with the switch active. Another switch on the side of the phone triggers Airplane mode, which tells the OS to disable cellular, WiFi, and Bluetooth. No mention is made of NFC. To access Google Android apps, there is a compatibility layer. Free apps are accessible via anonymous browsing to circumvent trackers. However, paid apps still require a Google account. The phone is under development, there is an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign for it. The first batch is expected in December 2023. In the US it only certified to work with T-Mobile, the cell company with the most hacks and datea breaches. They specifically say it is not compatible with Verizon. For more on their phones, see www.murena.com.
Techies can try installing the software themselves on a short list of compatible phones.
February 2021: Now you can buy smartphone with /e/ OS in the US and Canada (Android phones stripped of Google services) by Brad Linder for his Liliputing.com site.

LINUX PHONES top

I know of four companies working on releasing a phone running Linux.

The Librem 5 from Purism will be $700. It has been delayed a number of times and, as of Jan 2020, was still not finished. It started shipping sometime in 2020. It runs PureOS, has a user-replaceable battery and three hardware kill switches (WiFi & Bluetooth, Cellular baseband, Cameras & mic).
The PinePhone from Pine64 runs multiple Linux distros. It has a removable back cover, a removable battery, and a set of hardware kill switches. It is designed to make it easy to choose your own Linux OS. The phones ship with a version of Manjaro Linux and you can boot an alternate OS by flashing it onto a bootable microSD card and inserting it in the phone. The PinePhone started shipping in January 2020. In Dec. 2020, Brad Linder wrote about new versions of Manjaro, Mobian, and OpenSUSE that all run on the PinePhone. As of January 2022, the first generation sells for $150 to $200 US. The second generation, the PinePhone Pro Explorer Edition, was expected to ship at the end of Jan. 2022. The price was supposed to be $600 US, but as of August 2022, it was $400. More here and here.
postmarketOS is a real Linux distribution for phones and other mobile devices. Version 24.06 was released June 16, 2024. Quoting: "This release is geared mainly towards Linux enthusiasts. We are working hard on stability improvements and automated testing, but if you expect Android or iOS levels of polish, then this is not for you yet ... it allows to run an up-to-date Linux distribution on old hardware, making your old phone at least as useful as a Raspberry Pi, but with a built-in battery." Brad Linder wrote about it in June 2024.
Necuno Solutions was working on a phone to be manufactured in Finland. Their last website update was in February 2020 (I write this in June 2024) so they appear to have disappeared. They had open source hardware and software. It seems they did release one batch of phones.

GRAPHENE OS top

GrapheneOS is a version of Android focused on privacy and security. It is built from a minimal version of Android (AOSP) and it has no Google apps or services. Being Android, it preserves all the standard software and hardware security features. Development seems pretty rapid. They were six releases in February 2021, two in January 2021 and two in December 2020. It only runs on Google Pixel phones. As of March 2021, it is supported on: Pixel 5, Pixel 4a (5G), Pixel 4a, Pixel 4 XL, Pixel 4, Pixel 3a XL, Pixel 3a, Pixel 3 XL and Pixel 3. More: What Is GrapheneOS, and How Does It Make Android More Private? by Joe Fedewa (March 2022).
See the GrapheneOS Features Overview
One great Defensive Computing feature is the Duress PIN/Password . This is a PIN/Password that will irreversibly wipe the device when entered anytime the phone credentials are requested. The wipe does not require a reboot and cannot be interrupted.
GrapheneOS is preferred by Michael Bazzell of The Privacy, Security, & OSINT podcast. He discussed it on his podcast in June 2021, August 2021 and September 2021. He also wrote a GrapheneOS Installation Guide (undated) and a GrapheneOS VOIP Calls Guide (also undated)

SHIFTPHONE top

The Shiftphone, from Germany (alternate link), is available only in the EU (as of December 2022) where it costs 633 Euros. In January 2023 they were expected to announce something new. Out of the box it is Android with no bloat, just the minimal set of Google Apps are pre-installed. This article describes how to convert it to a Google-free system: Android without Google: Shiftphones. The site is mostly in German, so I could not get much from it.

ASSORTED top

August 2022: I tried completely de-Googled Android - here's what happened by Jordan Palmer of Toms Guide. Installing and using /e/OS version 1 and GrapheneOS. "Both try to do similar things, but offer vastly different experiences. Neither was as easy to install as I thought at the outset..." As for /e/OS, "...the documentation and recovery aren't good experiences, even for someone experienced with custom ROMs." As for GrapheneOS, "It's barebones and simple, and the stock apps seem pretty good for the most part."
In Dec. 2019, Ludovic Rembert of ProtonMail wrote that LineageOS was the most developed (and stable) alternative version of Android but he warned that installing it requires technical knowledge.
May 2019: Max Eddy of PC Magazine wrote about installing LineageOS on an old Android phone.
Died: The app development company, Simple Mobile Tools tried to sell a non-Google Android phone called Simple Phone. As of June 2024, it has fallen off the end of the Earth. In February 2023, it cost 350 Euros and was out of stock. In November 2022, it cost 400 Euros and was only sold in the EU. They had a FAQ and a blog: Why Simple Phone? and the techie details on how they removed Google from the OS: How de-googled is SimpleOS?. All gone.
In December 2023 the Simple Mobile Tools Android apps were sold to a company that specializes in ads and subscriptions, and they are no longer ad-free. The company cashed out.

SEE ALSO top

Also see the Location Tracking topic
Also see the Mobile OS Spying section which has some privacy focused Android alternatives.
And see the Mobile Scanning and Sharing topic