A Google-less Android phone. There are no Google applications, Google Play Services, or the friendly Google Assistant. There will be no more Google data espionage, relentless ad targeting, or the notion that privacy is a waste of time. Some businesses, like as Huawei, have been compelled to figure out how to make such a gadget. Others have attempted it in the name of protecting your privacy and fighting back against Big Tech's tyranny. None of it has ever worked properly.


For the past several years, the Murena team has been working on de-Googling Android phones, beginning in 2017 when Gael Duval designed an operating system he dubbed Eelo. In 2017, Duval stated, "Like millions of others, I'VE BECOME A PRODUCT OF GOOGLE." He claimed he wanted to create something that was as nice as existing Android applications but without the tracking. He stated, "I need something I can even suggest to my parents or my children." "Something pleasant, with stronger privacy assurances." Something that we could construct in a reasonable length of time and that will improve over time."


The operating system, now known as /e/OS, has been accessible on a few devices for a while, but Murena is releasing "/e/OS V1" alongside the company's first-ever smartphone, the $369 Murena One.


It's a smooth slab of glass with a 6.5-inch display, an eight-core MediaTek CPU, a fingerprint reader on the side, and three cameras in a little hump on the back, and it's quite good as a debut hardware attempt. The camera specifications are also excellent, with a 48-megapixel primary sensor on the back and a 25-megapixel pinhole camera for selfies on the front. Murena appears to have splurged on the camera, which COO Alexis Noetinger claims was a necessity. "When individuals migrate to an environment that is more focused toward privacy, they are willing to make a number of compromises," he added, "but we've discovered that the camera is the most probable item people can be selective about."


We'll have to test them both further before passing judgment, but based on my limited testing, they both appear to be acceptable cameras, but far from what you'd find on a new Google, Apple, or Samsung phone.


In order to disembarrass its device of each potential remnant of Google, Murena had to create an implausible quantity of stuff. The /e/OS code comes with: a customised electronic communication app, thus you don’t would like Google Messages; a browser to interchange Chrome; a maps app that uses OpenStreetMap information rather than Google’s; associate degree email shopper, a calendar, a file-storage system, a contacts app, and much everything else you’d get within the Google space suite; apps for notes and tasks and music and even voice recordings. Murena is even designing its own virtual assistant, named Elivia, thus you won’t miss Google Assistant.


IN ORDER TO disembarrass ITS DEVICE of each potential REMNANT OF GOOGLE, MURENA HAD to create an implausible quantity OF STUFF

Murena designed cloud back ends for several of these services, too, thus you'll check your email within the /e/OS email app however additionally use your /e/ email address rather than one ending in gmail.com. all of your on-line services sleep in Murena Cloud rather than on Google or Microsoft services. To some extent, all you’re very doing here is swapping one centralized supplier for one more, however Murena says all its product area unit designed with constant anti-surveillance privacy principles as its smartphones.


It’s associate degree admirable effort, however even Murena will solely go up to now in ditching Google. each company that has ever tried this, from Huawei’s Harmony OS to unfortunate comes like Ubuntu bit and Firefox OS, eventually discovered constant thing: while not the robot app scheme, your phone is dead on arrival. thus Murena tried to possess its cake and eat it too: the corporate swapped Google’s Play Store for the “App Lounge,” that enables you to install all major robot apps — as well as, yes, those created by Google — however has no sign of Google disapproval.


In order to use the App Lounge, though, you have got to simply accept its Terms of Service, that says right up at the highest that you simply have 2 choices — log in along with your Google account or browse the Lounge anonymously — however either method, your app-downloading relationship is generally with Google. You’re simply downloading Play apps in an exceedingly different-looking store. The Lounge fetches its data directly from the Play Store (without telling Google United Nations agency you're, Murena says) and uses Google for all kinds of payment.


THE APP LOUNGE ISN’T THE PLAY STORE, BUT... IT’S primarily THE PLAY STORE

The App Lounge will embody some non-Play Store apps, and you'll penetrate settings and value more highly to solely see ASCII text file apps and progressive net apps, however that pretty seriously limits the quantity of apps obtainable to you.


Connecting to Google flies pretty directly within the face of Murena’s guarantees and has created loads of Murena’s early testers mad, however I don’t assume Murena had another selection however to handle it this fashion. “A smartphone while not Google’s surveillance” may be a compelling plan to several users, however “a smartphone with none of the apps you want” may be a dealbreaker for almost everyone. Noetinger says that certain, Murena might have designed a UNIX phone that consummated everyone’s privacy dreams, however it wouldn’t have run any apps. and no-one would have needed it. “We would like folks to seek out apps,” he says, “otherwise we’re getting to connect with alittle quantity of individuals, United Nations agency can notice the project nice, however it'll finish there.” Murena is making an attempt to run a fine line here, however the reality is that line simply doesn’t exist. you simply can’t have the total robot expertise while not attractive Google into the equation.


Instead, after you log into Google or use its services, Murena tries to mitigate the information Google will collect. It leans on a project known as MicroG that’s primarily a a lot of personal the image of a number of the libraries that Google needs to run its apps, thus you'll use apps that need Google Play Services while not truly exploitation Google Play Services.It principally works, although it took loads of dig around in Settings to really log in to my Google account on the Murena One. I can’t imagine many of us area unit shopping for /e/OS devices so speeding to put in Google Maps and Chrome, however it’s still a frustrating bug.


Murena’s overall approach to privacy appears to focus less on stopping information assortment altogether and a lot of on security by obscurity. If you switch on Advanced Privacy in /e/OS, it uses a VPN to mask your location — either by selecting a “random plausible location” somewhere within the world or material possession you decide on wherever you would like to be — and even hides your science address from the sites you visit. It additionally tries to dam trackers in each app you transfer and appears to try and do thus pretty with success.


Advanced Privacy comes with its own tradeoffs, though. For one factor, it’s robust to use weather or maps apps once your phone thinks you’re in Singapore, as mine did once I 1st shodden it up from my house in Virginia. voluminous apps are geofenced in a technique or another, thus I tense having to show off all the protection for apps like Netflix and YouTube TV. (Oh yeah, and that i downloaded YouTube and YouTube TV as a result of Murena can’t replace those, thus Google got Maine there anyway.) Murena is making an attempt laborious to make set-it-and-forget-it privacy code, however it concluded up requiring a lot of picayune than I needed.


All of /e/OS continues to be supported robot, of course. The device I’m exploitation is running a forked version of robot ten supported Lineage OS, associate degree robot spinoff supported the previous CyanogenMod project. (It’s a fork of a fork! And LineageOS is all the far to robot twelve, though, thus it’s a bummer to check /e/OS lag behind.) And for all of Murena’s work, it still appearance like… robot. The organization has aforesaid that it plans to rethink the method notifications work, as an example, and create alternative changes to however robot works, however at once, it’s simply a straightforward iPhone-style launcher on prime of associate degree otherwise acquainted version of robot.


The Murena One is associate degree formidable device, and /e/OS is an excellent a lot of formidable OS. But so far, they’ve principally shown Maine simply however constituted Google is in our digital lives and the way far more management the corporate has taken its purportedly ASCII text file OS. the sole thanks to get robot freed from Google, it seems, is to form everything concerning robot a bit worse. and also the solely thanks to eventually create it higher is to reconstruct it from the bottom up. That’s getting to be robust for anyone to tug off, notwithstanding however fervidly they believe the mission.