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Yeah the notch was a couple generations back so I’d put it back too, the dynamic island is much better
-Sent from my iPhone
With both whatever-apple-is-doing and Android’s whatever-it-is-called-that-prevent-factory-reset when you don’t have access to the account on the device, I don’t see how people still buy “shady” phones and tablets.
Last time I borrowed a relative’s phone to run an experiment, I had to contact them to “unlock” the phone after a factory reset before being able to do anything because I didn’t remove the account before. Unless people go out of their way to make their phone “stealable”, that is.
I mean, if you can factory reset a phone to strip the need for authentication, that seems like kind of a bad thing, no?
You can factory reset it, but not really. On first boot, the phone requires a network connection; you can’t skip setting up wifi if there is no cellular internet available. And it will ask you to authenticate the google account it expect before even starting the “real” setup process. As a matter of fact, once you authenticate with google, it does start again, ask again for wifi and will not have the account setup at all, as you would expect after a factory reset.
So, while you can “factory reset”, the phone still needs the previously registered google account to start. There’s probably some phone that gives more leniency, but I was not able to circumvent that using adb (the device being locked, and impossible to unlock without accessing the menu, impossible to access without starting in the first place…)
I have seen several tutorials to skip this step on xiaomi phones through fastboot.
If the phone had is bootloader unlocked, sure. Otherwise, it won’t accept the commands. My mistake was on a Xiaomi Mi A2.
The people that designed this feature are not that oblivious.
If it was a Pixel 2 or a 4a I’m keeping it, that phone was peak modern smartphone before everything went downhill with no rear fingerprint scanner and fixed focus selfie cams
I have a 4a 5G variant and I can’t stand how the “stock” experience manages to be worse than on my old Samsung :-/ The pics are great tho
GrapheneOS gets rid of all the Google crap, it’s a much lighter and more minimal experience, I really like it. It also has some significant privacy and security improvements, it’s pretty neat.
I was thinking about it ever since Louis Rossmann showcased it. But as he had problems using his banking app and some other stuff, I decided it wouldn’t be worth the hassel. Also, many people wrote that with Graphene you lose a lot of the fancy camera shenanigans that Google made. And the camera was one of the more important points in getting this phone.
There’s a very detailed article about GrapheneOS banking app compatibility where you can check if your bank’s app works on Graphene: https://github.com/PrivSec-dev/banking-apps-compat-report/
Regarding the camera: Yes, you lost some quality with the default GrapheneOS camera app. But you can easily install the official Google camera app from the Play store (or anonymously through Aurora) to get full quality. You don’t even need Google play services installed for that to work, and you can revoke it’s network access, so it’s completely offline and private. I use the Google camera app all the time, it works flawlessly.
Don’t have a 4a, but big fan of my 5a with Graphene! The last one with both usb-c AND a headphone jack! It has been my phone of choice since my iPhone SE broke, and it is still my main driver.
I’m still on my Galaxy S10e.
The last normal sized phone with USB C and a headphone jack.
The Pixel 7a is almost the same size, just 0.2 inches bigger. Unlike the S10e, it is still supported by Google and gets security updates (until 2028). And you can install a better, more secure Android ROM like GrapheneOS.
GrapheneOS is the way to go, unfortunately the 5a won’t be supported by Google for much longer, only until August of this year. GrapheneOS will probably provide a few extra months of extended support though.
I still use Pixel 4 and the fabric case is so great to the touch, too bad the new ones don’t have them.
Do you have GrapheneOS installed on it? That way, you could at least get the update to Android 14.
