I’ve been wanting to switch phones for a few months before. The previous phone I owned, an iPhone 8 plus, had terrible display quality because the original glass was replaced with an inferior clone product due to stock issues after cracking it badly. The front speaker was also broken so I could only make calls on speaker mode. The battery health was also noticeably worn, and I might as well look for a replacement phone rather than use that same money for just replacing the battery. There were other reasons, such as the spookiness of Apple’s CSAM announcement and problems, which scans your entire photo/video library for CP. The bad part is Apple’s ability to remotely scan everything you have, implying they have access to everything on your phone and revealing their lie of ‘caring for user privacy’. There’s also the superior displays of Android phones (I know newer iPhone flagships have nice OLEDs too but I don’t want to spend that much), wanting to escape the imprisonment feeling of iOS, and finally becoming curious enough of Android to switch.
This was a pretty big move personally, as I’ve been with iPhones for a pretty long time. My first phone was a used Blackberry with no touchscreen and the signature physical keyboard. The screen was partially damaged and I mostly used the phone playing brick breaker. Then I had a cheap Samsung Galaxy phone, not the S series but some really low-end model, for a few months. About halfway through middle school I was gifted an iPhone 5 and from there on, I stuck with iPhones. I wasn’t an Apple fanboy or anything, but never bothered to experiment or figure out what Android had to offer going forward. My upgrade history goes iPhone 5 ⟶ iPhone 6 plus ⟶ iPhone 8 plus, the upgrade cycles gradually lengthening as I lost interested in phones over the years. I upgraded recently, and now I own a Xiaomi Mi 9T Pro, which is admittedly a late 2019 model in early 2022 and is not as big of a hardware jump as getting a new model from late 2021. But still, even this late 2019 model and relatively budget phone is providing a much better experience than any iPhone so far.
Why did I go with a China phone?
I did my research before picking this one up. While looking for a phone, I had 4 features I wanted/needed from it:
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The bootloader must be unlocked/unlockable
I was planning on installing community-customized versions of Android, known as custom ROMs. To do this, a software on the phone called the bootloader must be unlocked or unlockable. If the bootloader isn’t, then the modding process is very finnicky or impossible; Samsung phones are notorious for locked bootloaders
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The phone needs to have a headphone jack
I have a pair of nice earbuds (IEMs) and always prefer wired audio, especially for in-ears. As someone who dislikes the industry-wide tactic of removing the headphone jack to sell bluetooth earbuds, this was also a must have feature
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The phone has expandable storage
This was also a feature I wanted, having expandable storage makes managing space on your phone very easy
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The phone has a home buttom/rectangular screen
Apple seems to really try and remove every feature I want from a phone and propagate that to the other manufacturers because this one was impossible. Being honest, I did get adjusted to a full-sized screen rather quickly
Ultimately, I couldn’t find a phone that all 4 features. All of them had some kind of compromise: not being available in my country, being too old, or some other issue. In fact, there wasn’t a single phone that supported 3 of my needs without looking at phones with signficantly weaker hardware. I really miss the old days where flagship Samsung phones could satisfy all 4 points since there seems to be literally no options today. In the end, I gave in and had to choose a phone that could satisfy the most features, and the Mi 9T Pro was one of them. It has an unlockable bootloader, headphone jack (a rare find), but no home button and no expandable storage. It was also pretty damn cheap, I bought one basically new-in-box for $350 CAD from someone. Of course, I did some researching about any spooky CCP malware in the phone, and the general consensus was that it was all software-based (there might be some spooky firmware, but chances are low), meaning the custom ROM would overwrite it all. Overall, the Mi 9T Pro had a passable feature set, was affordable, could easily be modded, and had positive reviews so I felt safe with going with it. Seems to be a trend with Xiaomi phones at least, they sell incredible hardware at really low prices.
Why use a custom OS? And which one?
So in a nutshell, Google develops a thing called the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). This is basically a base layer for Android versions you would find on phones, but isn’t functional enough. It’s missing basic software such as phone/texting apps, keyboard, camera program, and more. So Android vendors (Google, Samsung, Huawei, HTC, Sony, etc.) take that base layer and add whatever they need to for their phones; firmware, extra UI features, custom bloatware. Think of having a stripped down copy of Windows that isn’t really functional and then OEMs like Dell, HP, Lenovo taking a dump over it with their software and Norton Antivirus. AOSP is a decent base layer, but the final OS that you see on phones is bad because vendors stuff it with all kinds of trash: weird programs/services that you can’t uninstall, tracking/ads, and bloat that drains your battery faster and uses more system resources. Some custom ROMs develop AOSP into a fully functioning OS which gives you the minimal base of AOSP while adding in features that you need and without the extra vendor junk. One ROM that does this is ArrowOS, which is the ROM I’m using. Some other well known ROMs are LineageOS, GrapheneOS, and CalyxOS, but I recommend you go look amongst the hundreds of ROMs for one that’s appealing to you as they’re all pretty unique and device support varies by each ROM.
A better experience than stock Android distributions and iOS
I won’t be going over how to install a custom ROM in this blog, since that’s out of scope and I’ve rambled on enough already. This post is for sharing my experience, what I think of it and how it compares to iOS (hint: a lot better). I’ve been with ArrowOS 11 for about 2 months now, and it’s solid. The base install is very minimal and contains virtually no bloat which is great. I chose the vanilla build which doesn’t include any Google apps or services, making the OS even leaner. The OS has all the basic features you would want and actually use, without being bagged down by customization options everywhere. Android by default is a lot more customizable than iOS, you’re able to change some parts of the OS and functionality that Apple would never let you touch. Here’s a list of some unlocked abilities that I can think of:
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You can install programs from third party repositories
This means that you can install programs outside of the Google Play Store. On iOS, you can’t install something if it’s not in the Apple App Store. This is a huge benefit and I’ll upload a post later going into more details about this
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You can mod the system and root it more easily This is the reason that allows this kind of OS modding to happen. Android is based off the Linux kernel and is mostly open sourced, meaning that modding is easier and offers more benefits than trying something similar on iPhones known as jailbreaking
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Android offers way more user-controllable variables You can change a lot of trivial features, such as your navigation gesture style. Want the Apple style of one bar? Sure. Prefer virtual home and back buttons? Go ahead. Or you can replace your launcher (the program that manages your home screen and program switching screen) to something that functions completely differently, use widgets that still make Apple’s improvements seem like child’s play, change system fonts, set ringtones to whatever you want, or change very small but nice functions such as turning on the flashlight by holding down the power button when the screen is off. Even if you don’t mess with small settings that much like me, the abundance of them is a good thing to have
The third feature is something any stock Android offers by default. Combined with the first two points that allow you to fully modify the device instead of surface level features, custom ROMs unlock the full potential of an Android device and I recommend anyone comfortable with modding devices to give it a try. To me, the extra control that deep mods like ROMs grant you is almost a necessity with today’s stock Android that comes bundled with nasty trackers and bloat that no one wants. Seriously Samsung, I have never seen someone use your browser. Even normies are ‘smart’ enough to use Chrome instead, which is not a good idea by the way. Go with a custom ROM, free your Android device and regain control of it, while eliminating the tracking and bloatware to enjoy a lighter OS that extends your battery life as well as the phone’s overall life.