What are the most privacy respecting smartphones to buy, I am also looking for the one which respects your privacy the most. So far going to privacy communities esp on reddit, I often see Google Pixel + GrapheneOS being recommended.
But the thing is I don’t really trust Google with privacy, as we have seen they are last one to respect privacy. What if Google has some backdoor in the hardware that cannot be changed? And the problem with the more privacy respecting OSes for mobiles like GrapheneOS, CalyxOS etc are that they are only supported for Google pixel phones.
So I am really confused here.
If you remove Google Play Services and only install apps from F-Droid (which are vetted by the community and explicitly list antifeatures) you should achieve your goals. That is, assuming your system itself is not snitching on you.
Also worth noting, phone providers are big corps doing tons of spying on their users. If you’d like to get rid of those, running your smartphone using wifi only with randomized MAC addresses (i think is default now on Android) is very reasonable.
Yes removing Google Play services will reduce the spying that Google does on you but the mobile company can still possibly spy on you. How do I check that my phone has a randomized MAC address or not?
The easiest way is to use the admin interface of your router to see connected devices. Turn on plane mode on your phone, then connect again. See if the device is “recognized” (with the same MAC) on your router or not.