Technology

I’ve had my current phone since 2019. I’ve gone through a lot of mobile devices over my life, and it’s been nice to have a single phone that’s lasted this long. Although most of the phone seems to work fine, the LTE connectivity issues I had to deal with previously have only gotten worse. Phone calls, both over my normal carrier and via jmp.chat have been incredibly unreliable for over a year. I suspect that some of the hardware (possibly the cell modem and the microphone) has physically degraded. So after nearly five years, I got a new device. I’ll go over the steps I take to de-Google my device, as well as some of my favorite mobile applications, both open source and proprietary.

Most normal people can take a phone out of its box, login to their services and start using the device. I’m not a normal person. I’m a software engineer who cares a lot about privacy. So I always unlock the bootloader and install an alternative operating system without Google Services prior to setting up a device. In the past, I’ve used Lineage + microG. Recently, I set up my tablet with just Lineage and without microG. I decided to attempt the same thing this time with my new phone, and discovered everything I use and care about works perfectly fine without microG.

The Sony Xperia 1 V Camera and Applications

When I replaced my tablet, I looked for a device that matched the operating system I wanted to run, rather than finding a device I wanted and seeing what 3rd party ROMs were available. I took the same approach with replacing my current phone. Although it looks like I’m a Sony fanboy, I simply couldn’t find another device I wanted that was officially supported by Lineage, had current connection protocols like 5G and Wi-Fi 6, and included an external SD card I could use for all my music.

When the “Sony Xperia 1 Mark V” first came out, it was an expensive $1400 beast of a phone, designed for a niche audience¹. Since Sony has released version VI of this flagship, I found an eBay vendor who was selling the V for a much more reasonable $800 USD.

The camera applications for this did look fairly unique, but I was unsure if they would work on something other than the stock Sony firmware. Installed apk packages can be pulled from an Android device by putting it into developer mode and using some adb commands². I used pm and grep to find the Sony packages and extracted the camera and video tools from the device before wiping it.

# Search for all Sony namespaced packages
adb shell pm list packages -f | grep sony

...
package:com.sonymobile.photopro
package:jp.co.sony.mc.videopro
package:com.sonymobile.cinemapro
package:jp.co.sony.mc.videoeditor
...

# Shell onto the device and get the path for the apk files I want

adb shell

pm path com.sonymobile.photopro
package:/product/priv-app/SomcPhotoPro-Yodo/SomcPhotoPro-Yodo.apk

pm path com.sonymobile.cinemapro
package:/product/app/SomcCinemaPro-YodoNagara/SomcCinemaPro-YodoNagara.apk

pm path jp.co.sony.mc.videoeditor
package:/data/app/~~voKnsH7nA78aM3DWSkpIIQ==/jp.co.sony.mc.videoeditor-b7-rBt5jekGYX6-yRnuVdQ==/base.apk

pm path jp.co.sony.mc.videoeditorpackage:/product/app/SomcVideoPro-YodoNagara/SomcVideoPro-YodoNagara.apk

exit

# From my host machine, pull all the apks files

adb pull /data/app/~~voKnsH7nA78aM3DWSkpIIQ==/jp.co.sony.mc.videoeditor-b7-rBt5jekGYX6-yRnuVdQ==/base.apk
/product/app/SomcVideoPro-YodoNag...7 MB/s (66427672 bytes in 1.638s)
/product/app/SomcCinemaPro-YodoNa...5 MB/s (19856926 bytes in 0.492s)
/data/app/~~voKnsH7nA78aM3DWSkpII... MB/s (101758114 bytes in 2.503s)

# The rest of the packages with transfer output omitted

adb pull /product/app/SomcVideoPro-YodoNagara/SomcVideoPro-YodoNagara.apk

adb pull /product/app/SomcCinemaPro-YodoNagara/SomcCinemaPro-YodoNagara.apk

adb pull /product/priv-app/SomcPhotoPro-Yodo/SomcPhotoPro-Yodo.apk

All the Sony photo apps worked flawlessly after I installed Lineage. I’ve owned Sony cameras, including the NEX-5 and the a6000. The user interface is amazingly similar to those devices. The aperture is fixed for each of the phone’s three camera lenses, but everything else is adjustable, just like Sony’s consumer and professional cameras.

I’m pretty amazed by the control and quality of the photos from Sony’s software, and see this as a powerful alternative to getting out my good mirror-less cameras when I need a quick photo for blog posts or eBay listing.

OEM Unlocking and Rooting Troubleshooting

The LineageOS install instructions are well written and fairly complete. Still, as with every time I attempt to flash an alternative ROM on an Android device, I run into some issues.

The Sony 1 V uses multiple slots, a feature that’s been available on Android devices for years that can help devices auto-recover from failed updates. I encountered issues when trying to flash some of the core partitions via fastboot due to slot identification. If I tried to set the slot explicitly, I got an error about how the device didn’t support slots.

fastboot flash boot boot.img
fastboot: error: Failed to identify current slot

fastboot getvar current-slot
current-slot: a
Finished. Total time: 0.004s

fastboot --set-active=b
fastboot: error: Device does not support slots

fastboot --set-active=a
Setting current slot to 'a'                        FAILED (remote: 'Invalid Slot')
fastboot: error: Command failed

I encountered similar issues when attempting to root a Razor phone years ago. These issues almost always relate to the USB cable. I went through several different USB cables with fastboot mode until I could flash each partition without issue. I’d recommend running fastboot getvar current-slot first, as any connectivity issues should show up when trying to retrieve slot information.

Magisk and Rooting a Device

The next big change I encountered was with installing Magisk, a powerful open source tool for root and administration management. Following the same procedure I have for other devices, I used the Magisk application to patch the boot.img distributed with LineageOS. My phone rebooted following the patch with Magisk not installed. I made the mistake of attempting to install Magisk onto both boot slots and ended up with the phone rebooting and eventually loading the recovery ROM.

It turns out that, starting with Android 13, Magisk must patch the init_boot partition instead of the boot partition³. The LineageOS download page doesn’t have the init_boot.img, so I used payload-dumper-go to extract it from the Lineage firmware ZIP file.

❯ unzip -x lineage-21.0-20241201-nightly-pdx234-signed.zip payload.bin
Archive:  lineage-21.0-20241201-nightly-pdx234-signed.zip
signed by SignApk
 extracting: payload.bin

~/src/payload-dumper-go payload.bin
payload.bin: payload.bin
Payload Version: 2
Payload Manifest Length: 143567
Payload Manifest Signature Length: 267
Found partitions:
boot (101 MB), dtbo (25 MB), init_boot (8.4 MB), odm (2.0 MB), product (2.4 GB), recovery (105 MB), system (922 MB), system_dlkm (389 kB), system_ext (542 MB), vbmeta (12 kB), vbmeta_system (4.1 kB), vendor (1.1 GB), vendor_boot (101 MB), vendor_dlkm (33 MB)
Number of workers: 4
boot (101 MB)           [=============================================================] 100 %
dtbo (25 MB)            [=============================================================] 100 %
odm (2.0 MB)            [=============================================================] 100 %
init_boot (8.4 MB)      [=============================================================] 100 %
product (2.4 GB)        [=============================================================] 100 %
recovery (105 MB)       [=============================================================] 100 %
system (922 MB)         [=============================================================] 100 %
system_dlkm (389 kB)    [=============================================================] 100 %
system_ext (542 MB)     [=============================================================] 100 %
vbmeta (12 kB)          [=============================================================] 100 %
vbmeta_system (4.1 kB)  [=============================================================] 100 %
vendor (1.1 GB)         [=============================================================] 100 %
vendor_boot (101 MB)    [=============================================================] 100 %
vendor_dlkm (33 MB)     [=============================================================] 100 %

When I attempted to flash the init_boot partition with the patched image, I got an error saying the partition couldn’t be written to. I discovered I could only flash this partition if I went to the fastbootd screen within the recovery ROM⁴.

Favorite Apps

There are a lot of programs on my phone that just work, and I always prefer open source tools over closed source ad-revenue based slop. Some of the older tools I’ve loved have had license changes, and have been removed from F-Droid. Some have gone unmaintained. Others have been surpassed by better tools. I talked to some friends, looked at what was out there, and reevaluated what I’m currently using on my device. Here are my lists of recommended tools, both open and proprietary.

Application Repositories (App Stores)

• F-Droid - An amazing open source application store. They’re very strict and ideological about reproducible builds and open source philosophy in the primary repository. But it’s also easy to add 3rd party repositories via QR codes. A great tool for the open source Android world.
• Aurora - Available via F-Droid, the Aurora store gives you anonymous access to the free packages on the Play Store. Although they’re not guaranteed to work without Google Services, Aurora allows you to install, try and update applications that might not have open alternatives.
• Amazon Appstore - Except for the occasional breakfast bar at Whole Foods, I haven’t purchased anything from Amazon since 2016. Still, I have some tools I pull from their application store. At one time, Amazon offered a “free app of the day,” and I still have several of these, as well as some purchases, from Amazon’s system. Targeted towards Amazon Fire devices, anything purchased from their ecosystem is guaranteed to not be dependent on Google Services.

Essentials

• Mull - I had been using Firefox mobile previously, but Mozilla is no longer the privacy aware open source foundation it once was⁵⁶. On my desktop, I use the Firefox fork Librewolf. When I asked people online what I should consider on mobile, Mull was recommended by multiple people⁷.
• AdAway - Root privileged, DNS based ad blocking. I still use uBlock Origin in Mull, but having an extra layer of tracking prevention within the core operating system is always a benefit.
• FUTO Keyboard - I’ve avoided most voice-to-text services because I never liked the idea of my audio clip being sent to a remote server to be transcribed. FUTO does voice transcription directly on your phone. It has an F-Droid repository allowing for easy updates, and it supports glide typing. Previously I had used HeliBoard, which is available on F-Droid, but requires some additional steps and proprietary libraries for glide typing. I also have an old apk for Swype, the original glide typing app, which I had paid for on the Google Store a long time ago. Unfortunately, Swype finally stopped working with newer versions of Android.
• KDE Connect - You don’t need to use the KDE desktop environment to make use of KDE Connect. It works on multiple operating systems, and is packaged on most Linux distributions. It’s the ultimate tool set that allows you to share files, texts and media between your computers and an Android device, or even independently between multiple phones! Advanced features allow KDE Connect to be used as a remote keyboard or mouse input, useful for meetings and presentations. A great suite of tools with fine-grained plugins and permissions, allowing you to pick and choose the features you want.

Communication

• Cheogram - An XMPP client that’s a fork of Conversations, but with features specific to using jmp.chat as a sms/voice service
• Element - A Matrix chat client
• Molly - An open source re-implementation of the Signal client. Even though Signal might have ties to the CIA and intelligence sector⁸⁹¹⁰, it’s still the encrypted message app most normal people are likely to use. Unlike Signal, Molly can be updated via its own F-Droid repository¹¹, doesn’t require an apk download¹², and doesn’t have an annoying update process like the Signal app.

Tools

• DAVx⁵ - I use Radicale for self-hosting my calendar and contact. DAVx⁵ is an amazing open source tool for synchronizing this personal data onto Android devices.
• aCal - A closed source proprietary calendar I got for free on the Amazon store ages ago. It is still maintained and far better than the stock calendar app.
• Nova Launcher - The Trebuchet launcher that comes with Lineage is missing the very basic feature of adding screens to the left of the home screen. This feature was removed years ago¹³¹⁴. Open source alternatives like Lawnchair still lack a lot of features, and many launchers are not available in F-Droid. Unfortunately, I still have to pull the free version of the proprietary Nova Launcher from the Aurora store, as it’s the only one I’ve found that just does some of the simple things I like.

General Applications

• K-9 Mail - K-9 is still a great open source e-mail client that meets all of my needs. I know this is now part of Thunderbird/Mozilla, but I’m glad I can still install it from F-Droid with the K-9 Mail branding.
• Fossify Gallery - I couldn’t find Simple Gallery in F-Droid, and it turned out it was because Simple Gallery had acquired some non-open dependencies¹⁵. Fossify Gallery is a fork of Simple Gallery¹⁶ that works well and has all the original features I cared about.
• AntennaPod - I’ve been using this open source tool for podcasts and it’s only gotten better over the years. Bugs have been fixed, features have been added, and it’s easy to backup and restore all my subscriptions and listening data between devices.
• Music? - I had previously been using Vanilla Music Player. It works well, but I put out a call to see if there was anything better on F-Droid, and was recommended Auxio¹⁷. Auxio is fast and has a decent user interface, but song information over Bluetooth is delayed for some reason. Symphony is another tool that has fast song metadata updates, but doesn’t have as good a user interface. The players that do respect the random button from a Bluetooth device will shuffle the playlist, but none of them return to the original play order if you want to keep listening to the rest of the current album. Music players on Android are still not all that great. I’ll probably mess with all of these for a while until I decide which one is least bad.
• HERE We Go - Closed source map and navigation software that works without Google services. I normally just use the navigation built into my car, but if it can’t find a destination, HERE works fairly well.
• OSMAnd~ - An open source client for OpenStreetMap, OSMAnd~ is what I typically use when I’m hiking or off-roading.
• Peristyle - A great open source wallpaper manager that will randomly rotate through your folders of wallpapers for both desktop and lock screens.
• Breezy Weather - A really nice open weather app that includes home screen widgets and uses the Open-Metro weather API.

Slop

• SoundHound - A closed, proprietary application that helps identify music similar to Shazam. It has its own account system to keep track of tagged songs and doesn’t require Google Apps. Great if you want to identify a piece of music.
• Uber - I hate Uber and their business practices. In recent years, the only time I’ve needed to call a cab service is when I need to take a vehicle to a mechanic. In the past, I’ve used Lyft, but unfortunately, Lyft requires Google Services to even start up. Uber will complain it requires Google Services, but will still start. You do have to manually enter your pickup location, but other than that, it should work¹⁸. Hopefully, it will be a while before I have to test it.

Case

My old case had seen better days. Still, it’s held up for years. For the new phone, I found a case on eBay with artwork from an artist named Nene Thomas.

The camera I used here doesn’t really do the phone case justice. The artwork is really well printed. I’m not sure how long this print will last, but it’s nice having a piece of art on my phone case.

Final Thoughts on Mobile Computing

I will admit, my new device is quite snappy. The display looks nice, and this is the first phone I’ve owned that can use the inductive (wireless) charger that’s built into my truck. The camera is certainly my favorite feature, and I’m glad I have full access to the Sony controls without the stock operating system.

Still, I don’t use my phone for a lot, other than texts, music, photos and podcasts. It’s not uncommon for me to be at a party for several hours and reach into my pocket to show someone a photo, only to remember my phone is still in my car (or at home, or drained of battery). I think it’s one of the reasons I’ve avoided spending money on replacing a device that is slowly falling apart. I really hope the Sony 1 V lasts at least as long or longer than the phone it is replacing.