Hehe, I’ve never NOT used a custom rom since, …well the last Nokia with Symbian-OS.
My first Android phone had CyanogenMod available. With tons of extra features, back in the day the camera would get better, you’d get an equalizer for the headphones, some privacy features like remove permissions from apps, revoke their access to contacts, and extra menu options. It stayed like that for a while. Then we got the times manufacturers dropped updates within 2 years but my phones lasted me 4… So I made sure to always pick something with a good chance of LineageOS support. In order not to constantly throw phones in the bin and buy new ones. They also added tons of crapware to my friends’ phones, while mine were without any bloat… That eventually got removable, they added a somewhat proper permission system to stock Android… I had to rock a ZTE phone with the stock operating system for a while because it took the community quite a while to get LineageOS run smoothly. But that’s mainly it. After that I had two Pixel phones. I made sure to try the Google experience for a day each, without any private data on them. Then flashed GrapheneOS. Can’t complain. It’s stupid easy to install it these days. And while you won’t get a bazillion extra features like back in the day, I think it’s still worth it. Main feature is not to be 100% dependant on one big tech company and continuously send all data to their servers.
Hehe, I’ve never NOT used a custom rom since, …well the last Nokia with Symbian-OS.
My first Android phone had CyanogenMod available. With tons of extra features, back in the day the camera would get better, you’d get an equalizer for the headphones, some privacy features like remove permissions from apps, revoke their access to contacts, and extra menu options. It stayed like that for a while. Then we got the times manufacturers dropped updates within 2 years but my phones lasted me 4… So I made sure to always pick something with a good chance of LineageOS support. In order not to constantly throw phones in the bin and buy new ones. They also added tons of crapware to my friends’ phones, while mine were without any bloat… That eventually got removable, they added a somewhat proper permission system to stock Android… I had to rock a ZTE phone with the stock operating system for a while because it took the community quite a while to get LineageOS run smoothly. But that’s mainly it. After that I had two Pixel phones. I made sure to try the Google experience for a day each, without any private data on them. Then flashed GrapheneOS. Can’t complain. It’s stupid easy to install it these days. And while you won’t get a bazillion extra features like back in the day, I think it’s still worth it. Main feature is not to be 100% dependant on one big tech company and continuously send all data to their servers.