Department of Paranoia
How do I use my android phone effectively without google
http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/1...tively_without/ My current setup:
- Thrown out: Gmail. Google Contacts. Google Calendar. Dropbox too, because f*** the NSA snooping my data.
- Email at fastmail.fm. It's not free, but once in, you will wonder how you ever managed to survive the bloated monster gmail has become. You quickly realize gmail is slow and horrible.
- Email migration was done via imapcopy.pl following this guide.
- owncloud hosted on my own NAS. Provides me with Dropbox/Drive-like functionality and terrabytes of space, not to mention calendering and contact-management based on open standards. Only a webserver with PHP is required. MySQL-storage is recommended over SQLite if you plan to add clients all over the place.
- CardDAV Sync Beta to get my owncloud contacts on my phone.
- CalDAV Sync Beta to get my owncloud calendar on my phone.
- Tasks to get access to tasks from my calendar as well.
- ownCloud client because that just fits into the overall picture.
- MailDroid. Because it's the prettiest email-client out there. I prefer the Pro-version, because I don't like ads. K9 may be completely free, but it's dog ugly, especially on a modern HDPI device running a holo-themed OS.
Voila. I'm still on Android and enjoy the freedom that it offers, but I get to keep my data mine, and don't have to worry about Google creep. I get to decide what apps to use to access my data, because all components involved are based on open standards.
Now, if something better which is not Android comes along, I will be able to seamlessly try that out without waiting and hoping that Google will eventually "support" it. That's the power of taking ownership of your own data. It feels good!
TLDR: No need to jump from one closed ecosystem to another. It wont bring you any good.
Edit: This can also be integrated into desktop email-clients like Thunderbird through SOGO connector, both for contacts and calendering. It's not at all limited to Android.
Edit 2: Another benefit is that from your phone's point of view (not to mention other clients), things like calendar, contacts and email are now 100% completely separate sub-systems, which puts you at must greater liberty to mix and compose best-of-breed services as you see fit.