My experience with default apps

General
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I just want to give you a feedback about default apps that comes with IodéOS.

  • MicroG core apps: GmsCore, GsfProxy, FakeStore. - excellent, this save a ton of time by flashing it separately that mostly brings another problems
  • NLP backends for MicroG : DejaVuNLPBackend (default), MozillaNLPBackend, AppleNLPBackend, RadioCellsNLPBackend, NominatimNLPBackend - DejaVu has last update 3 years ago, RadioCells has update 4 years ago… are you updating those?
  • App stores : FDroid (with F-Droid Privileged Extension) and Aurora Store. - Why not Aurora Droid or other F-Droid fork? I really hate that f-droid don’t have option to backup repos and also UI is quite outdated nowadays.
  • Browser: our own fork of Firefox (with Qwant as default search engine, many other ones added, telemetry disabled, parts of telemetry code removed) instead of * * Lineage’s default browser Jelly. - what about change Jelly for Bromite? Also I personally prefer Mull over your fork.
  • SMS: QKSMS instead of Lineage’s default SMS app. - QKSMS will probably not get updates anymore reminder: the developer owes you nothing! · Issue #1885 · moezbhatti/qksms · GitHub - however until this app works, I’ll use it as default
  • Email: p≡p (Pretty Easy Privacy). - never used because I need activesync (email, calendar, contacts, notes)
  • Camera: our own fork of Open Camera, with a few tweaks. - what about FreeDcam? GitHub - KillerInk/FreeDcam: FreeDcam is a CameraApp for Android >4.0(ics) wich try to enable stuff that is forgotten by the manufacturs It has more options for video and also postprocessing.
  • Maps/navigation: Magic Earth GPS & Navigation (the only one free but not open source). - never used, in my country Mapy.cz is best what you can get for car, bicycle and walk navigation.
  • Keyboard: OpenBoard instead of AOSP keyboard. - why?
  • PDF: Pdf Viewer Plus. - it has very limited options about appearance of text
  • Personnal notes: Carnet. - I prefer Joplin
  • {Ad/Malware/Data leak}-blocker: iodé. - best app that Iodé brings
  • News: to keep users informed about our developments, as well as a FAQ. - never used it, but I should
  • Meteo: Geometric Weather. - that never worked for me because of OpenWeather API key - other weather providers are not reliable in my country

I regulary change:

2

Thanks for your feedback. This explains well why we have developed the preinstalled apps uninstallation feature :wink:
Default apps should not be considered as a definitive list of the best apps on the market, imposed to the user. It is in our view a set of reasonably good apps, often chosen for their simplicity in use, that can be a good starting point for all users. After a quick setup of the phone, you can do most of the basic things everyone do on their phone. Many users are satisfied with these apps, many others replace some of them by their preferred ones, it’s all up to you !

About NLP backends. DejaVu has effectively not been maintained since a long time, but still works perfectly. Its future is a bit uncertain, we’ll see. We included RadioCells to offer some alternatives, but I’m not sure it’s still relevant to keep it, I’m not sure a lot of people use it…

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