Worked for most things, the maps and location part was most dodgy though. Uber was almost impossible to use and Grindr stopped working. Other than that, things like G/FCM worked perfectly.
> Uber [..] Grindr
Can I just comment how contradictory this is? I understand "privacy" means different things to people, but when used like this it's diluted to an arbitrary buzzword. What I mean is:
Grindr Shares Personal Information With Third-Parties: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16735956
Uber pulls U-turn on controversial tracking of users after trip has ended: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/29/uber-u-tu...
Uber has user route history, payment history, etc, and law enforcement is readily utilizing this data, e.g. in the recent Jussie Smollet fiasco, in cases. Even if you're not worried about that, Uber had a massive data breach, which they were investigated for and fined.
Since then, Google has lost my trust, and now I'd like to restrict their access to my data.
Does anyone have any idea why this is? Are the open source location provider backends just not as robust as Google's?
That said, I've actually (anecdotally, I guess) seen an improvement in the speed with which my device can locate me with LineageOS + microG. I've been using Unified NLP with the GSM location backend that you can find on F-Droid. Not sure how well this would work out if I, say, road tripped through an area without cell service - not sure if it uses ANY carrier's tower it can find (that your baseband supports) or just your carrier's towers. Waze finds me much faster on launch, though.
https://location.services.mozilla.com/
https://github.com/microg/IchnaeaNlpBackend
If you want to improve the data quality in your area, you can use the Mozilla Stumbler:
https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=org.mozilla.mozs...
Firefox for Android also lets you opt in to help improve Mozilla Location Services whenever Firefox makes a location request. This is equivalent to using the Stumbler app (and you should check its battery/RAM usage to make sure this setting is acceptable for you):
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/improve-mozilla-locatio...