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Recommended Low Permissions Android Apps

Mark of Zorro

先輩
4 Oct 2012
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I guard my privacy zealously as many of you know.

For the past few months I have been slowly disabling and deleting privacy invading applications from the smart phone I bought in January and I have been replacing them with other apps that require no permissions or minimal permissions. This has been quite a chore, because there is so much utter junk out there. But I have gotten together some apps that are as good or better than what comes with the phone. Even if privacy is not your goal, you may find some great apps here.

F-Stop Media Gallery-- by Seelye Engineering - Photo and video management plus minor editing. This program is as good as its Google counterpart and if I remember correctly it only requires permission to accesses media files. It even comes with a world map. The free version comes with adds. But I paid a few hundred yen and that is gone.

Slim Flashlight -- from Slim Gears - Nice flashlight and easy to use. Very convenient. Its free, but I contributed.

Silent camera -- by Yagni - I think camera apps are finicky and some work better with different phones. This one works great for me and its nice to be able to take pictures without having everyone respond to your shutter click. For example, if I want to take a candid pic of my son and I don't want to interrupt his play or whatever.

Silent Video -- by Peace - I must have tried dozens and only this app worked on my phone silently. Others made noise or crashed. However, I did have to reboot after installation in order for it to be silent. Recording quality is good although the quality may seem bad as you are filming. Its not. Its just dumbed down for processing speed.

Unit converter -- by MobiTrendz - Damned handy. Especially as an American in the metric world!

InBrowser-- Excellent for guarding privacy. You cannot even make bookmarks. It erases all information and starts fresh with each use. That said, NO BOOKMARKS. So its a bit of a pain.

Full screen private browser / Privatebrowsing -- by Savy Soda - Another simple and private browser but does allow bookmarks to be created.

Reminder Pro --by sreekanthreddy KURRI - The lack of calendar and alarm features on this supposedly "smart" phone has been driving me bananas! And downloadable schedulers etc all seem to require massive permissions. So I have been getting by with simple calenders and a monthly alarm app. But what I really needed was a yearly alarm to remember birthdays and such. This app does the trick. Just found it today. I did have to pay about 100 yen for it. But I would have paid 1000 at this point. It think there is also a free version. Its very simple and easy to use.

Alarm clock/personal assistant --by EANovate, LLC - I found this just before Reminder Pro and would have use it if only I could disable the voice alarm and replace it with a sound alarm. For each reminder a female voice says the time plus whatever message you punch in. And she WILL say whatever message you want! Its pretty funny actually. Its a bit complicated to use though.
 
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A Simple Calendar/ R Calendar-- by Ryota - A basic calendar with Japanese holidays and you can select to have all the holidays in English.

日本のカレンダー (Japan calendar) -- by CrossFact - Japanese only. Lists holidays and even the daily Buddhist designations and also the phases of the moon! You can write in your own reminders but you cannot see them unless you tap on the day. Not much use. That combined with the fact of no alarms either makes that feature useless IMHO. Still, nice as a simple calendar. I think it requires media permissions though.
 
I'm surprised you didn't include AdBlock. Lessens the load on bandwidth, memory, screen space, and blocks tracking scripts. Supposedly it even blocks ads in certain apps outside of the browser.

If your device is rooted, you may want to check out XPrivacy. Rather than having to look for alternative apps that request less permissions, this lets you use any app and block requests to things you disapprove of. Any time an app attempts to perform a potentially privacy-invading action for the first time, a popup appears where you can choose whether to grant access or not. When you don't, the request is either denied (e.g. SD card access, internet), or "satisfied" with fake information (e.g. device ID, Google advertising ID, GPS coordinates). This gives you very fine-grained control over the things that each app may and may not do.

And yes, it comes with a full Japanese UI translation.
 
I searched, but no one knows how to root my phone type. Many people have this problem. In fact, I believe pretty much all new phones have this problem. My understanding is there has been a massive corporate movement to stop rooting.
 
That's too bad :). Rootability was a criterium when choosing my current phone; in the end I got a Motorola since they provide an official way of doing it. There's an online procedure where they give you a key for unlocking the bootloader, after which you can freely root the current OS or install a different OS. No third-party exploits required that may or may not continue working after the next software update.

In return, the phone displays a warning that the warranty is void every time it's rebooted, but that's only fair.
 
Do you mean AdBlock from BetaFish Inc.? The trouble with that is I would need to use Google Chrome, Firefox, Opera or Safari. Those all require a boatload of permissions. As per the OP, I ain't got time fo dat! I would rather have the ads!
 
Adblock is not only available as a plugin for certain browsers, but also as a standalone application that installs a local proxy. You set your internet connection to use that proxy, and from then on any apps that connect to the internet will go through it and get filtered.
 
I should've been more specific: I meant Adblock Plus, by a company called Eyeo. Either way, BetaFish's AdBlock does not appear to be available for mobile devices, only desktops.
 
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