[OnePlus 7T Questions & Answers] abadasstanker69:
I wanted to GTFO Google and (ONE) single ROM has been developed for this phone on XDA without Gapps and it's not even maintained any more. I tried out Lineage with Micro G and I was pretty happy. I asked if anyone here would be interested in GrapheneOS and got no reply. I built it for myself and was happier with the spoofing in Lineage so I went back. But that brings me to the OP question...​

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I guess I just don't understand why anyone would build a custom ROM that allows Google to spy on you completely unchecked. I thought I must have been insane since literally nobody here seemed to agree. Then I found this write up......I immediately decided to post it. Not because I want to piss people off. Not because I'm unappreciative. But because WTF ARE WE DOING??​

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Why are we even running custom ROMS? Xposed came out and Google screwed us with SafetyNet. Then you had Substratum that got checked from Google but it's being "allowed" right now even though they tried to patch it out. Then Magisk comes and Google buys him out. This has always been a "cat vs mouse" game until recently. Now it's just a "cat vs customizable cat" game. Did we lose? Or is it that people would rather trade their privacy for convenience? The direction we are headed as a community is allowing Google to slowly close off and become Apple pt2 and nobody seems to mind much. But this is XDA! How will it exist without people caring about this?​

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Here is part of the write up that applies specifically to the OnePlus7T. Hopefully I'm not alone. Hopefully we can get this train back off the tracks where it belongs. Barreling through the unknown in defiance of these huge entities trying to control you. Link is at the bottom of the write up.​

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crDroid​

LineageOS-based custom ROM designed to increase performance and reliability over stock Android for your device while also attempting to bring many of the best features existing today, according to their intro & how I think its grammar should be.

Personal remarks: A very good heavyweight ROM (and the best Limbo ROM at the moment), burdened with a soydev website (at least there's no BlockAdBlock unlike Arrow) & lack of Vanilla/GApps enforcement in a way similar to Bootleggers - no Vanilla/GApps branding

Advantages:

Per-app data restriction (Pie, A10, A11)

Signature spoofing (A10 & A11: no toggle)

Inbuilt App Lock

Disadvantages:

No signature spoofing (Pie-only; forgiven & redacted starting with A10, 12/4/2020 build)

If you look at the official site, there's a screenshot that shows this feature, on a toggle. Should have been available at Settings > crDroid Settings > Miscellaneous; but it's not there.

Tested the 12/4/2020 build & found out that microG support is enabled without toggle. This anti-feature is redacted.

Poco X3(N) only (confirmed on 23/3/2021 build) - USB debugging enables itself on boot (redacted per 22/4/2021 7.5 build)

28/4/2021 Update : With inbuilt vendor on 22/4/2021 7.5 X3N build, USB debugging no longer self-enables on boot (it's enabled at 1st boot, but can be disabled without enabling itself on subsequent boots). Welp, guess it's like the F1's Pie era all over again, where most builds (especially userdebug ones) enable USB debugging on boot until developers starts to include vendor partition in their builds.

Poco F1 (A11) : No force encryption

No Vanilla/GApps enforcement, in addition to lack of Vanilla/GApps labeling

List of GApps-infested builds :

OnePlus 7T & 7T "Pro"

Not having an active TWRP development for a device does not excuse the maintainers for releasing GApps-only releases, unless they also make a Vanilla variant. And, since there is an active TWRP development, there shouldn't be any more reason to tolerate a lack of Vanilla build (other than the maintainer being too lazy / unwilling to develop a Vanilla build, in which case per should be replaced).

Poco F3 (switched to Vanilla builds as of 9/7/2021 builds, but still listed for reference)

Redmi K20 / Mi 9T (davinci) (Vanilla build available on GDrive, FWIW.)

OnePlus 9 "Pro"

When its non-"Pro" (the vanilla OnePlus 9) variant gets a Vanilla build (despite a lack of functional TWRP for either) there is no excuse to be lazy & provide GApps-only builds

Custom ROM List