Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about all kinds of questions you have about the smart things in your life. I’m Jerry, and I’ve spent most of my life around technology. I have a background in engineering and R&D, and I’ve been working with Android and Google for 15 years.
Ask Jerry
“Ask Jerry” is a column where we answer your burning Android/tech questions with the help of longtime Android Central editor Jerry Hildenbrand.
I’m also really good at researching data on all sorts of topics — that’s a big part of what we do here at Android Central — and I love helping people (another big part of our job!). If you have any questions about your tech, I’d love to talk about it.
Send me an email to [email protected]and I’ll try to clear things up. You can remain anonymous if you want, and we promise we won’t share anything we don’t report here.
I look forward to hearing from you!
Can I use an Android phone without a Google account?
Anonymous asks:
Can I use an Android phone without logging into a Google account? Will everything work?
Thanks
Hi Anonymous! This is a great question that I get asked from time to time because when you turn on a new (or new to you) phone, the first thing you see is a tech company asking you to sign in. Apple and Google do this, and if you bought a phone from a company like Samsung, you may also be asked to create or sign into an account.
The good news is that you don’t have to do any of this. But you might want to anyway.
I like to give a short answer at the beginning of an article for people who want quick information, so as mentioned above, no, you do not need to sign in to a Google account to use an Android phoneHowever, not everything will work as expected, including some really important features.
Of course, Google apps and services won’t work properly if you don’t have access to a Google Account. For example, Chrome may be fine for browsing the web, but you won’t have any syncing tools for accessing saved bookmarks or cross-device usage.
Other apps, like Google Calendar or Google’s Contacts app, don’t work at all because they rely on information stored in the cloud under a Google account. The main feature that doesn’t work properly is the Find a Lost Phone tool. You have to log in with the same account you used for the phone to “prove” you’re the actual owner. Without access, you can’t locate a lost or stolen phone – or, more importantly, lock it and wipe data.
The same goes for things like Samsung apps. You need a Samsung account to use them properly, just like you need a Microsoft or Apple account to use their services.
The good news is that the basics work just fine. You can use the phone to make calls and send texts, apps can be installed and used as long as they don’t require any of Google’s underlying services, and millions of people use such phones every day.
I wouldn’t recommend this to most people. I can understand if you don’t want to share your personal life with a faceless, giant tech company, but I suggest you read Google’s terms of service and learn about the privacy and data deletion tools available to you before making a decision.
Plus, it’s easy to create a “fake” Google account and manage it so that most of the data doesn’t actually contain anything about you.
