Both were minor annoyances for me at first lol, thankfully the widget button can be removed (Settings, Home Screen, Edit button - toggle off)

The favorites box is an interesting one, I was originally puzzled with it being empty until I started opening and pinning apps. Now settled on using it as an overflow for my home screen, where 5 of the most used are shown under the clock (with music permanently pinned), and the rest sit in the favorites box.

I did notice some stutter on the apps menu which only occurs while the keyboard is open, but goes away completely when the keyboard disappears. For others it seems like the entire app drawer is stuttery (noticed a long discussion on GitHub with some potential solutions: https://github.com/MM2-0/Kvaesitso/issues/257 )

Admiral Ads: We value your privacy
Me: Reject All
Admiral Ads: Some parties cannot be rejected due to LeGiTiMaTe InTeReStS
Me: my legitimate interests are PiHole and uBO then 🙃

Really like this!

Only one additional thing that came to mind - get a phone with lots of storage! My two previous Android devices died as a result of EMMC failure, and they had a pretty small onboard capacity (16GB, and 32GB)… my current device is 64GB and I now keep most of my data on a 512GB sd card.

Lots of empty storage space allows the EMMC firmware to perform wear levelling as needed, prolonging the life of this non-replaceable component. Most well-designed Android devices also run a “TRIM” on the internal EMMC storage when the device is idle, a kind of self-maintenance procedure that allows the firmware to keep track of how much space is unoccupied.

For Android users who are curious about the details (or have rooted devices and want to run a trim manually) see here

Sadly doesn’t work for gov level blocks that look at the SNI rather than blocking at DNS level

Edit: correction from ESNI to SNI

All the alternatives work great for cycling, driving etc… but collapse instantly when you try and use them for public transport