After turning on the phone for the first time and going through the initial setup, where you'll select the language and other settings, you will be on the desktop.

There you’re greeted by a clock widget, as well as a panel at the bottom with pinned application icons.

Swipe to the side to switch desktops. When you press the volume button, a menu with sound adjustment opens. At the top of this menu, an icon shows the current sound and vibration settings, and at the bottom the arrow allows you to expand the menu and adjust the volume of different operating modes, such as alarm, volume, ringtones and talk volume.

A swipe from the bottom opens a menu with all installed applications.

Long-pressing an application icon brings up a menu with additional actions for that application, and if you long press the application icon and move it, you can place the application shortcut on the desktop.

When you click on an element on the main screen, you can open an additional menu or move the element, or remove a shortcut from the desktop. With a long press on an empty area of the screen you can open a menu in which you can change the wallpaper, add new widgets and change the home screen settings.

In the “Wallpaper and Style” section you can change the colors of the wallpaper, apply a dark theme, and change the desktop icons to thematic ones that will match the colors of the selected theme. There are also other appearance settings here.

In the “Widgets” section, you can select available application widgets, and by long pressing on the selected element, bring it to the desktop and place it in the desired area of the screen.

The Layout Lock feature allows you to lock changes to the position of icons on desktops.

The “Notification Icons” item allows you to give permission to the Desktop program to display “Notification Status” above application icons. When applications receive a notification, an indicator is shown on its icon. Go to the “Home Screen” item, then “Notification Icons”, a notification appears. Click "Change settings" and click on "Trebuchet". Activate the "Access to notifications" slider and allow access.

The Add App Icons to Home Screen feature adds icons for new apps to your screen after you install them.

The “Allow home screen to rotate” function will rotate the desktop horizontally when you rotate the phone if it is activated. The Hidden and Protected Apps feature allows you to set authentication when opening certain apps or hide selected apps and their widgets from the app menu. The Use Theme Icons in App Drawer feature lets you apply your theme settings to the icons in the app drawer. The “Show icon labels on the desktop” and “Show icon labels in the menu” functions let you show or hide the names of applications.

A swipe from the top opens the notification panel, and a second swipe from the top opens the switch panel. In this panel you can adjust the screen brightness or set this adjustment to automatic mode.

A little lower are shortcut icons for various phone functions.

There are separate switches responsible for “Access to the microphone and camera”; with these you can turn off the access to these functions for all applications.

By clicking on the pencil sign you can change the set of quick switches.

In the upper right corner, you’ll sometimes see a green dot. This notifies you that an application is currently using either the camera, microphone, or GPS. When you click on this, a pop-up notification will show the program that is currently using that permission. When you click this prompt again, you can go to the permission settings of this application. This is a useful feature for controlling privacy on your phone.

At the bottom of the notification panel there is a “gear” icon that brings you to the general settings for the phone. Here you can customize all the phone’s functions.

The settings for many parameters are intuitive, and we will only mention them so that you’ll understand where they are. Later in this guide we’ll discuss some of them in more detail.

The “Network and Internet” item allows you to manage your phone’s connectivity with the Wi-Fi and SIM card settings.

The “Mobile access point and modem” item allows you to distribute the Internet from a SIM card via WiFi or connect your phone in modem mode to a PC via a USB cable.
Airplane mode allows you to completely turn off all network interfaces.
Data Saver allows you to limit background traffic from certain applications.
There are also settings for “VPN” and “Private DNS server”.

The “Connected devices” item allows you to connect other devices to the phone via Bluetooth, and the NFC setting makes it possible to use contactless payments (you must install a payment program to use this feature).

The “Applications” item allows you to see a list of all installed applications and manage their permissions, as well as select the default applications that will be used on the phone.

The “Notifications” item allows you to manage notifications for individual applications, view notification history, and configure other settings related to notifications.

The “Battery” item helps control battery consumption and enable power saving mode , which will turn off some functions and applications to save battery.

The “Storage” item allows you to control files stored in the phone’s internal memory. The “Sound and vibration” item allows you to adjust the volume of notifications in different operating modes and change ringtones.

The “Screen” item allows you to adjust the brightness of the screen and turn on adaptive lighting, screen off time, and display notifications on the lock screen. You can also enable a dark theme, change the screen scale, text size and other settings. The default setting is to activate the screen in a horizontal position. To turn this off, turn off the "Activation in vertical position" item.

The “Wallpaper and Style” item allows you to change the colors of the wallpaper, apply a dark theme, and change the desktop icons to match the theme colors, along with other appearance settings.

The “Special Features” item contains additional accessibility options for people with poor vision or hearing.

The “Security” item allows you to change the settings for unlocking the device using a PIN code, fingerprint or pattern key.

The "Privacy" item contains settings for the Trust tool, and allows you to see which applications have recently used various permissions and manage application permissions.

The “Location” item allows you to enable/disable geopositioning technologies such as GPS, AGPS, and manage geolocation resolution for applications.

The “Security and Emergency” item allows you to fill in information for emergency services and set up emergency calls to the rescue service. The “Passwords and Accounts” item allows you to manage accounts in various applications.

The “System” item helps you configure your phone’s language settings, navigation keys, system profiles, status bar, and gesture controls. Here you’ll find the options for adjusting your time zone and managing backups. You can also set up multiple users, reset application settings, and return the phone to factory settings. This also is where you’ll find the MicroG module settings.

The “About device” item allows you to see various firmware and phone data, such as software versions and imei number.

Trust Interface is a set of Lineage OS tools that help you maintain device security and protect your privacy. It helps you keep key settings and permissions under control.

After you turn on your phone for the first time, you’ll have a Welcome notification from Trust in the notification panel. When you click on it, you’ll get some information about the Trust tool. Once you click “Got it” you’ll be notified that the assembly is signed with public keys. This message will appear every time you turn on the phone; to remove it, go to Trust and turn off “Assembly signature” at the very bottom.

To connect to Wi-Fi, open the switch panel and click on the “Internet” icon. Find your Wi-Fi network and enter the password. Once connected, you can enter the settings of the connected network and view various options. You can see that there is a “Random MAC address” item.

To activate this feature, you need to activate the “Developer Menu”. Go to your phone settings and select the “About device” menu item. At the bottom, click on the “Build number” item several times in a row until you receive a notification that you have become a developer. After that, go back to the main settings menu and go to the “System” item. You will have a new item there: “For Developers”, where the function of activating a random MAC address will be available.

This allows you to connect your phone to your computer. After connecting the USB cable to the computer, a connection notification appears in the phone's curtain. Click on the arrow on the side and expand the notification. Click on the arrow again to fully expand it and see the two notifications.

“Charging device via USB” lets you know the phone is connected and charging. If you click on it, a new menu with connection modes will appear. Select “File Transfer” to transfer various files between your computer and phone.

"USB Debugging Active" notifies you that debugging is enabled. To disable this feature, you need to activate the “Developer Menu” following the instructions from 4. Wi-Fi in this guide.

To transfer contacts from Android, go to the "Contacts" application on your old phone, open the menu, and find the "Import and Export contacts" item. Choose to export contacts to internal memory or to a file. The details may be slightly different depending on the specific phone and Android version.

After exporting your contacts to the internal memory of the phone, you will have a vCard file with the VCF extension. This file is usually saved in the root of the “Phone Internal Memory” directory. Copy this file from the old phone to the new one via the computer, open the “Files” file manager on the new phone, and find and open this file. Confirm the import of contacts. In a few seconds, they’ll all be available in the Mobi phone book.

If you need to transfer contacts from iPhone, you will need to go to http://iCloud.com in the “Contacts” tab. Select the desired contact from the contact list. If you need to export multiple contacts, press and hold Command (on a Mac) or Control key (on a Windows computer), and then click each contact you want to export.

Click the export key on the right, then select "Export vCard".

If you’ve selected multiple contacts, the Contacts app exports them all into one vCard. Save this file, copy it to Mobi and open this file as described above.

Mobi's philosophy is that every user has the right to customize the phone for themselves. There is a minimum set of installations that are pre-installed on the phone. These include the standard applications Gallery, Calendar, Calculator, Camera, Contacts, Music, Settings, Recorder, Phone application, File manager, Clock and SMS. There is also AudioFX for customizing your phone’s sound.

The additional programs that come pre-installed are Jelly Browser, the mail client K-9 Mail, the module MicroG, and the alternative app market APK Updater. We’ll discuss each of these below in this guide, and there are more detailed descriptions and guides on our website.

Jelly Browser is an excellent lightweight browser from the developers of Lineage OS that is open source and trackerless. When you open it, you are greeted by the start page with the Google search engine. However, you don't have to use Google search.

If you click on the 3 dots in the top right corner, you can open a menu and then go to the browser settings.

Here you can change the search engine and start page to something other than Google, such as DuckDuckGo. You can also set your home page to StartPage.com. Both of which don’t use trackers at all.

After saving the new settings, you can open a new tab and see those changes. If you enter a search query in the search field, the search will go through the StartPage search engine, and if you enter a search query in the address bar, DuckDuckGo will be used.

K-9 Mail is an open-source and tracker-free mail service aggregator application. You can add your existing email accounts in this app. You’ll simply need to specify your email login and password.

Note: some email services, such as http://Yandex.ru or http://Mail.ru, require the creation of a one-time password for applications to log in. To create a one-time password, open your email on the website, go to settings and create a one-time password to log in.

The distinctive features of K-9 Mail, in terms of protecting your data, are described in a separate description of this mail program on our website.

All applications on Android are installed through APK installation packages. This is just like downloading an installation package with the .EXE extension and then installing it on Windows, but for Android the installation package will have the .APK extension.

The Google Play marketplace is a directory of applications. When we click install for a desired application, Play downloads the APK installation package to the phone and installs it. Other app markets work the same way. But you can also find the installation package on the Internet and install it manually; it’s not at all difficult. More on this below.

Since Mobi does not have Google Frameworks, it therefore does not have the Google Play market. Instead, an alternative market, APK Updater, is installed. This open source market uses the repositories of Since Mobi does not have Google Frameworks, it therefore does not have the Google Play market. Instead, an alternative market, APK Updater, is installed.

This open source market uses the repositories of all major alternative markets and collects all available applications. This limits the speed of searching for new applications, but provides access to a huge collection of different programs.

When you launch it for the first time, you can immediately go to the settings and select your preferred application sources, such as GitHub, F-Droid, and Aptoide.

In the "Search" tab, enter the name of the program you want to install and you’ll be shown all installation packages that have this word in the name or description.

The search will return all options for the request from all available sources. The numbers at the bottom of the icon indicate the version of the application. The icon in the upper left corner indicates the source of the application, and clicking on the sign in the upper right corner will begin installing the application.

When installing for the first time, you need to give permission to install and click the installation icon of the desired application again. After downloading, allow the installation. In the "Applications" tab you can see a list of all installed programs.

The "Updates" tab contains a list of applications for which there are updates.

It’s important to consider the issue of security when installing applications.

Software developers usually distribute their applications through their official websites or GitHub first. Yes, almost every developer wants to place their application on the Google Play market and gain access to a large audience, but due to numerous requirements and Google policies, some applications are allowed in the Play marketplace only with limited functionality or are not allowed at all.

For example, Telegram for Android can be downloaded as an APK file directly from the official Telegram website. Unlike the Telegram version available in the Google Play marketplace, in the version on the official website, the developers bypassed some of the requirements that Google places on applications.

The official Telegram website says: “This version of Telegram for Android will be updated more often than the version from the Google Play catalog, and it has fewer restrictions.” Applications for Russian banks are also not available in the Play Market. These programs can always be found on the bank’s official website. Here is an example link to Sberbank.

Attention: Only download applications that work with your finances or personal data from official websites!

Application security and the Google Play market

The truth about security is that hackers aren’t interested in hacking and infecting an application located on some site on the Internet (even a well-visited one), since downloads of this application from the site are significantly fewer than downloads of the same application from the Play Market, where the number of visitors and downloads are simply huge. Therefore, despite Google's claims that the Play market is the most secure, there are those who want to find a security hole in Play Market.

Probably the safest application market is F-Droid. It contains only applications that are completely open source, without trackers and completely free functionality. This is monitored not by antivirus programs, but by cybersecurity specialists who manually check each application. But the downside of this market is that due to such requirements, there aren’t as many interesting applications in it.

We still recommend F-Droid as the first place to check when looking for an application.

As an example, let's try installing the Telegram application. To do this, go to the browser, type the name of the desired program in the search bar and add “APK” - this will indicate to the search engine that you are looking for an installation package for Android. One of the first results is the official Telegram website with the page you need. Go to the page and look for the download link. Download the installation package.

To install the application from the installation package, open the “Files” application and go to the “Downloads” folder. Here you’ll see the downloaded installation package. When you click on it, you’ll get a warning, and you can agree because you trust the site you got the installation package from. Confirm permission for installation, and the application will be installed.

The MicroG module is a non-identifying implementation of some proprietary Google Frameworks features. It is open source, does not transmit sensitive data, and also removes all identifying bits. This module helps to obtain the functions AGPS and FireBase, as well as launching applications that necessarily require Google Frameworks to run.

Enter the MicroG module settings in the application menu by clicking on the corresponding icon or going to “System” - “MicroG Settings” in the phone settings.

It is not necessary to add your Google account for the module to work! Go to “Register device in Google”. Select a device profile from those offered by the MicroG service, for example, Google Nexus. This way the link to Google will be sent as Google Nexus, not our phone's serial number. Next, activate the module using the “Register device” slider at the top. During this action, the phone is assigned an Android ID to work with Google servers. Android ID is an advertising identifier that Google uses to collect usage information. On Mobi you can change it at any time—more on that later.

The Cloud Messaging option activates the FireBase tool. This tool is responsible for receiving Push notifications when applications on the smartphone are in sleep mode. In general, receiving notifications is not a basic function of the Android OS, but a proprietary function from Google. (Although it is proprietary, we do not link it to either a Google account or the serial number of the device, and the Android ID can be changed.) On a phone, as a portable wearable device with limited battery power, apps don't work all the time. If you minimize the application, it turns off very quickly and therefore cannot receive any more notifications. To solve this issue there is a tool called FireBase that takes over receiving notifications when an app goes to sleep. Some applications, such as WhatsApp and Telegram, have their own FireBase and can receive notifications on their own in active mode, but still use Google's FireBase in sleep mode. And most applications do not have their own FireBase at all and rely entirely on Google's FireBase.

The Google SafetyNet is responsible for obtaining certification that the device is correctly protected and compatible with Android CTS. This certification is required for some programs that are closely related to the Google Frameworks. After activating this feature with the slider at the top, you must pass the ReCaptcha test. This item doesn’t have to be activated unless necessary.

Location helps the phone receive satellite location edits via the Internet. This helps you quickly find a location when geolocating.

We are all accustomed to finding our location very quickly when using navigation. But you need to understand that navigation uses two different technologies.

GPS technology is a direct connection with satellites. However, it takes about 30 minutes to find a location with GPS. In order for your phone to be able to calculate its location using satellite signals, it needs so-called “Location Edits”, and it takes a very long time to receive them via satellite channel. AGPS technology fixes this problem by receiving these edits from the Internet in seconds.

Android OS has its own servers for AGPS, but the edits there are not entirely accurate, and therefore, on “de-Googled” phones, navigation turns on quickly, but it picks up only a few satellites and does not work entirely accurately. The MicroG module allows you to connect to Google servers to get the most accurate satellite location corrections and get normal navigation. This is exactly what the Location item is responsible for. You do not transmit information about your location to the Google servers themselves, but only download “Location Edits” for satellites.

In the application menu, press and hold the MicroG icon until an additional menu appears.

In that menu, you can turn off the battery saving message when using “Cloud Messages” in the background by going to the “Battery consumption by applications” item and setting the mode to “Unlimited”. Then restart your phone to apply the settings.

To change the Android ID, go to “Storage and cache” in the menu and click “Clear storage”. This action will completely erase all MicroG settings. When you re-activate and configure MicroG, you will create another Android ID.