Firefox Focus is solving such a pain point for me. Browsing the web on mobile feels like 2002 desktop with all the flashing, scrolling, pop overs. It's a nightmare. The companies that rely on ads for revenue took the thing that made adblockers so commonplace and did it on mobile.

"anything on a unrooted mobile feels like 2002 desktop with all the flashing, scrolling, pop overs. It's a nightmare."

fixed it for you.

Stock rom without root was pretty decent for me. No ads at all. However, I only use free software apps mostly from F-Droid (and uBlock Origin takes care of the web). I knew that this was putting myself in a bubble, but I had not realized that the experience of using a phone for a lot of people must be that annoying. What a shame. Computers should serve humans, not the other way round!

I discovered Google Play's App Store on someone else's phone, that was painful and stressful. But what you are describing seems hellish.

I used to root the devices I got. Relying on CM supporting my device or totally breaking carrier updates got old though. I switched to Google Fi and am using a Nexus 6P (Android 8) and it's really nice.

I wanted to get a PCAP from an app a few nights ago, I was surprised it was possible without root. Now there are apps that can act as a VPN to sniff traffic. Having the most up to date firmware and Google Fi's international rates are worth giving up root to me.

It would be nice if they built in secure root access interface to Android though.

The main problem with rooting my phone is that a number of apps I use will stop working, including the de facto standard mobile payment app in my country.

If you rein in the notifications (ie. switch them all off), use Firefox with uBlock Origin (or Firefox Focus) and avoid using apps with obnoxious ads (or switch to the paid versions), Android as of 2017 is quite nice.

If you root your phone, you can modify the hosts file to blackhole any address you please. That will affect every part of the system that attempts to dial out to those addresses, including native apps.

On behalf of the Linux community, no need to thank us, you're welcome.

Adguard android app does full-device ad blocking including __native apps__ by setting up a local VPN. It's a proprietary app, and there are some open source alternatives such as MinMinGuard or DNS66, but the difference is that Adguard inserts their js into html, effectively running a browser extension.

iOS has a bunch of apps that do ad-blocking in the App store. It works well in Safari.

Mozilla Focus does this - you don't have to use the Focus browser, just enable it as a content blocker for Safari. Works great.