The phone I have now is half way paid off… I will say it. It is a Samsung S23. I didn’t want it. It is just my other phone literally died from a single drop of water! I won’t get into the details. But I want grapheneOS or the most private OS I can.
Right now I have been carrying my phone less than before. I used to take it even to grocery store trips, but I am just getting sick of the endless monitoring, even if I am a terminally online person. I literally cannot leave my apartment without being on camera since my landlord has all the corridors and exits/entrances on 24/7 surveillance.
I know that a phone can be tracked even when on a private OS. And the EU’s rules on wanting a copy of every single message sent out from all messaging apps (including signal) will still affect non-EU people, too. It fucking sucks.
Well. They will try anyway.
The Android ecosystem has been feeling more like an invasive chaotic advertisement machine the past few years. The play store is a cesspool, the weather app switch was poorly executed, Google Podcasts went to the graveyard, and Google pay getting shut down meant I had to switch back to vomits Venmo.
I still have Android gaming handhelds, but why wouldn’t I just get an iPhone the next time I go to replace my phone? I can’t believe I’m even saying that after being so die hard Android so for years.
why wouldn’t I just get an iPhone
Jumping from the frying pan straight into the fire.
Yeah that’s what I’m thinking too. Android’s only advantage over the Apple ecosystem is being able to install apps. If that goes away there’s no reason for me to stay.
They also managed to remove a feature from the fucking clock app. It’s not much, but seriously, it’s like a headless chicken running toward a cliff from the business end.
Google pay is being shut down?
Seems like Curve pay could be an alternative
Google Pay is different in America, right? To me it’s just contactless.
uh, not sure, I’m in Europe as well
I was thinking about NFC payments, yea
Fuck Google
I hope they fail.
Google says it’s no different than checking IDs at the airport.
Fucker, if I own the airport, own the planes in the airport, am the only person using my own planes in my own airport, then nobody is asking for my ID.
Our phone, our software choice.
Fucker, if I own the airport, own the planes in the airport, am the only person using my own planes in my own airport, then nobody is asking for my ID.
Okay, but what if Google owns the airport, the planes, and thinks it’s entitled to own the people flying on them, to boot?
Our phone, our software choice.
There it is, haha.
Gave me a good chuckle as i’m with you here.
I have a similar sentiment when it comes to ads, my device, i pay for the internet and the device is inside my home. I’ll decide if you get to show me ads.
But what if you owned nothing and were happy about it?
so no modded apps, no emulation, no unauthorised chat apps. hopefully some root mod will make this irrelevant.
Nice timing for chat control!
Lets build a Raspi phone
I am toying with the idea of creating a PDA of sort from a raspberry pie, touchscreen and a powerbank. Case can be 3d printed, it would be bulky af and equipped with Tails or some other secure OS.
Why not just get a PinePhone?
Or FairPhone??
Because they are cool and build phones from scratch
Got it, you want a project more than a finished product. I can respect that. :)
Well, sort of…
Two things especially worth noting from the article.
If you have a non-Google build of Android on your phone, none of this applies.
This means that at least GrapheneOS will be unaffected for now. Other ROMs without gapps will be unaffected only as long as you don’t install gapps. Since Graphene has a sandbox for them, I’m assuming it’ll be fine. That is, unless Google decides to lock the bootloader entirely.
In September 2026, Google plans to launch this feature in Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand. The next step is still hazy, but Google is targeting 2027 to expand the verification requirements globally.
So most users worldwide still have at least 1.5 years until it’s implemented. Plenty of time to get a Pixel and install Graphene on it. Or to figure out some other plan.
Don’t get me wrong - this is insane, unreasonable and horrible news for everyone. We should push back as hard as physically possible against it. However, at the very least we still have some time to figure things out before the policy rolls out.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Google stop allowing BL unlocking soon… Following Samsung and Xiaomi (although Xiaomi technically can be unlocked, in reality you’ll not be able to do so nowadays unless you pay someone to do it via remote USB shit for you)
I’m getting Huawei
Consider a Volla Phone with UBPorts.
UBPorts can also be installed on Fairphone.
Literally just as bad lol
Yes. Would be a protest buy.
I would spend more money and get Chinese os to just not fund Google.The way I see it this is the last drop in the bucket for android openness anyways.
Fair enough- at least you’re not under any illusions that they’re less restrictive and scummy.
EU: How often do I have to teach you, old man?
EU is moving full steam ahead toward the end of “private” computers and mandatory state surveillance on your devices. They’ll be delighted with that. The funky “hey, we’re consumer friendly” times are over.
EU: Thank you Google for complying with the DSA.
This is a a huge part of it, the whole “prevent illegal” parts.
- “easier reporting of illegal content”
- “less exposure to illegal content”
- “level-playing field against providers of illegal content”
The EU isn’t going to punish them for this, they will hold this up as the golden standard.
The EU waltz.
One step forward.
One step to the left.
Two steps to the right.
Three steps back.Repeat.
Inside the EU’s chest there are two wolves.
The Cyber Resilience Act may also have something to do with this.
Just as they did with Apple when they forced them to allow sideloading? So yeah, the EU will push massively against this if its implemented there.
You mean when they forced Apple to implement the “trusted trader” scheme.
No, i mean when they forced apple to open their IOS system to side loading custom, unverified apps.
Here, have a read:
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/117767
The trusted trader scheme only applies if you want to distribute your app via the official apple iOS app store.
Where does it say that Google is blocking all side loading?
It says they are blocking the installing of unsigned apps. This is the macOS Gatekeeper being the only option on Android. You can still download and install apps that aren’t in the Play Store. So the EU will still love this as 3rd party apps can still exist, but at the same time anything “illegal” can be reported to them immediately.
It’s effectively becoming the gate keeper in the same way apple only allowing app installs through its app store only is a gate keeper.
Ok this needs harsh pushback, because phones are affordable, computers are not. There needs to be a massive project dealing with making phones platform agnostic.
Have you shopped for those items recently? You have 200 buck computers and 2000 buck phones.
Also I live in a 3rd-world country
My current phone, a Pixel 7a, cost me around 350€ (let’s say it’s roughly the same in $). There is definitely cheaper options. And most of these options will give you a decent phone.
A $200 computer will bring you to basic office stuff and playing facebook games.
Yep but also 200 buck phones.
Where are all the open source phone OSes? Where are the OS agnostic capable hardware phones? Technically some do exist, but I don’t think they have any significant market share. Hope I’m wrong though.
They are in the same room with all the third-party support for them, ESPECIALLY from state-built applications that are increasingly being required to do administration stuff and mandatory banking apps that are required for online payment and even opening their websites these days.
That room does not exist.
Google slowly suffocated all the 3rd party rom vendors.
Essentially every browser that’s not Firefox or Safari is reskinned Google chrome for a reason. Because it’s insanely expensive to build and maintain browsers. Mobile operating systems aren’t much different in this regard.
That’s not exactly true. There are several FOSS mobile OSes, such as PostmarketOS, Mobian, Ubuntu Touch, and the various Android ROMs. Once it’s compatible, keeping that OS updated is relatively simple.
The issues with mobile OSes are:
- many phones lock their bootloadersl, and every phone mfg seems to do things a little differently
- so many different phone models with different hardware includes, none of which has manufacturer support in Linux
- closed firmware for cell modems, which have their own little OS that needs to work with the main OS; trying to touch this runs into regulatory issues
Basically, supporting a new phone has a lot of upfront work with very little ongoing work.
Web browsers, on the other hand, need to stay updated with constantly shifting web standards, they’re a huge malware target so they need to keep up on CVEs, and pages are getting more complex causing performance and rendering issues, and everyone blames the browser. Supporting a new platform is generally trivial, but the ongoing work is immense.
They’re very different beasts.
I will pay hard cash money for some devs to bring postmarketos to quality hardware vendors.
I’m all for buying a pinephone, but man are we missing out on the full potential from some genuinely good OEM hardware stuff like razr flip.
Aside from google doing google things, android has been a bloated java pos toy OS for nearly a decade now. It completely wastes the full potential of superior hardware by running everything on a shitty JVM known as the ART that was designed for when devices had <512mb of RAM. A Nintendo 3DS can do better multi process tasking than modern android which regularly kills app threads for no reason other than to screw with you because you dared to switch to a different app for 5 seconds.
Android was supposed to be the big apple killer because of its closeness to a desktop OS with heavy emphasis on widespread features and functionality. Even technically speaking, rooting got you there if you wanted to run whatever straight on the linux environment or swap kernels.
Its nothing but a ripoff iOS clone now. Android 7/8 was probably the peak of development and usability, and even back then people were complaining it didn’t have groundbreaking improvements like 6 or lollipop.
I don’t think that it’s the lack of quality hardware what is stopping adoption of Linux on phones. There are many resons why I don’t consider someting like PostmarketOS viable as a daily driver for most.
First of all some apps are just not available on Linux. Banking apps are a prime example. Most banks are now requiring some form of app where I live and they don’t even consider Linux. But that’s also another problem in it self.
Secondly: driver support. Drivers aren’t something one thinks about when talking about phones. But they are needed and mobile phones being what they are, most manufacturers aren’t really open to do anything in that regard.
As an Android developer I’m also annoyed by the restrictive power management of Android. But it’s there for a reason. On PostmarketOS my phone would be dead after sitting around all day doing noting. On Android I can maybe squeeze two to three days of use out of the same phone. And that’s not even with the OEM rom.
That being said, I hope for a future were all of the current issues can be solved and we finally have a viable alternative to Apple and Google.
To be clear, I’m in no way trying to defend what Google is doing.
I honestly don’t care about apps. I switched to GrapheneOS and opted to not use Google Play Services, so my app selection is very limited, especially for things like banking apps. It turns out I can just use the website for the vast majority of them, and I can fill in the gaps with FDroid apps.
The main things stopping me from using a Linux phone (eg PostmarketOS) are:
- MMS compatibility - I use this a lot with family, and getting everyone on Signal or something isn’t going to happen
- battery efficiency - the best I’ve heard is 8 hours with light use, and there are still issues receiving notifications in standby mode
- hardware quality issues and drivers - every phone supported by PostmarketOS either has a bunch of unsupported hardware (ie no camera support), or the hardware is poor (ie the PinePhone has crappy audio)
I don’t need a flagship with top tier driver support, I just need basic phone things to work. I’m even okay with poor camera quality, provided I can take pictures of things and clearly read the text later. I don’t need much in terms of app support, and I’m willing to help port things I need. But my phone needs to work as a phone, and it needs to do so all day without needing to charge until night.
Yeah, I tried to use it as my daily driver a while back and what bugged me most was the terrible battery efficiency. Running the full desktop version of Firefox certainly didn’t help. At that point the camera also didn’t have any drivers. Since theres been some progress and we now have a work in progress driver for that model. Frankly it’s amazing that this works at all and I’m incredibly grateful for anyone working on this.
I’ve actually been rather lucky and managed to convince most of my friends to join me on Signal so we barely need to rely on SMS anymore. But last time I checked there weren’t any real Signal clients availabe for Linux phones. Of course, one could always use the desktop version but that still requires a phone to be linked to. Someone has managed to get the Matrix/Signal bridge working and rely on Matrix for the final delivery but that seems like too much tinkering for me :D
Don’t get me wrong, I think the work that’s been done is amazing, my point is that it’s still not daily driver ready. I want to help out, I just don’t have the time anymore with a full-time job and kids. If it was daily drive-able, I could probably spare a few hours here and there to improve things (port apps, track down bugs, etc).
I hope it gets there before I need a new phone. Last year I switched to a Pixel 8 for GrapheneOS and cut out most of my Google Play apps, so I should be good for a few years, but I’d very much like to ditch Android entirely next time.
For now, I got my SO to use Signal, but that’s it.
The only way to log into my bank on the website is to use the phone two factor authentication app, which only works with Google Play Services… 💩
I’m considering getting a dedicated login device which can sit on my desk all day doing nothing else.
Which 2FA app is that? I use Aegis (replaces Google Authenticator, available on FDroid) and Symantec VIP (from Google Play, but via Aurora and runs w/o Google Play Services). Is it something different?
Most of them don’t support generic 2FA codes and sadly require some sort of proprietary app that talks to their servers. Setting them up usually also requires some sort of identification; think receiving a pin in the post. As far as I can tell, the only other option for me is to rent some sort of pin generation terminal from the bank which is, of course, ridiculously expensive.
FYI: Apple got sued for blocking other app stores. This would prevent f-droid from being installable
f-droid would be verified right?
It’d be up to Google to do so, and they probably will just as an example of them totally not being a monopoly “look we even allowed a competing store”.
If you have the ability to, don’t use a smartphone. You’ll be better off and you don’t have to care about stuff like this anymore.
I wish I had… Got me a VoLTE capable feature phone and tried but it’s insanely difficult to get people to understand that you’re only available on call or SMS now (+no MMS here) lol
For real, when this thing rolls out, I’m going to stop updating and try to still use my foss apps for as long as they still work, once my phone eventually becomes useless I’m not going to spend 400 on an expensive phone just so I can run custom roms. I will have to just get used to not having a computer in my pocket all the time again.
