The comments keep mentioning Linux phones, have they managed to get Linux running on mobile hardware that I won’t have to go on an archaeological dig for?
I mean, there are Purism phones. Super expensive, but they keep selling out so I guess they are reasonable.
I have one, and while the actual hardware features are nice, the constant overheating and incredibly slow responses on the phone are reminiscent of a brick laptop from the early '00s. I am instead just running e/OS on an old pixel 4a (since it still has a headphone jack)
There’s this… https://commerce.jolla.com/products/jolla-phone-preorder
Also waiting for this! Would love to get TOH, but doesn’t look too promising currently.
It specifies the European market, not sure how well it’ll play with Canadian service providers. I’ll have to wait and see before dropping $1000 (before shipping) on it. VoLTE is pretty much required here and last I heard that was tricky for Linux phones
For now I have GrapheneOS on a Pixel 8 Pro, but I’ll keep an eye on this one to see if it’ll be compatible in Canada
F-droid will stop working I imagine?
Fairphone, here I come.
Yeah, I’m not buying any more Pixels. I got the Fairphone 6! It’s good! I’m in the US, so I got it from Clove. Works fine on T-Mobile.
Although, I’m currently running Android… Probably have to install e/OS or something.
I hope Fairphone can continue to grow to eventually meet Graphene’s hardware requirements.
You’ve got Framework laptops, who make repairable modular laptops. Seems great in theory but i haven’t got one to test.
Tickle those guys to get into phones too.
Anyways there are very few companies now who actually respect right to privacy, repair, etc. Treat their employees like humans and don’t shit on environment.
Well, Europe will fix this for sure.
I think it’s hilarious that the site recommends filing antitrust actions with the US Dept of Justice.
That office is currently amongst the most corrupt, compromised and against doing anything good in the US Govt.
I’m doing my part ! Mail send with help from fdroid.
TD;DR
(FOR EVERYONE)
Here is the petition that we all need to sign:
https://www.change.org/p/stop-google-from-limiting-apk-file-usage
(FOR DEVELOPERS or “DEVELOPERS” 😉 )
Here is the form that we need to fill:
(Please UPVOTE this so others can see!)
The tech companies are doing a great job at making me uninterested in the hottest new phones. I used to follow the news about them and know the tech specs and stuff, because I’m a nerd and gadgets are fun and smart phones in particular are the intersection of SO much technology and engineering. Moore’s law was alive and well during all my formative years, so I am even conditioned to expect the excitement.
But lately, not only have I been ignoring what the big players are offering, I have been ignoring the phone I already have! Instead I have a PC at the end of the couch with a monitor on an arm that s swings right over my lap.
I use my phone pretty much just for music, web browser, Voyager (Lemmy on the go), and occasional texting. When I am at home I will sometimes misplace my phone for hours and just not worry about it.
I have already pushed the megacorp phone + social media experience so far out of my daily life, that if future options for open linux phones are rough around the edges and don’t have tap to pay then oh well I don’t think I care.
It’s much easier to live without the shiny new thing once you see how well your brain does when separated from it. (and you have some loved ones who are still hopelessly addicted to the scroll)
Sometimes I use my phone so little that I only need to charge it every 2-3 days. Nearly everything that it does my PC can do better and not try to lock me in to a dozen different
monthlyweekly subscriptions.PCs are the best, especially the keyboard (I don’t like using a mouse), the shortcuts, and the terminal.
I just got a Pixel 9a and put GrapheneOS on it straight away . my battery with my current usage says 4 days hahah. my old phone was 1 day maybe. I loose my phone around the house , my friends know I don’t text back for awhile.
Twinsies 👭
I’ll be frank with you. As long as my customers are captive on either Apple or Google platforms I can’t do shit.
Dear terrorists, I don’t like your actions, but if you still exist and want to cause destruction and deaths, please, do it by attacking main offices of big corporations. That will be a tragedy for whole world. Thank you!
Terrorists tend to act across borders and so they are interested mostly in global corporations. If only there was one single building that housed all of them at the same time. Some buildings where they all engaged in trade around the world, centralized.
Then that would make your scheme easy.
you mean this place?
Has anyone tried a Murena (/e/os) phone?
I am thinking about it.
My next phone will be running /e/OS. Seems to be a suitable alternative for my needs.
This move doesn’t look like a co-incidence,first google acquires android ,then you now have to use your ‘‘google account’’ as user detail to signup for most services, Now they’re tip toeing towards This techno Lockdown kwowing full well how many pesrsons use Adroid phones…Who owns google Satan?
So then, in 194 days, Android will be an inferior version of iOS and you may as well just switch to Apple because their devices have a better security posture.
It’s mostly marketing honestly. They’re both total ass.
No, unless you use GrapheneOS, iOS is far more secure than Android.
FUCK no! Apple is dogshit locked down like crazy, so, fuck no, politely.
I don’t know if you’re being stupid or trolling, but that’s literally what’s going to happen to Android soon anyways.
No, because you can literally use an alt app store
“Install F-Droid ↗ on your Android device(s). The more people that use alternative app marketplaces, the harder it will be to shut them out”
Also, to data transfer anything, you’re locked to iTunes on a specific device, on Android I could sideload apps from my SD card if I wanted, move pictures or video, etc.
The link you posted literally has this banner at the top
F-Droid is under threat. Google is changing the way you install apps on your device. We need your help.
Reading is hard for some people lawl
Yes… It does… I copied straight from the article, and a way to combat the whole Dev reg thing was to… Install alt store!!! Whoa!
Presumably Android will still allow mounting the complete phone file system and the phones to have SD cards and headphone jacks. If we lose the ability to run whatever we want that majorly sucks, but still not as locked down as iphones.
At least I can get almost 10 years of updates on iOS.
Where they slow down your phone to try and force an upgrade? Let’s be real, how many people keep phones passed their 1-2 year upgrade cycle? I’m coming up on 4 years a my android, and outside of me dropping it in a pool it’s worked well! I’m finally ready to upgrade tho since it’s still funky ever since then.
I usually upgrade every 6 to 7 years.
Sorry to piss off all the Apple shills on here, but sounds like an opportunity to me. I think there’s enough of us that want something better and some traction with Graphene and some Linux options. This should be a spark to ignite some fires. I’m disappointed but unsurpised by this news, but also a little excited about the window of motivation and opportunity this opens.
traction with Graphene
What kind of traction? Is it missing something? Or do you just mean more developers behind it?
It’s missing a robust user base imo. More developers too.
Could you go over what Graphene is for phones? Is it easy to switch to an alternative to android?
Its a version of android OS that can be installed on Google Pixel phones. Its a relatively easy switch if you’re technically inclined, but the device needs to be carrier unlocked.
I’ll switch in a heartbeat if they support a nonGoogle phone
They’re working on it. Unfortunately most phones have poor security hardware, which is why its limited to Pixels at the moment.
If it’s just a fork of Android, doesn’t that mean 194 days from now they either need to branch off entirely and write their own code from here on out…
Or…
Never advance the base code?
No. As long as the base remains opensource (AOSP), they can remove the bad parts. Graphene has made numerous contributions to AOSP, I’m confident they can manage that. And if the user base growths, I hope their fundings will follow.
It would be a good thing for the world if AOSP was forked with big resources behind an open project with an open governance. But that needs lot of resources.
Neither is true, that’s not how forking works. But there is some truth to it in that it can start to become significantly more difficult to keep in sync as time goes on, depending on how obnoxious the security becomes and how many places they have to remove it.
Consider the trivially naive case where Google implements this feature in a single function: “function app_is_signed() -> bool” then the fork just adds “return true;” to the beginning of that function, and happily merges every other update Google makes from then on with zero issues. Even if the code for “app_is_signed” itself changes, nobody cares, because the first thing it does is return true and everything else Google ever tells it to check or do is ignored, the function can still be used everywhere throughout the code, it just no longer actually checks anything in Graphene, whereas it does check things in Google’s Android.
Of course the reality is much more complicated than that, but the principle is the same. It’s only a question of how obnoxious and difficult Google chooses to be about it. They could move the function around every update, or use many different functions, make a whole system out of it, make it do crazy cryptographic validations and checksums in various different places of the code, have watchdog tasks that are checking that the validation code is getting used. They could be really, really obnoxious about it, if they want to be, and they have more resources than the Graphene OS developers probably do to undo and keep undoing all these obstacles, so if they really want to devote that much time and energy to making Graphene’s position untenable, they can. But they could also be doing that now, and they’re not. Crackers have been fighting these sort of battles against copy-protected software for ages, it’s the same principles, and much of the same economic choices go into it. How much does Google want Graphene OS to go away? How much is it worth to them? It has to have a dollar value to them, and that dollar value might be significantly higher than they’re willing to bother with.
Worst case scenario where Google makes it extremely difficult going forward, what is the hard part about just never rebasing onto future work from Google?
From what I’ve seen there hasn’t been significant core work on Android for a long time. It’s been mostly changing from rounded corners to square corners to rounded corners, or shoving AI into every nook and cranny.
I’d think a small dev team like Graphene could maintain their AOSP fork moving forward.
I absolutely agree they can maintain an AOSP fork going forward, and I think that’s completely realistic and I would be surprised if that is not the case.
But I was answering OP from a strictly technical perspective about the potential difficulties they could, theoretically face while doing that. Since you asked what is the hard part, I’ll answer along those lines (again, with the caveat that I don’t think these are going to pose realistic obstacles for the GrapheneOS team in the near term) My point is not to say it’s impossible but I think it’s important for people to be aware that this approach comes with risks, and those risks will grow over time especially when you’re up against a non-cooperative upstream that is one of the largest and richest tech companies in the world.
For one thing you’re never going to support any new phones without either pulling driver support from AOSP or reverse-engineering the hardware and drivers yourselves, or accepting that some parts will just… not work. So you get stuck on older and less capable hardware. Maybe you don’t care about that too much, and that works fine for awhile, but eventually the cracks start to show. Now you have to either start figuring out how to get into the newer hardware, or you have to start getting custom newer hardware of your own, which is $$$.
Using closed hardware this way as leverage is a pretty common way of getting in the way of open source development, and Android hardware is very closed. Similar tactics are already even being used against x86 PCs now with things like TPM and Secure Boot. It doesn’t completely brick your system on day one of course, but the erosion of support begins when they start writing software that intentionally relies on these features to say “oh, sorry, this software you want to use? it won’t actually work on the open source OS/open source client because they don’t have access to this hardware… what a shame.” One or two pieces of software, no big deal. But they won’t stop there, eventually it’ll be like half the software, then over time it’ll become 90% of the software, you won’t be able to find alternatives. They can often afford to be more patient and relentless about this shit than we are. The battle will continue, and there’s no sure path to victory. Forking is one tool we have, and that’s great, but we also have to remember that it’s not a flawless, unstoppable long-term solution that we can play as a trump card whenever corporate interests do something bad. They don’t just give up. They have other means of getting their way.
It’s Android with all of the Google removed where possible and sandboxed where not. You can choose to install the Google Play services and use it like any other Android phone or use it without any Google software.
Some things won’t work, namely things like some banking applications and NFC payments, because they require on hardware attestation that Google will not allow Graphene to pass. Essentially everything that isn’t banking/payment related works exactly like any other Android phone.
It is just a secure phone (though you can still install Facebook on it if you want) that is designed around mitigating attacks that could violate your privacy and security.
Very easy to install, you just buy a Pixel directly from Google (don’t buy from the carriers, they’ll be locked). Enable OEM Unlocking in the Developer menu and then plug it into USB and you can install it directly from the Graphene site via WebUSB. It takes about 5-10 minutes, then your phone will reboot (It’ll give you a scary looking screen about not running a Google OS that you’ll see every time it reboots but it’s just informational, it doesn’t affect anything and the system will boot into GrapheneOS in a second or two).
The more complete instructions and WebUSB install process:
Why do banks need a hardware attestation, out of curiosity? I’d assume that banking apps are just clients so all that matters is if they have creds or not.
The banks don’t want their payment systems being accessed by devices that are compromised by malicious actors.
The attestation chain allows for Google to tell the apps ‘Yep, this system is running a known safe image that has been crytographically verified using the secure hardware on the device’. The apps will only allow their payment systems to be accessed (like, to send an NFC payment).
If you want technical details: https://developers.home.google.com/matter/primer/attestation
They don’t NEED it for NFC payments to work, this is a way of limiting attack vectors on their payment infrastructure (or, cynically, a way for Google to ensure that no competing OS can exist because people would rather give Google all of their privacy so they can pull a phone out of their pocket rather than a credit card.
What really bugs me about it: The first step from “how to ungoogle your phone” is “go, give money to Google” by buying their hardware.
It bugs me also.
My thinking is that the part of Google that I think is bad is their advertising and algorithmic recommendation systems which are built on private data that I no longer wish to divulge.
The Pixel is made by a company that used to be called HTC before they were consumed by Alphabet. That company produced good hardware that was smartly designed and innovative. That legacy continues with the device that Google has sells as the Pixel.
There are a few things about the phone that Alphabet has tainted, such as the inability to use NFC payments because hardware running GrapheneOS isn’t allowed into their secure hardware attestation chain. Not for any real technical reason, only because it allows Alphabet to disincentivize people away from a competitor by abusing their many monopoly powers.
GrapheneOS takes advantage of the excellently designed HTC hardware to create an operating system that is designed from the ground up to be secure. It then leverages the complete control over your hardware to put Alphabet’s other software inside of a little box where it constantly lies to the software in a way that lets your applications work without them actually being able to access everything on your device.
Yes, it is technically an Alphabet product and giving them money can feel distasteful. However, in this case by buying their hardware you can cut off their software, which is the actual thing that is negatively affecting everything.
I’d buy any other phone that fully supported GrapheneOS’s requirements for future devices.
Until then, I’m less worried about giving HTC money than I am about having a device that I know is under my control and that works to protect my privacy.
Buy refurbished. GOS support will be coming to a (yet unnamed) OEM.
Honestly, I’m worried. Current Linux options are expensive and or shitty. IDK if Sailfish is still a thing. I can’t use Apple. If I keep taking good care of my not-so-shitty Xiaomi phone, maybe I have a couple more years until I’m pwned.
PostmarketOS seems promising, though.
SailfishOS is still very much a thing and they have a brand new phone on the way. Since it hasn’t been released yet it’s hard to get into specifics, but early interest seems to point in a positive direction at least.
If you care about using third-party Android apps, I have good news for you, but grim news for the ecosystem. You will still be able to use third-party apps. But it’s going to be harder. You’ll probably need to use something like Shizuku or an ADB tool. The first wave of those affected won’t be you and me; it’ll be people who aren’t quite as technically competent. Then, slowly, a chilling effect will echo across independent development.
I look forward to LibrePhone coming online. I hope it comes soon …
“Librephone — Free Software Foundation — Working together for free software” https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/librephone
PostmarketOS is already in a good state for a secondary device, though I don’t think it can completely replace an Android phone just yet. Most devices still have some fundamental hardware support issues even on the more well supported phones (camera is the big one, call audio is also problematic on a lot of devices). However, as a pocketable Linux machine, it is wonderful. I got a second cheap SIM card so I can have data on my OnePlus 6 postmarketOS phone as there are a lot of tasks that work better on Linux than Android. I keep an Android daily driver but am trying to do less and less on it and more on the postmarketOS device.
They aren’t competitive with Android or iOS phones presently — don’t have the scale of userbase — but there’s only one way that that’s going to change, and that’s people starting to use them.
(“Linux” here as in “GNU/Linux”, as opposed to “the Linux kernel”, which Android phones also use.)
(“Linux” here as in “GNU/Linux”, as opposed to “the Linux kernel”, which Android phones also use.)
I feel compelled to point out that PostmarketOS, one of the popular Linux phone options is not, in fact GNU. It’s based on musl and BusyBox, not glibc and GNU utils.
carrying a laptop won’t help. If it helped, I won’t mind running a termux os via proot also. I dont mind if it isn’t optimised for small touchscreen yet.
right now most mobile payment options in my country only work with android/ios. My bank requires a phone for its device token (2fa).
The food and cab ordering platform is also exclusively on mobile only.
very sad
My bank requires a phone for its device token (2fa).
In most cases (at least in the US…I suppose that there might be places that require use of a state bank or something) one can pick their bank. None of the banks I bank with require this, and I have never installed a banking app (though I think that they all have an app as an option). One may need a phone of some sort to respond to a voice call or an SMS to validate oneself, but not an app. I believe that Bank of America has the most customers in the US, and they’ll even do YubiKeys via a browser.
The food and cab ordering platform is also exclusively on mobile only.
I think that GrubHub and Uber Eats are the most-common food delivery options where I am. It looks like both permit ordering from the Web (though I’ve never used their services).
Waymo, which in the US is, I think, the most-advanced robotaxi service (and probably currently the only really practical one where I am), does require an app, so I don’t know if there’s a good Web-based robotaxi option. Lyft looks to me like it requires use of an app. Uber looks like it permits Web-based ordering. I’ve never used anything but traditional cab companies (not that I especially object to the newer services, just never bothered to use them), and I’ve never run into one of those that requires an app — I just call up a human.
This isn’t to say that the same situation is true of where you are. But just pointing out that for many people, there are options…though it may require using an alternative service. Those services will be aware of how many people are ordering in what way, so if people are using different methods of ordering, that will cause them (and others) to tend to provide that route.
That’s generally true. Personally, I enjoy using a laptop way more than using a mobile device of any kind.
However, modern life is beginning to require mobile apps (Android or iOS). More and more things simply aren’t available as a website or FOSS. You have to have a vanilla mainstream mobile device to do certain things like using your bank account. I really hate that.
Hardware peripherals are another area that really sucks. If you want to enjoy the comforts of modern life, many people just bow down and use one of the two mobile platforms in order to use their smart ring/scale/lights/curtains/heating/car, etc.
Resisting all that is getting increasingly difficult, because there’s so much to resist. On the other hand, resisting is also becoming increasingly appealing as enshittification intensifies.
Really no point in having an android anymore, might as well as get the iphone
Sadly many won’t care, but for those that do it removes one of the key differentiators. Plus it’s kind of hard to trust a company that has had such a wild change in values - Apple have at least been consistent.
Tim Cook is a billionaire. I trust him no more than any other billionaire.
Lest anyone forgets, he’s put money into Trumps inauguration fund, and if I remember correctly, some other things as well.
I’ll keep grabbing refurbished, carrier unlocked androids from Backmarket, and load GrapheneOS on em.
BackMarket is the way to go. I won’t buy tech from anywhere else. No more money to big tech companies who only care about the bottom line no matter the cost.
Absolutely the way to go! I haven’t bought a new phone since 2015. When I can afford it, I’ll grab a laptop to replace my 7 year old HP envy.
Was there ever? If you’re gonna pay iPhone prices but get weaker hardware and they sell your personal data, why not just get an iPhone? Custom launcher? Better keyboard? Certainly valid reasons, but I just don’t see the value.
Way I see it, my iPhone is a pocket version of my Mac. A computer sold as an actual computer, not a vector to sweep up my personal data and sell it to the highest bidder.
Never got down with Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, or any of that shit. Yes, I know, I’m the weird one. And I’m okay with that.
Way I see it, my iPhone is a pocket version of my Mac.
The thing is, you can install software from whatever source you like on your Mac. That’s not true of your iPhone - even in the EU and Japan where they’ve been forced to open up a little, apps can only be installed with Apple’s permission.
Macs were completely open in that regard until recently. You could install apps from wherever you want. Now, Mac apps have to be notarized by Apple or installing them requires use of the command line. That’s obnoxious, but the user still has the final say, unlike the iPhone.
I love my Mac. I can install all kinds of cool software, as my Mac has been upgraded to only run Linux Mint.😉
“You can’t install whatever software you want” is a good argument, but I haven’t found anything I want to install on my iPhone that I can’t. At one point it was emulators, but Apple overturned that a few years ago. I have an emulator on my iPhone, and it’s one of the best (Delta; if you say RetroArch is better, I don’t disagree, but I could get that, too). But I almost never play it. That’s entirely my choice. My use case scenario doesn’t need me installing any apps that aren’t in the App Store.
Not that I don’t have a problem with the App Store. It’s mostly trash. They don’t highlight good apps, they highlight profitable apps, which means subscriptions. App Store is virtually 100% trash, and its recommendations are 100% trash.
I haven’t found anything I want to install on my iPhone that I can’t. At one point it was emulators
So you have found something you wanted to install on your iPhone that you couldn’t, but Apple has decided to allow it for now. I think it’s pretty obvious how this is a problem.
Of course you’re not going to find apps that exist that you can’t install because Apple says so. People won’t bother making them if they can only be distributed to the tiny handful of users with jailbroken devices. Of course it comes up on occasion when Apple withdraws permission, with ICEBlock being the recent socially important case.
I haven’t even used a custom keyboard or launcher since Pixels became a thing.
That’s what I’m thinking, been on pretty much straight Google since my Samsung Galaxy Nexus, moto g 2013 Google edition, then all pixels, but I’ve got / love my MacBook Pro and having an iPhone would probably complement that a bit.
From one semi-closed garden to a fully closed gaden? Might as well try Lineage or e/OS
gonna buy a couple pigeons and some thumb drives.
I don’t think you can plug a thumb drive into a pidgeon.
Haven’t tried with a custom for a while but I’ve heard good things about lineage
