- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmit.online
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmit.online
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I’m on the fence with getting a new phone. Should I buy something now, like a Pixel 10 or Fairphone 6 and flash Graphene/eOs on it, or wait for next gen which might have these restrictions?
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)
Call your representativesHire a lobbyist to donate millions of dollars to election campaigns for your representatives
We need alternatives to big tech. They’re reigning in and locking everything they can down, and the states are loving them for it as it solidifies their ability to control us.
They’re kind of already is. It’s the free and open source community.
The problem is phones are actually incredibly impressive pieces of hardware and the fact that we can Mass produce them has diluted that opinion. I’m actually to look into building my own phone and I wanted to have at least some near-flagship specs. I know how to design my own circuit boards and get someone to print them. But acquiring CPUs that perform at least 1/4 as well as Pixels or iPhones is objectively not possible, these companies have deals with manufacturers for exclusive products. And even if you could these chips are so precise you will never be able to figure out the signaling yourself.
Maybe things have gotten better now that we have ai and you don’t need to be any sort of expert in anything you just need to be good enough at decision making problem solving and communicating to acquire the skills and knowledge to work on these chips. And by the time you’ve done all the work and acquired all the hardware you might have spent close to 3 to 5K on a device you could have just bought for $800. All for what, to circumvent privacy breaches that should be illegal in the first place?
And that’s the root problem we’re trying to solve. Another symptom of these companies being able to engage in the bad behavior that they do is that they gain the ability to overvalue themselves. There should be no safety or privacy concern when engaging in the purchase of any device for the same reason that people should not fear food poisoning every time they go to the grocery store.
That’s what the regulators are for. This is a legal issue not a technical one.
But the only underlying cause for why we’re not regulating tech companies is because fear of privacy violations is not reducing market activity. Apparently people are still going to use their phones even if their phones are listening to them having private conversations. Apparently people will still buy shit off of their phones even if their phones are going to use that data to show them ads.
Apparently the harm of your privacy being breached does not hurt enough to prevent you from doing good things.
Now if Android takes away my F-Droid, Tasker and Termux I’m gonna throw a fit. That’s not privacy that’s self-determination, I bought an Android because I can customize it to be as low friction for me as I need, if my phone starts giving me friction then we’re going to have problems.
Europe is slowly working on that. Ironically, Trump’s policies were kind of a blessing to Europe, because it forced politicians to finally start working towards strengthening the independence of the region.
What we need is a good linux phone that is affordable, has hardware that isn’t slow, and isn’t over sold to an annual pre-order.
Sadly, if the first two are true, the third one becomes an issue.
What we need is a large company to see that is a sign of huge pent-up demand. Apparently, HP and Dell are both talking about switching to Linux as their default OS for desktops. Once all the desktop manufacturers find themselves in the business of selling hardware with Linux on it, either mobile manufacturers will copy, like Samsung, or the desktop folks decide to make their product smaller.
What everyone has wanted from the beginning was a desktop in their pocket. The amount of time that no one has produced that despite major demand, and the amount of development that has gone into building any other stack, just feels like willful suppression at this point.
Is there some government somewhere telling large-scale manufacturers that they can’t build something as free and open as a desktop that isn’t at least the size of a laptop? Because it actually takes less technology to make something that’s open than something that is closed. And there is just as much appeal for the consumer to not restrict them.
What we need is a good linux phone that is affordable, has hardware that isn’t slow, and isn’t over sold to an annual pre-order.
That’s not enough, sadly. That phone must support, at the very least, all the national ID and banking software. And that bit might be tricky.
This always gets brought up, and is the chicken-and-egg problem, but only sort of.
Supporting software designed for different platforms is not the phone’s responsibility. It should be the government and bank developers’ responsibility to build software for platforms their citizens and customers use.
Android and Apple do not jump through hoops to run Windows desktop software, for example, and the notion is kind of absurd to begin with. Yet this argument is used for Linux smartphones all the time.
Some of this also applies to people without phone / with dumbphone.
It’s a kind of “yes, but actually no” situation.
Way back when, smartphones were a relatively new thing. Nobody gave a crap, so building a new OS that had similar capabilities to the competition was easy. We had a bunch of those over the years.
However, every new OS means new architecture, every architecture means developers having to take it into account when building apps.
Eventually, the smartphone market essentially defaulted to Android and iOS - long gone are Windows Phone, Blackberry OS, and a dozen others.
They didn’t die off because they somehow had to - they died off because they couldn’t keep up with feature parity with Android and iOS.
Nowadays, everything is being made for these two OSes. And by “everything” I mean things that are actually crucial to people - banking apps, ID apps, train ticket apps, parking lot apps - things that they either cannot replace with “not in a smartphone” solution, or can, but it would force them to juggle cards and papers.
Any new OS coming in must take that into account. If Linux comes to mobile phones but can’t run national ID apps or banking apps, it will have a market share of maybe 1% - the hardcore fans, and the “technological preppers” who are always anonymous, always off-grid - and that’s that. No users further users will switch, and because no users switch, no developers will take it seriously enough to make their apps work on it.
Windows Phone is a great example of this. At its height it had around 20% of the European market share. And what happened? Snapchat (massive at the time) and Google actively worked to undermine and destroy it, because they knew that - in the long run - it’ll be cheaper than having to hire a third group of developers. With 3rd party alternative apps being constantly blocked, the OS eventually went down to sub 5% in its biggest market, and sub 1% in the US, and Microsoft finally pulled the plug.
An OS coming in without critical app support won’t ever get to even 1% of market share in any region larger than “local Linux fanclub”.
Android apps do solve a lot of UI problems a that are unique to the phone interface. If only Linux could run APKs. Oh wait, it can. Linux can run anything.
Those who have the expertise should start contributing and working more on Linux for mobile. Postmarket has made great progress it just needs more manpower
What kind of roles do they have for people who don’t know how to code? I’ve considered helping translate things before, but my languages are among the most popular, so it’s almost always already translated.
You should checkout their contibuting guide. There are many ways to contribute as non programmer.
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!
If this happens, I guess it’s Linux Phone time for me… I’m pretty certain GrapheneOS will be able to get around this abuse of power for a while, but it wouldn’t take much effort from Google to kill them too ; they almost already have…
Or maybe dumb phone time ? But I like browsing Wikipedia and playing chess and RetroArch on my phone, I don’t want to lose that just because big G$ said so…
The new requirements will “only” apply for “certified” Android devices. I’m pretty sure, devices running a custom ROM aren’t certified, especially if you don’t even have Google Services installed. Nevertheless, I’m looking forward to a bright future for Linux phones.
Fwiw, just because a dumb phone doesn’t give you access to “smart” features doesn’t mean the capabilities aren’t present on the phone. It’s just a matter of what could be hidden on the circuit board (lots can be hidden in chips), and what can be hidden in usual expected traffic (if bandwidth requirements are low, even timing of packets could be used to encode hidden data that would never show up in any logs).
Plus the simple tracking of cellphones is necessary for them to function at all.
I wonder if there is a dumb phone with tethering currently. Cause if you don’t mind carrying 2 devices, that may be viable for your use case
If you just need a mobile data connection there’s alot of sim based wifi routers
Good point!
The new Jolla phone can’t come soon enough. I truly believe the future of tech independence lies with linux, for us, europeans. Anyone welcome ofc.
I do hope it’ll be a good enough device, even if there will be no NFC phone payments possible.
You can still use a dump phone. You can play and browse Wikipedia on a Steam Deck which has WiFi. If you are outsid, you can use a Mifi device of a USB LTE/5G dongle for the SteamDeck.
Steam decks are expensive and relatively bulky when compared to a phone. I don’t think it’s really a practical solution for most of us.
/e/os
Do you really think that will survive ? It’s next on the chopping block with GrapheneOS if they keep going this way.
VPNs will be forbidden, age will be verified.
Coincidence that all are gaining traction?
Remember to contribute to postmarketOS!
I’ll be frank with you. As long as my customers are captive on either Apple or Google platforms I can’t do shit.
Linux phones look more and more attractive
Couldn’t agree more Especially when the Pine Phone Pro is improving every year since its has came out and with Posh shell and Waydroid nothing will stop Linux from succeeding in the modern era
sadly
The PinePhone Pro was officially discontinued in August 2025, as it didn’t sell well enough to keep production going.[7]
Aw shucks now that’s something you don’t see often on the internet
So what can I buy now?
I’ve been following this for a while.
You have two main branches to follow
Bare‑metal (native Linux kernel + native drivers) pros:
- True Linux kernel
- Long‑term maintainability
- No Android blobs in userspace
- Cleaner architecture
cons:
- Driver support is the biggest pain point
-
- Modems, cameras, GPUs, sensors often require reverse‑engineering
- Power management is worse
- Hardware acceleration may be incomplete
- Fewer devices are viable
You can put this on an old pine phone, or a pixel 3 or a fairephone 4/5 You can buy a preconfigured puresim librem 5 Battery life is pretty rough. You can find lots of youtubes recounting their attempts at daily driving both PostmarketOS, Puresim and UBPorts on bare metal
Halium‑based (Linux userspace on top of Android hardware abstraction)
pros:
- Excellent hardware support (camera, modem, GPU, sensors)
- Better battery life
- Runs on many more devices
- More stable than bare‑metal
cons:
- Controversial in the community
- Relies on Android blobs
- Not “pure Linux”
- Kernel is usually Android‑based, not mainline
- Long‑term maintainability depends on Android vendor support
You can buy preworking models from Volla or you can put it on a Fury Phone there are a number of options for used phones if you want to install it yousel.
IMO, If you want a daily driver with working cameras and good battery life, Halium is usually the practical choice.
You also have to beware of usage in some places, looks like most of the carriers in Australia will refsue to active VoiceOverLTE even though the phones support it.
My tears, maybe I can afford to eat today.
Graphene OS
As far as I know, it is still reliant on the whims of Google through shenanigans with AOSP, and of course having to use a Pixel.
Linux offers a more solid and independent foundation, and while it is less polished yet, to me it’s the only real way out in the long run.
Still, GrapheneOS is a big step in the right direction - hope it wouldn’t come across as me being against the project.
They’ve signed with an OEM (still secret atm, but the best guess seems to be Motorola?) who will produce the first flagship GrapheneOS device sometime this or next year iirc. Supposed to be revealing the manufacturer next month. That’ll at least take some of the Google dependency by having to use Pixels.
Motorola
Oh hello.
Yep, heard a bit about it. Didn’t include here because it’s still a big WIP.
Yup, if enough people switch to graphene big G will fuck them over. Exiting entirely is the only long term solution.
No, linux
Fuck you Google. I won’t do further updates on my Pixel and the moment I run into an issue I’ll move operating systems or phones if required. Half my apps don’t come from Google Play and I don’t want the developers to have to register with Google for anything.
is there a way to ACTUALLY disable them? I’ve attempted to change every option I can find (pixel 7 pro) and it just downloads them anyway. I’d love to try graphene but I am a fucking moron and I will 100% end up bricking my phone if I attempt to install it.
Grapheneos has a wonderful how to install procedure. I did it with a Linux Debian machine. It took several tries to get the bootloader right, part of that was I didn’t know what I was looking for. Once your phone has the red triangle in the bootloader of the phone, the installer should recognize it, and the installer was awesome from there.
still hard to commit to it when it’s the only phone I have to use. maybe I can grab a cheap older pixel to test drive it on or something, I think pixel is up to 10? now but 7pro should hopefully last me 3-4 more years if I treat it right, as long as I don’t fuck it up
I’ve found some cheaper pixels on e-bay, bought mine there.
no you won’t … its so easy to install.
Not that I know of. I was just going to not install them.
Actually I hear Graphene installation on a Pixel is nearly unbrickable and has a nice user friendly website.
I watched a video of it and was reminded of the old Limera1n/Blackrain/etc IOS jailbreak days. There was one where you just went to a website and swiped to jailbreak then your idevice rebooted and you were jailbroken.
put grapheneOS on it …
That will be the go to. I’m just procrastinating the migration.
Is GraphenOS tenable to use as a daily driver?
Yes.
Is grapheneos available on anything but Google pixel phones?
No, just buy one used on ebay.
I heard that they’re working on that, but currently only Pixel.
Sadly, no. Your best bet is Lineage without gapps. Aurora and F-Droid covers pretty much everything I use, so that’s likely my move in the near future.
I have found it good
Are you pretty much able to do everything you need? I don’t even love using my phone but when I use it its kind of critical. Things like maps while driving. Does that work alright?
I am. You can install Google Play services in a sandbox. One of my banking apps works the other does not, but I prefer to do that over web on a desktop anyway. Otherwise I get pretty much everything off of f-droid.
Absolutely.
so much yes. I just got mine a few days ago and I love it so much.
Absolutely. You won’t be able to use tap to pay, and the Google Wallet app doesn’t open for me. Certain banking and finance apps might require some additional compatibility settings to be enabled. Otherwise it’s been an extremely smooth experience for me.
Cool. Currently I try to use Mobile Pay for everything, but the privacy is more important for me. I’m on IOS right but I’m tired of Apple and hate Google’s privacy policies. So I’ll def get a refurbished Pixel and try out Graphene. Thanks!
What does this mean for GrapheneOS and similar degoogled android versions?
Nothing changes for now but other moves by Google clearly show they are trying to kill 3rd party ROMs by locking down Android’s code. In my opinion, unless EU steps in and mandates phone manufacturers and Google to support google free apps we’re fucked.
EU wants phones to be locked down so they can then make Google implement mass surveillance for “national security” reasons
What are you basing this on? If you say “Chat Control” I will just ignore you.
Chat control is an issue tbough why ignore it?
Chat Control is not implementing mass surveillance and has nothing to do with national security. I that’s their only argument they are confused and there’s nothing to talk about. If they have other arguments I would like to hear them.
It likely is not their only grievance as other things exist like porn blocking, ID implementations and VPN discussions.
Also chat control is reviewing private conversations. It is a provacy breach. There is no circumstance where this is not abusable. Here are some truths to how the law is presented:
1: nothing can be seen, only if certain pre registered files are recognised 2: politicians, military and associated personnel are exempted.
Meaning it can see more than nothing or else it is acceptable for these people to possess these materials.
It is also able to controlled a granular level person to person.
Porn blocking? In EU? I heard about it only in UK. Which EU countries block porn?
ID implementation… yes, all EU countries have ID. Many have digital IDs. What’s with it?
VPN discussion isn’t really proof of anything. Even Chat Control 2.0 isn’t approved yet, it’s just a project. VPN blocking is not even a proposal. It just someone mentioned in some report. Hardly a reason to claim that EU is becoming a surveillance state.
You live under a rock my friend.
Look at history. Look at the anology of how a frog will not jump out of boiling water if the temperature is slowly increased.
They are slowly increasing the temperature, and chat control is a big step for them. If you cannot see that then there is no hope for you
Repeating some scary conspiracy theories you read about online doesn’t make you informed. It makes you naive.
The EU has no interest in allowing privacy on devices, since it is increasingly attempting to control alternative narratives. We’re in touching distance of the Fourth Reich now.
Europe has explicitly no problem with this. They showed they have the power to censor Russian media but refuse to do this with European far-right, they just want the local fascists to win.
This describes the EU, in a nutshell https://theuaob.substack.com/p/the-comprador-calculus-why-europes The fascists have already won.
Even the premise is too generous:
Why would the leaders of the EU—a project ostensibly built on peace and sovereignty—
How on Earth is the literal cradle of Fascism and colonialism built on peace and sovereignty? The EU is built on neoliberalism and anticommunism, it cannot be built on peace or sovereignty.
Remember that the EU arose in part from the institutions set up to deter the same type of nationalist fascism rising again, such as the ECSC. Sadly, we may have encouraged Russian -funded American -spread international fascism in its place, although they don’t seem to control the EU yet.
Fascism is not even Russian funded or American spread, Europe is perfectly capable of growing its own fascism as we saw 100 years ago, sadly we’re going down the same road.
Removed by mod
Criticizing European colonialist roots makes me an asset? Welp, guess I should instead join the massive far-right crowds in Spain chanting that Muslims should be expelled and that Spain brought culture and technology to its colonies in America
Would not be sure about that. There has been steps in opposite directions in the past. Remember the regulation regarding 3. party app Stores on IOS, or even further back in the past the “Free Brwoser Choice” in MS-Windows.
It is surely called competition law?
I’m dumb But using grapheneos How would them locking down the code affect graphene?
Graphen is based on AOSP - Android Open Source Project. As the name implies, that’s the part of Android that’s Open Source. Google publishes this code, Graphene OS people modify it and release. All bugfixes, security fixes and new features go there. Google first stopped accepting contributions from other devs and now they are limiting how often will they release AOSP and how often will they publish security fixes. This makes development of Graphene OS more difficult and it looks like Google’s ultimate goal is to make Android closed source. Graphene OS doesn’t have the resources to develop Android by themselves so this would probably kill the project.
Some apps require google play, like android auto and maps.
I’m using grapheneos with open street maps, so I don’t think there would be any problem with that. There is a work around to load some apps that require google play with out a google account. I’m guessing that is what would be affected.
While it does not affect them directly, it is unlikely most app developers will give significant effort to only support a small percentage of Android users running custom ROMs. So while GrapheneOS users will be able to install apps, there will likely not be that many apps to install.
Edit: What I mean is that most applications will have to choose to either agree to google terms and identify themselves, or develop only for custom ROMs, or stop developing altogether. And I don’t think many will choose the 2nd option. Also, 1st option may not be available if google does not like your app.
The european movement away from american stuff however is increasing, I’m hopeful that Jolla, Fairphone and the ROM world will actually increase in importance and numbers
It’s the other way around. GrapheneOS users will be able to install all the apps but stock Android users will not be able to install apps from F-Droid and other alternative sources*. F-Droid will lose access to about 99% of the market.
*Technically it will still be possible for open source devs to distribute apps to stock Android users but it will require handing Google your personal information and setting up way more complicated build configuration.
Please see the edit with clarification, since I guess I wrote it poorly and multiple commenters did not get my point.
Yeah, uh, no alarm bells in the market watchdogs? None at all?
I’m writing this on a GOS Pixel tablet with only free/libre installation sources. There are quite enough applications to install.
Please see edit of my comment. Since it seems my point did not get across, I elaborated. Of course there are plenty right now since there are no barriers yet.
GrapheneOS is not limited by Google, as long as the bootloader is unlockable and Google contnues releasing the sources. Longterm, the GOS project needs to support alternative hardware platforms.
There are Linux tablets, so if Android is dead open source developers will support these.
I think the problem is your second assumption of “will continue releasing sources” is the one to fail.
Hence, a new OEM.
The OEM makes the hardware tho. How does that help if Google stops releasing the Android source code?
It means they fork and they’re going to need funding to keep up with security work at least.
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.
Pixels are the best phones to buy since you can install GrapheneOS…
Yeah… But Google and US Big Tech have too much power and are making the world shitty for everyone. I’d like to contribute my grain of sand to someone else.
Unless it’s carrier locked.
I’ve a pixel 7a, and cannot install graphine without calling T-Mobile and convincing them to unlock it for me. Sure, I got OEM permissions, but I’m blocked at the next step.
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.
