cross-posted from: https://jlai.lu/post/24787719
Starting next year, Google will begin to verify the identities of developers distributing their apps on Android devices, not just those who distribute via the Play Store.
I made fun of the Liberux Nexx before due to its outdated cpu being promoted as new but this is making me change my mind. Speed isn’t worth the walled garden. I have concerns about the battery life but all it takes to remedy that is a powerbank. Banking apps might be a problem but if I find their websites wanting I can just use them on an old cheap android.
It is disappointing that the Liberux Nexx missed its fundraising goal and had to open a new one. And the new one is only 10% of the way there, with no prototype and delivery on next summer. That’s cutting it very close with the timeline of these restrictions. https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/liberux-nexx--3#/
BTW, the Google
blog postwebpage has a link to a feedback form. Doubt it will do anything, but if you want an abyss to yell that’s good as any: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfN3UQeNspQsZCO2ITkdzMxv81rJDEGGjO-UIDDY28Rz_GEVA/viewformSo I guess my next phone will be a Chinese phone. Even if it spies on me, I’ll have the freedom to install whatever I want from anywhere.
The Chinese have a golden window of opportunity. Let’s hope they don’t mess this up.
We’ve read that Apple was doing this for a while, but Google is joining in.
Apparently they’re doing it to comply with the EU’s Digital Services Act. But they’re doing it in the USA too.
I’m probably going to spam this around a bit, since most people don’t seem to know about it, but a reminder that FuriLabs has a (GNU+)Linux phone with decent spec.s and the ability to run Android app.s (from what I’ve heard) pretty decently: https://furilabs.com/
Biggest drawback is it’s based on Halium. Usual growing pains of a new product/company apply but apparently the company is pretty responsive and their dev.s have worked with customers to get things like calling working with the carrier and bands of their country where it hasn’t worked before so improvements move pretty quickly.
Collection of different experiences I’ve variously seen online over the last year or so:
- https://clehaxze.tw/gemlog/2025/07-20-flx1-actually-usable-linux-phone.gmi
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41839326
- https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1fa1ljn/furilabs_flx1/
- https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1j46f2w/flx1_linux_phone_display_out/
- https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/03/furiphone_flx1/
I don’t own one, myself, so I can’t give any personal experience but I’ve seen it around for a few years now but most people don’t seem to even know about it. Maybe there’s a reason for that? But none I’ve ever seen anyone say.
Why does every interesting / unique phone have to be phablet sized. ;(
With a microSD slot and a 3.5mm jack, too. I’m just gonna go ahead and save this
While I won’t tell people exactly what to search, I can guarantee that I can find malware first try on Google Play. Google Play Integrity is just as dodgy.
When a preventative measure very obviously won’t solve the stated problem, that may not be what it’s really there to solve. This is another of Google’s anti-open-source moves designed to bring all Android devices entirely under their control and surveillance. It goes along with their bringinh all Android development in house and making it harder for third parties to make their own custom versions of Android (Graphene OS etc.). It also seems a little odd that this happens right when several countries are introducing requirements that users supply ID to visit websites.
It is like the whole world becomes a psychopathic dictatorship overnight.
yup, they are closing in. i wonder why the surveillance wing of the fascist regime wants to control everyone’s digital life that more tightly.
you guys may have the power to protest this before it goes worldwide. i wonder if there will be real pushback.
I mean, some of us did when GrapheneOS and folks started to bootlick goolag for their walled garden in pro of security as well as the economical breach they did not cover (Pixels are not available to everynyan) and even incentivated.
Yet here we are again.
It is unlikely that there will be a real resistance, the majority will resign themselves like submissive cattle and only a few will try to fight to the end, I have already seen this in history.
Yawn. Guess more people will just have to not install gapps…
one of those things that’s good in theory but i have no trust in google handling it.
Let Google know what you think about this: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfN3UQeNspQsZCO2ITkdzMxv81rJDEGGjO-UIDDY28Rz_GEVA/viewform
Love it!
ELI5 if this will affect the use of F-Droid?
If you have the stock OS from the manufacturer, it will affect you. If you flash a custom ROM, it won’t.
Edit: You can still use F-Droid regardless of which android you’re running, but if you run stock you can only install the apps that have developers registered with google.
I hope there will be at least some bypass using ADB like with older apps.
The bypass is to just not install gspps…
Time to fund /e/OS GraoheneOS etc but also bridges like Waydroid until we can use e.g. PmOS and avoid Android altogether.
Time to fund /e/OS GraoheneOS
no.
those are just android with some modification. two years from now google can easily disrupt them too.
phones need a copyleft new OS. not a foss one, an actual copyleft one. with an independent group managing it.
an OS that a company can decide what app I can run on it is just a surveillance apparatus gadget.
google never wanted user to have control of their phone even 10 years ago.
the easiest way to check this is to see if you can stop an installed app to ever do stuff without you explicitly opening it. they are so many “triggers” that apps can register and run based on them that user cant do anything about them. “wifi connected” “wifi disconnected” and so on.
if an app can “listen” to these triggers and I cant disable it from listening to them (even for non-system apps) them I don’t really own my phone. then android is just a attention stealing spam machine at best and spying and terror gadget for world’s supremacist regimes too.
I think even apple iOS has that option (disabling backgournd refresh per app ) and in that regard is better than android. If I wasn’t against non-foss software and I didn’t live in Iran, at this point apple iOS is not that different fro google and is more polished too.
Sure I’d support that, is there such a project or starting one? If not what’s the closest?
Is sad that PinePhone are inaccesible in a lot of places. They dont send where I live because they use DHL (shitty service which charges 34 euros to send from the capital city to where I live because is “remote area” despite is the city in the airport and is nearer than the capital city) and the pricing was 1.5 times the price of the product so they cancelled the option (as well as they dont know the different custom that may exist in special zones in the same country).
This is why you use a proxy service. Also more secure against interdiction attacks.
Those proxy services usually do not target custom stores (Banango and Guanxe Prime).
Also, it leaves you unprotected if something is bad with the goods, as the return parcel ticket targets the initial destination.
ProxySto.re
Anonshop.appYou definitely can buy from custom stores. Just send them the URL and the Monero.
They dont send to my place :3
The second one has the same problems I mentioned in a post before and in the service to send anywhere, 600 USD is prohibitive.
The provided (Pine64) could just use a different shipping company for those cases, such as Seur which is more reilable and fair than DHL. Yet they hold themselves in that.
My blood glucose monitor is not on the play store. So one dy next year I’ll wake up and no longer be able to get that data…?
Sorry, your survival is incompatible with this version of Android.
You are probably half-joking, but… yeah.
I fucking hate this timeline. Actually, scratch that, that is way to placid and abstract.
I hate the assholes in charge. Fuck all of them. Luigi did nothing wrong.
Yeah sorry, I feel you. Things like these make me really cynical.
Fühl ich, Bruder.
The terrible risk that you install apps which don’t use google-tagmanager, googleanalytics and don’t send logging and user data to Alphabet.
Won’t someone think of the
childrenshareholders
It might just be time to kick that “smartphone” addiction and just use burner phones.
Aside from Signal messenger, I feel like I could go back to having a casio watch, some sort of GPS in my vehicle, and a dumb phone. My phone is ancient and hasn’t gotten a security update in years, I was thinking of going Graphene next but maybe the solution is to just dump it and go full 1990s again.
Maps and encrypted messengers.
