And in one fell swoop, Google just took a baseball bat to its own kneecaps.
Because people have so many other options…
Google says it’s no different than checking IDs at the airport.
You’re not a fucking airport, Google!
i dont need to show id to fly domestic…
Ah, but Google is never flying domestic. They sell your data internationally.
Also we bought and own the fucking plane! Don’t tell us where we can fly to!
Bettler. We bought the airport. Google was paid to pave the runway and maintain it for a couple years after. And now they try to dictate that only planes they approve may start and land.
While stealing and selling all the data from the passengers.
Let Google know what you think: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfN3UQeNspQsZCO2ITkdzMxv81rJDEGGjO-UIDDY28Rz_GEVA/viewform
they will just ignore it.
Not touching that website with a 10’ pole, spyware confirmed.
It’s the official feedback form from https://developer.android.com/developer-verification
You didn’t confirm anything.
Last time I check google is willing to log every keystroke you make on their sites, doesn’t matter if it’s YouTube.com, Gmail.com or Android.com if google owns and controls the content its spyware.
A fair point, but you misrepresented the nature of the link all the same.
I thought the EU said that Google and apple have to permit other app stores? If that is the case they’d have to allow side loading in effect.
As long as the developer of the app store undergoes registration
So Android is pointless now?
No, really. If I’m gonna be dragged kicking and screaming into the walled garden, why would I go with Google’s joke of an ecosystem instead of much nicer and better integrated Apple garden?I might as well start carrying one of those weird branded ultra-tiny laptops from AliExpress and some used, older iPhone for the 2 apps I need. Fuck it.
i have a feeling that google largely gave up on making a decent phone for a while, all they want is your data, plus to put thier AI into everything to offset the cost of using AI.
To be fair, they never cared about making a decent phone. They have always just wanted your data. They are a marketing company and you are the product up for sale.
that was pretty much clear years ago, when they moved onto to thier inhouse chips.
If you’re technical enough to sideload Android apps, you’re probably technical enough to install Graphene too.
Even I was able to get GrapheneOS running on my old Pixel >.>
If you have a compatible phone. As long as the allow those compatible phones to be made.
If google is gonna ban sideloading, surely they will lock their bootloaders first.
I see it this way.
Google wants everyone using gapps to be identified but isn’t outright saying you can’t use Android without certification.
“Google says that only apps with verified identities will be installable on certified Android devices, which is virtually every Android-based device—if it has Google services on it, it’s a certified device”
So LOS and Graphene may get off the hook on this and be able to install whatever non-google apps they need. By default, neither have google services.
Sucks for the gapps people, but, I mean. They knew it was coming, right?
But the point is, manufacturers will comply because otherwise their phones won’t sell.
Looks to me like they’ve been complying for 20 years or so. No real change needed on their part.
Leaving in the bootloader unlock gives people who want to retain sideloading a place to retreat to that google still ultimately controls. Which is more appealing to a sociopathic corporation than cutting people off entirely
Sidelading apps on android is never technical anyone could install an apk. It’s just the safety that you need to be technical when doing so. Also fuck my phone which doesn’t allow unlockibg bootloader
At least on Samsung phones, they used to have you open the Settings (this is enough to deter 50% of non technical users) and look for an allow button which is protected by two fullscreen danger warnings (there goes the other 50%)
Mine is vivo, and there is no known way of safely unlocking bootloader
You’re over estimating common users
*if you have a Pixel device (that aren’t that great, actually).
A pixel phone is something like 9 months of minimum wage in my country.
If you can’t have Graphene or Calyx (once they’re back up) there’s still /e/OS, they also got a 1-Click Installer for a few devices. As well as a how-to for several hundred. And iodeOS I guess.
…if bootloader unlocking will be allowed…
*if google /OEMs still provide drivers for AOSP (check calyxos blog, google stopped doing it and it is killing custom ROMS)
Pixels are good, what are you talking about?
For the price, hardware-wise are underwhelming (see benchmarks).
I daily drive a Pixel 8 Pro and it’s never felt underpowered to me. I have no need or desire to look at benchmarks.
It’s a fair point to make to say they’re expensive, but that’s not really relevant to their actual quality or performance, both of which are fine. And the used market seems pretty good for these things, too.
I have no issue with my older Pixel devices. You’re use-case isn’t everyone’s use-case.
xcuse me what the hell
What does this mean for F-Droid?
Every developer wishing to offer applications on F-Droid will have to register their identities and package names to Google for Android devices to install their apps, regardless of the distribution platform (F-Droid, Obtainium, GitHub releases, etc.)
Doesn’t fdroid build everything from source (in the main repo)? There’s no way Google would allow them to do that with their own developer keys.
Apple does
You can only install an app you made for a week until you have to resign it.
It’s shit.
As Samsung is blocking custom ROMs with OneUI 8, I seriously need to look into alternatives. Does anyone have good experience with a custom ROM on a S25 Ultra? The only thing I really worry about are my banking apps. I need those to work.
I just use my banking through the web UI. Why do you need an app for it? If it’s for check deposits, try using an old phone as a dedicated banking device.
If you don’t use apps that depend on Google services, consider deGoogling your phone.
I use /e/OS, my office mate uses Graphene. All our banking apps (I have like 3, lol) work flawlessly. However, once you go down this road, there is always a chance that they stop working in the future, as Google introduces more bullshit like this or Play Integrity.
Just use apps like Hermit or Native Alpha and use the banking website like an app.
Wait, what the hell?
I can’t believe this, who the hell are they to decide what I should install?
They are welcome to curate their own store, but sideloading concerns only the user.
Hopefully, the EU and other jurisdictions block this.
Fucking corrupt American oligarchs.
The EU can’t even distribute their own apps without Play Integrity. Seems unlikely they will care.
Hopefully, the EU and other jurisdictions block this.
This is very similar to the notarization process Apple introduced to comply with the EU requirement of allowing third-party stores, and yet the EU don’t seem concerned (maybe because Apple did not allow third-party stores in the first place, will it be different for Google?)
Not an Apple user, so I didn’t know about this. Extremely disappointing.
It really does seem avoiding any and all American services/products (to the extent possible, with exceptions where reasonable) is the only way forward.
I am increasingly coming to the conclusion that the US is a ethical, cultural and even economic dead end. Yes even economic, only a fool would believe intense corruption and broad support of criminality and corruption among the population will not have any negative effects in the future.
You think this wouldn’t happen elsewhere?
It’s not just an American thing, it’s an asshoke thing, and those people are everywhere, and will always find a way.
even the OP phone is considering doing a soft-blocking of bootloader
Of course it can happen elsewhere.
Just US has a massive influence on tech platforms, and they are currently under-going an oligarch takeover (oligarch influence was already bad irrespective of whether the far right or centre right was in power).
Mind you I am not anti-American. I have largely always defended the US as matter of pragmatism (it is the largest and most influential democracy-leaning country with a measure of respect for human right). US had done really bad things, but they have done good things as well. I can’t say the same about say China or Russia.
Yes the largest economy in the world is an economic dead end. Do you know why so many countries are sucking off Trump? They want access to American dollars. And no diversification doesn’t work because what do you replace America with, there isn’t some untapped multi trillion dollar economy just sitting there. It sucks and I don’t get why the world let it happen but it is where we are and it we’ll hurt to change it and nobody seems like they want to do the work.
us has made every country dependant on it, which is why the brics was created o offeset it, but it isnt doing really good right now.
I clarified what I meant by economic dead end. It’s not going to happen tomorrow or even in ten years. But absolute corruption, rollback of democracy and a population where a large number of people support crime and corruption will have a caustic effect in the long term. It’s a straw man to suggest that I was claiming an immense collapse in American economic might.
At one point the “sun never set on the British empire” and now the British empire is no more. There are also examples of economies that were once top end, but are now closer to middle income.
I don’t think you understand the extent to which American “soft power” is being eroded right now. What countries have you lived in? What languages other than English do you speak? Do you have close friends in other countries?
Of course America is major economy, that doesn’t mean the rest of the world doesn’t exist. Just look at the state of Chinese products in the early 2000s and where they are now.
People don’t like thugs and liars, especially ones who are constantly parroting polemics about “freedom for this and that” while engaging in criminality and opposing democracy.
Google says it’s no different than checking IDs at the airport
What, and Google is now the TSA? Fuck that shit. I’ve paid for my device, I get to do whatever the hell I want with it!
I’ve paid for my device, I get to do whatever the hell I want with it!
You bought a phone but is leasing the software. It’s not yours to do with as you please.
Have you considered using fully open source android versions?
The few options that exist (along with their negatives) can’t be installed on my phone. N20U is still pretty much locked down.
Open source Android is a thing??? TIL that might be my solution to this long term since I sideload apps regularly.
Just be mindful of what ROM you’re putting on your device. That ROM can still have access to everything you have on there so it should be a source you trust.
Search for your device name and “custom ROM” to see what’s out there. Some are completely Google free, others retain different levels of Google play support, including downloading existing purchases.
No custom ROM on a recent smartphone technically gives you a fully open source Android system when they rely on vendor-provided proprietary blobs in order for basic hardware functionality to work at all. Unless you want to go without a modem, GPS, and likely more depending on your model, at which point it’s functionally no longer a smartphone.
Open-source custom ROMs are at least far more open-source than the alternative in most of the ways that matter most, including the ability to change the code in order to remove app installation restrictions, to avoid Google’s telemetry, etc.
Would the proprietary blobs in the baseband hardware stop the end user from installing software, which is the topic of concern?
If no, is this a irrelevant “achtually”-reply?
Okay, let’s check ids wherever you leave the house, since that’s the sane as checking them at the airport.
Papers please, right?
google likely has that data already, use any of thier apps, they got it, searching on google, taking pictures, emails.
google is pretty aggressively trying to datamine people for a while, Reddit is thier playgound.
Its 2050, you are waiting outside of the HR Office waiting for them to talk to you. You’re certain that your job has just been replaced by a robot.
Fuck this shit, you thought, 90% of the people are unemployed anyways, fuck this 16 hour shift.
You pull out your hand terminal (yes a “hand terminal”, as “smartphones” no longer have local storage now, almost all computing is done on cloud) and start typing in your journal app: “Down with the regime, Down with tyranny!”. You tap “save”.
“Action not authorized. This incident has been reported”
2 seconds later, you can hear sirens in the distance growing louder and louder.
This gas no basis in reality. No way that society makes it to 2050.
The ultra wealthy are building bunkers. Preserving any form of society no longer interests them.
they wont be able to sustain it, without the 'worker" slaves turning on them, what more likely to happen is they live in the pristine cities while everyone else not part of that circle is in the slums outside the city.
it will be worst, since most people wont have jobs, and are outside the cities in SLUMS. think ds9 2024 episode, or 4400 show.
Surely that means they’ll allow more apps onto their own app store with that, right? Right?
fuck google!
Who can I donate to that is working on making alternative OS accessible on android or iphones?
I know there are alternative OS already out there but they aren’t as universally accessible compared to how Linux can run on any PC.
FUTO has some good initiatives to follow.
Problem is we need vendor like pinephone maybe fairphone,which will able to run give us freedom what to run on device hunting and seeking for vendor which allowing to unlock bootloader and then install custom os it sleepery slope because it’s not know how longer they will let to do it
If they lock bootloaders, whats the best way to force it work even the vendors don’t want it to?
None,we fucked up.that why I don’t wanna non arm non RISC currently see on desktop
I was wondering this awhile ago too. There are ways but it’s pretty hardcore stuff from what I can tell. It’s basically a lost cause at that point. Some solutions involve using $30,000+ laser machines to manipulate the hardware physically and cause glitches in the locking. But even then the devices have self-destruct mechanisms to detect tampering. Not like the phone explodes, but they self-destruct the cryptographic keys needed to unlock the bootloader, and then you’re stuck trying to brute force in by guessing keys, which most likely will take literally a million years.
thats pretty aggressive to unlock it, i dont think non-tech saavy people will go for it.
The only way to bypass a forced bootloader lock is to find a bootrom exploit. It’s basically like jailbreaking an iPhone or a console at that point.
Note, the iPhone hasn’t had a working jailbreak in years. Samsung phones in the US also haven’t been able to be unlocked in years.
Android would be even harder because of how fragmented the market is. There are many different phones from many different manufacturers.
PostmarketOS is the biggest player. UBPorts (formerly Ubuntu Phone) is another. And of course there are lots of projects like Plasma Mobile, Nemo, or Mobian.
So looks like graphene is the future. Away from android and iOS. Any other alternatives OS and phone to look at?
Isn’t graphene having a challenging future because they have vendor locked themselves into pixel phones and said vendor is pulling the rug by not providing drivers going forward?
GrapheneOS has largely worked around this by automating creating device support themselves using “adevtool”. The current Pixels’ hardware supports installing third-party OSes and will continue to do so, they will support those Pixels until EOL. For future Pixels (Pixel 10 series has not yet launched, only available for pre-order), it remains to be seen whether they still fully support installing third-party OSes. If they do, GrapheneOS will also support them, but it might take much longer to implement device support because they need to make this by themselves and this is more difficult doing it from scratch than being able to use the old Android device support for it as a base, like they could do for the existing devices when Google did their rugpull.
They have not really vendor locked themselves for the future. They have hardware requirements listed in their FAQ: https://grapheneos.org/faq#device-support Google just happened to be the only company meeting those requirements, which weren’t even that strict, becuase other OEMs just didn’t prioritize security.
But, there is good news. GrapheneOS is currently in active talks with a major Android OEM right now in order to help them meet the security requirements for a subset of their future devices. They are very optimistic about that.
Google just happened to be the only company meeting those requirements
I don’t know. They designed the requirements in a way that only Google met them. It didn’t “happen” to meet them after the fact.
It’s like demanding yellow hard hats on a construction site. Sure, they are safe and highly visible. Would it make sense to allow black hard hats as well if it means not locking into a single vendor and try pushing for high vis while having a stronger base? And also working around the issue with a vest? I don’t know the answer to that but it’s clear that they have made a conscious decision to move into the situation that they now find themselves in.
They are literally talking with a major OEM right now to help them meet their requirements so what you say does not make any sense. They aren’t purposefully making requirements so only Pixels would fit them. The current hardware ecosystem is just bad with regard to security. Many GrapheneOS features depend on certain hardware security features being present, if they would also support lesser secure deivces, they would have to rip out too many fundamental features of GrapheneOS. That would go against the purpose of GrapheneOS, which is delivering a secure, private and usability mobile OS.
I didn’t say they need to rip something out. I didn’t say their current efforts to open up weren’t valid. I specifically said that I don’t know whether it would have made sense to start with reduced requirements.
I just stated that they didn’t “happen” to only support Google. I simply acknowledged how they knew exactly that the standard they were writing would only be matched by one vendor as they were writing it.
They were written at some moment in time and major vendors often have multiple moments during the year when they release new phones. Even if GrapheneOS, while writing down the requirements, realized that only 1 brand met them at that time, they were still assuming and hoping other brands could also easily meet them in the time following. The main problem here was that other brands didn’t seem to care. After hardware memory tagging was added to the ARM platform and Pixels immediatelly adopted this, GrapheneOS added it to the requirements, because it was such a subsantial feature that could outrule a large number of vulnerabilities. But, they have communicated multiple times across social media that they were willing to be much less strict about that requirement because earlier phones also didn’t have to meet them and because Qualcomm didn’t add ARM yet to their SoCs. They said back then they would be willing to support a Samsung phone if it would meet everything except for memory tagging (the main problem for Samsung is lack of proper third-party OS support). So, I think they’ve tried their best, to be honest. The current talks with the OEM I was talking abour earlier, also aren’t the first time they do those efforts. They’ve had contact with OEMs in the past to try to push them towards meeting the requirements, but the efforts happened to fail. The negligence of other brands is just really that big. In the tech space, sadly, only Apple and Google seem to truly care about security, spending money on it, and hiring sufficiently large teams of security researchers. I really hope, together with you, that this will change 🙏 .
I agree, the ecosystem seems to be focusing too much on hype and not enough on a strong and secure foundation. I’m still hoping for the best but I feel must more hopeful towards Linux on mobile devices. They are moving at an excruciatingly slow pace, though. Not enough resources and hands.
Graphene is locked to google hardware, so google effectively holds the keys to graphene too
I understand what you mean, as in GrapheneOS is a bit dependent on Google right now allowing third-party OS support. But, you have used words which actually mean something different in the software world. Keys often refers to signing keys for software and it’s important to note that Google doesn’t control those keys for GrapheneOS at all. GrapheneOS owns the keys, and signs all of their builds locally.
Only because Graphene is about using a security chip.
Lineage isn’t, so runs on more devices. I’d argue most people don’t have risks that require the security of Graphene.
But the moment another phone manufacturer decides to use a similar security chip, Graphene will be on it.
Now I’m wondering if Harmony OS is going to break out of China.
lineageos does support far more phone vendors; who knows what pixel phones will be like in the future
I’m hoping on fairphone to get graphene support 🤷
Thanks!
They won’t get GrapheneOS support becuase they don’t meet the hardware requirements: https://grapheneos.org/faq#device-support They are actually very far removed from meeting them, compared to OEMs like Samsung.
Graphene is also based on AOSP, which Google makes worse on purpose. I don’t think they’ll allow other devices to exist forever, or rather not in a way that’s compatible with “real” Android (aka Google-infested). The only proper solution is to focus fully on the new Linux Mobile ecosystem and become independent from Google-maintained shit (and hardware - Graphene is based on Google Pixels, they literally exist at the mercy of Google). Otherwise they will fuck you over again and again. Not saying getting Linux Mobile on par will be easy, but it’s our only true, permanent option aside from rejecting smartphones altogether.
That’s true. Fair point.
