…in Singapore…
Kinda depressing that all of big-tech seems to have given up “innovating” (finding applications for publicly-funded research), and have become rent-seeking dinosaurs.
Capitalism baby
“Purism makes premium phones…” Haaaaaaaaa 😂
Correction: purism sells mediocre phones for premium prices.
Why is it so hard to “Don’t be Evil”
That would mean less money, at least in the short term, but also in the long term as it grants the user the autonomy of optionality, the power to choose some of Google’s edicts. Really it’s about the power to shape the choices of the users in the future. Take their power away. And in the future this will be conducive to leverage this power against the user for more money.
I asked the AI about it, in case anyone is curious https://chatgpt.com/share/68454a70-5cd8-8005-8075-3579244f0ce4
This article is a thinly veiled ad paired with fearmongering to get gullible users to buy the shit phones they sell (or not, some people have been on “waitlists” for 5+ years after providing a full payment).
Granted, their phones are fully open, but have next to no apps.
Personally I’ll stick with Android 12, rooted, and see what the future brings.
This is an ad
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Degoogled ROMs are gonna be the bomb in the future.
Maybe you should curb your enthusiasm a bit. have you seen what it take to unlock the bootloader from most manufacturers? you might even need your grandma’s birth certificate before you’re allowed to do so in the future
Depends on the manufacturer. Ideally, they’re forced to allow choice, but until that happens, we can at least prefer phones that don’t lock you in.
I am aware, but what choices do we have? I for one stopped using banking apps in my Android phone, not a big deal, we didn’t have banking apps there pre 2007 right?
I know not everyone can do it, but we can fight back in our own ways.
And voting with your wallet should be an obvious statement at this point.
CalyxOS works with most banking apps, and is don’t degoogled.
Certainly depends on where you live.
Unlocking a Samsung phone is trivial here.
The restrictions on apk access over the past 10 years have already been an annoying pita. Many of the best power user apks have had to gut themselves over their original functionality, all while obtaining root access over your owned devices has become harder or next to impossible.
Let them keep those. I hereby declare that if I don’t own the thing, I ain’t buying it. So no root, no $$$.
Yeah, but I still really like my micro SD card slot and pen on my note 20 ultra. Dunno what I’ll do when I have to replace it.
The pen is the only reason I have stuck with Samsung. If they made a Pixel with a smart pen that I could put GrapheneOS on I’d buy it in a second.
Yeah. Id pick up a redmi 10+ pro if it had a pen and sacrifice away the SD card slot. Id at least have a huge battery and awesome cooling.
If you would get that why wouldn’t you just get a Galaxy S2X Ultra?
I meant redmagic 10 pro plus. My bad.
As for the samsungs:
Because it’s priced higher than it should be, it has a slightly lower performance chip, a much lower capacity battery, and older battery tech that will degrade faster and charges slower. The best redmagic out specs the samsungs in every way but picture quality and does it for $500 less.
Sure, but the Redmagic doesn’t have things the Samsung does - one of which seems to be a dealbreaker for you, the built in stylus.
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Censorship strikes again.
In parallel, Google has rolled out its Play Integrity API, which allows developers to limit app functionality when sideloaded, effectively pushing users to install apps only through the Google Play Store.
All of this while EU forbids Apple to do the same, what is the idea here? Measuring how EU reacts?
…did you read the ad…? It quite obviously answers your question and calls out the difference. The large, glaring one. The one that probably even a first grader would grasp.
Is it the same though? Google is allowing the developers to choose to prevent sideloading. I thought Apple’s issue was that they prevented side loading completely.
That sounds illegal.
Depends. Are you from the EU or not?
I am, that’s why it sounds illegal. :D
Purism is sketchy btw:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKegmu0V75s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IjUryQOlgk
(Louis Rossman videos explaining how a customer was denied a refund for a “pre-order” and then they tried to coerce Louis to take down the video.)
Edit: typo
As a person who experienced the customer support regrading preorders I can confirm this firm is extremly sketchy.
Never had an issue with them. Writing from my Librem 5
There is exactly one app I use that is available only on play store - my bank.
I don’t really need the app.
They have a website.
I have a few phones, just got one that now has grapheneOS.
I’ve been using it for a few weeks to see how it works before I switch over anything to use it as my main. it has a lot of very interesting privacy/security features to test out.
Either way, I don’t get anything from the play store anymore.
It’s F(L)OSS or a website.
As god intended.
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From what I can tell, all of this shit is on Google versions of Android. If you are on AOSP such as lineage or graphene, from what I understand this has no effect whatsoever.
But this is not the only aspect of Google’s autocratization; Apps who’s developers have enabled the Google Play Integrity APIs will not run on custom roms.
I’m sorry, but in that case, it wasn’t worth running the app to begin with. You can either find a third-party app that lets you access the same content, such as Newpipe and YouTube, or you can use it from a web browser, such as your bank, and if you can’t do either of those, then just don’t fucking use that service.
I was willing to totally switch banks because my previous bank required me to use a mobile app and I did not want to do so. If I must go through some annoyance to use something that works properly, I will.
For me at least, running as much open source as I can possibly do is worth more than the inconvenience caused by not being able to use these shit services.
I use open source whenever I can, but sometimes that just isn’t an option in the real world. I work in IT at a hospital that REQUIRES Duo. I use GrapheneOS. I was able to get it to work, but it was a horrible experience.
I was “required” to use duo. Okta worked fine. Might be the same in your situation, might be worth a looksee.
I’d be telling them to provide a work phone.
I did honestly think about this, but its honestly more trouble than it’s worth. Carrying around two phones is just kind of am eh experience, plus I’m new, and I don’t wanna be that guy. If I kept having issues with it, that is probably the route I would have ended up taking, but it’s working as expected now. I’m not a FOSS purest or anything either way. I have a librebooted thinkpad, but I also have several proprietary apps on my phone. Its all about usability for me.
cool, any dev who requires that is acting in bad faith against my privacy and doesn’t deserve my support.
The problem comes when it’s not an app you’re using for the app’s sake, but because it’s the app of some company you have a real-world relationship with. Your bank’s app being the most important one that comes to my mind, considering I’ve already heard about some banks trying to restrict users to only Google’s flavour of Android before this.
Honestly other than a fingerprint lock, I’ve found the apps suck compared to just a browser on a PC anyhow. Half the apps could just be webpages, and a bunch of those are just wrappers to a web rendering layer anyhow
and that’s important why? pick a different bank, or don’t use the app at all.
I get that some folks think using the app is a requirement. that may be true for some but not all.
don’t support shitty services and these companies won’t continue to abuse us.
One of the reasons why I got a Android over ios :(
