Before anyone gets too excited, the headline is clickbait. The bigger Chinese phone brands are looking into de-googled Android. They are still going to use Android.
several prominent Chinese smartphone manufacturers, including Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, and OnePlus, are exploring the possibility of developing versions of the Android operating system that do not rely on Google Mobile Services.
Chinese laptop makers are also in search of an OS that isn’t Windows. Queue a race to prop Linux with Android support on that side of things.
It also says:
It is currently unknown whether these companies would aim for compatibility with existing Android apps or follow the path of Huawei’s latest HarmonyOS NEXT, which removes Android app support entirely
So, it’s not clear yet.
Waydroid is pretty nice, integrating the Android apps as regular apps in the Linux UI.
Waydroid is very close to greatness. My major hope there is Valve contributions to Waydroid for probable Steam Deck integration will make it incredibly seamless. There’s also the Android Translation Layer being developed
https://gitlab.com/android_translation_layer/android_translation_layer
Am I the only one who never got Waydroid to run even basic apps…?
de-googled Android you say?
ISeeThisAsAnAbsoluteWin.jpg
Too bad that what you want in a Google-free Android distro isn’t what the manufacturers want.
I thought android in China was already de-googled
So like how Huawei was hyping up their new mobile OS which was really just skinned AOSP?
HarmonyOS is not AOSP anymore. It does not run Android apps anymore.
So that title is just a straight up lie. They want to use a de-googled Android.
To be honest I was hoping for an alternative OS, competition is always good. But a de-googled Android could possibly be good, but being Chinese I assume instead of Google telemetry you’ll just be replacing it with CCP telemetry.
US telemetry == CCP telemetry, I can’t see how CCP will be more damaging to regular person.
I think it’s just that they were saying his won’t end up benefitting us. It’s just changing who is holding the binoculars.
Why bother switching then?
Because, at least for now, the US has the greater power to fuck up our lives with the information gathered.
Indded but as an Australian, if I have to have an anal probe i’d rather it from the CCP as they wont share it with my Government.
I mean judging by the current American government id much rather my data is going to the CCP then the American Government via Google as a proxy.
How about neither?
Would love that if it was an option.
I don’t know to what extent they smuggle data out of the devices, but afaik a de-googlified phone such as Pixel + GrapheneOS gets you close.
We need phones with standard Linux. Without strange “Java only mediator” or something. Just a normal OS.
Android is a pain in the ass.
Exact! And please no bloatware!!
Oh wait, before anything else : NO, and I really mean NO AI and/or VR shit. Just none. None A T A L L
Dude, you get free third party bullshit with every update. What’s not to love?
So AOSP
I would love to have a phone that I could just plug into a USB C dock and use as a normal computer. They’ve got plenty of processing power for that now. Every single program I use except for games could run on a phone if it used normal GNU/Linux.
Convergence! I think Ubuntu tried to go that way for a while.
We need phones with standard Linux.
Already exists. Several iterations are active and work as a daily driver: phone, sms and mobile networking works reliably, apps exist. Just not as many as on Android, and some features are not part of the OS. This is enough for many to declare them “a failure”. That and limited hardware support.
Google has coddled us for way too long, and at what price.
Honestly, I think the old FirefoxOS could do well these days. Literally everything an app can do can be done by a browser with a decent caching/local storage scheme. Slap a decent camera on that and it would be amazing.
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What’s that link got to do with PostmarketOS? It does not look like FuriOS is a version of it?
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They have been promising a good Linux phone for forever. Is this one any good? Will support last?
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GNU/Linux is about 100x more painful than Android…
How so?
Title is misleading, they are moving away from google services.
Yeah I was going to say there is very little alternative from iOS and Android or its derivatives. There used to be Windows Phones very breifly, but they’re gone now.
Anthing else has to emulate the other OS to run mobile apps.
I actually had a Windows phone around 2011-ish. It had some pretty cool features and was a Nokia.
Dude 2011 was like 6 years ago
Aww, and I here I was hoping multiple vendors were FINALLY going to contribute to mobile linux.
Year of the Linux phone
Linux-mobileOS!
That sounds nice and all but linux still is subject to exploits and the open sourced nature of it makes it an enticing target for state actors to include extremely well made obfuscated exploits. I dont know how to win here, tbh.
All you said, is infinitely worse with closed source
“State actors” already have the ability to spy on anyone they want. It’s a whole industry
Uhh maybe more likely 15 years ago and also goes for everyone else. Actually, what are you even saying?
You probably should’ve led with the fact that this is Chinese phones, not like Samsung and shit.
Samsung has it own OS on some phones.
They
allmostly run android with GMS. They do apply their own skin, and sometimes Manufactures try to market it as a seperate OS. For example “NothingOS” in the Nothing phones, which is just stock android with a fancy skin applied.Thanks, I didn’t know about that.
No they don’t; they killed off Tizen over half a decade ago. All modern Samsung devices run on Android. OneUI is a skin, not an OS.
Is it that long ago already? I thought they had kept it around. Thank you for updating me.
We are going to move away from Google, by basing our new future on AOSP, which is also primary maintained by Google…I smell another FireOS level product on the horizon. Still Android, but worse.
USA is being horrible at the moment, but China has a LOT of convincing to do before I’ll let them deliberately have my data.
Best way remains to raise as high a digital moat against everyone. If you need a smartphone, get a Pixel, install Graphene on it and as few apps as possible.
I would love getting a Pixel but the 100% price premium and no official support is making it hard.
https://grapheneos.org/faq#supported-devices
It’s my understanding that the latest model pixels have official support for Graphene. I could be wrong but their FAQ says they do. I’m installing it on mine
I think shegorath meant official support from Google.
Please, do not post clickbait
A rumor of plans??! Tell me everything!!!
arent there mods on the sub to delete clickbait crap like this?
It makes sense for Chinese smartphone OEMs to move away from the Google version of Android. In the medium to long term you are setting up yourself for failure if you are reliant on an American company.
Unfortunately, the United States cannot be trusted.
If it’s not proper linux I don’t care
To what? Linux? I’ll believe it when I see it.
To what?
Read the article and find out.
So they’re switching from Android to Android.
The article exposes the title as a lie. People shouldn’t reward that kind of journalism by reading it.
How easy is it to degoogle Android? Don’t currently use Android or iOS but dumb phone options are getting pretty limited these days.
If I got an Android phone I would probably be looking at something second hand because fuck paying 3 figures on a phone. I know I wouldn’t use data at all, call/SMS SIM only. I guess another option is not needing to degoogle it as it will never talk to google once I have finished downloading maps of the country for OSMand and a few other apps. Then it can be on Wi-Fi to allow communication with my PC over LAN but don’t allow it access to the internet.
If it never touches the internet after setup I guess outdated OS doesn’t matter too much.
If you’re looking at getting a new (used) phone, I would suggest GrapheneOS (the most secure/private de-googled rom afaik).
You need a Pixel phone, the newer you get the longer you will keep getting software updates for the future (if you keep the phone past these many years of support, then I believe switching to a other rom will be required for security patches etc. Each phone is supported until Google stops supporting them I believe). You said you don’t care about updates because you can keep it from connecting to the internet, but it’s a plus anyways.
If you plan on never touching a google service, GrapheneOS allows for that (nothing google by default), but on the other hand, if you need google play, etc for banking apps or whatnot, they have that covered with Sandboxed Google Services (which you can run solely in another user profile on your phone for added privacy).
Anyways, I think GrapheneOS in a great option & their website has much more info if you’d like to continue hearing about it:
p.s. you can check their website for how long different pixels will have continued support before (if) you get one (incase anyone else is reading this).
If you have a phone with custom ROM support, pretty easy. I’ve been running LineageOS without GAPPS for like 5 years now. Most stuff just works, but to be fair, I am not using any of the cool kids apps like google pay or android auto.
I just got my Pixel 9a and put GrapheneOS on it. The only thing that seems to not work right now is KDE Connect, but I’m unsure if it might be me doing something wrong rather than being impossible.
It runs just fine for me, huh. Certainly not because of lack of google services.
Maybe graphene is doing some firewall things? KDE Connect needs some ports open (to the local lan) to talk
Yeah guess I don’t really care for most of it. Can get anything I want as an apk or mostly just on fdroid. VLC and an SSH client would be nice.
It depends on your definition of ‘deGoogle’. You can disable the Google apps on most Android phones. They’ll take up storage space, but won’t run.
If you’re getting a second-hand phone and want to completely deGoogle it, you can check if (1) the bootloader is unlockable and (2) custom ROMs are available online (e.g. Lineage OS compatible devices). In general, Xiaomi, Motorola and Pixel devices have unlockable bootloaders, but not all their models have custom ROMs.
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