Google’s Android, the world’s most widely used mobile operating system, started life as open-source software. In its quest for ever-greater profits, the tech giant has been gradually eroding Android’s open-source nature over the last decade.
Originally published on The Lever, but that one asks you to sign up.
Tried to restart my fairly new Pixel phone a couple days ago by holding down the power button, but instead of showing the Power menu it prompted me to ask the Digital Assistant something. Excuse me? I don’t remember enabling that. Every other phone I’ve ever had, holding down the power button has always been the way to power down or restart. I had to search Settings to find how to configure the power button to control the power. Or course maybe I could have asked the Digital Assistant - but fuck that.
Yep, this is how they trick people into inadvertently using their shitty ai Spyware. Welcome to the future, yay. Fuck Google and Samsung.
So, how do you power it down?
In Settings you select Power as the function of the Power Button instead of Digital Assistant. Then the power button works like it should.
Sure, but what did they expect you to do before making that change.
On my P7Pro, pressing power and volume up simultaneously brings up the shutdown/restart/lock prompt
On android the off button is on the quick settings, and on iphone you hold the power button and one of the volume buttons
No idea. Presumably they expected me to figure out the settings and change it like I did. Or maybe I could have told the Digital Assistant to restart the phone, I dunno.
It’s almost like the organization itself is designed to make things worse if it means short term profits, useful and appreciated apps sacrificed at the altar of line must go up
My pixel 5 recently broke and the only reason I went with a pixel 9a was to install grapheneOS on it as soon as I got it. The process has become way easier than it used to be. After setting up/skipping all the first run screens I plugged it into another Android device and used the grapheneOS site to run the install, took like 15 min.
hows your experience with graphene? Better than stock? I heard they have a sandboxed Google Play store now, so getting apps is even easier.
So far it’s been good for about a week. Highlights have been the easy install, secure by default but lets me override when I want (block app network access on install is awesome), and getting access to the other app repos than Google’s I haven’t seen since I installed dirty unicorns years ago. I setup multiple users so I can keep my primary like a root which was also simple to do.
Only complaints I have are when I get messages on another user than primary I can see the messages in the app but not the message content in the notification, its just a generic alert message like new messages received. Nice to have but not going to make me switch back. And the keyboard doesn’t have swipe typing so I use gboard with network access turned off.
Also I did install the Google app store to get a couple paid apps and calendar/contacts I need to move out of Google. It does sandbox by default which is really cool and i think should be required for phone manufacturers. I just disabled services/store/calendar access to the network after I let it download everything.
Edit: also not a OS thing but I tried switching VPN to orbot/tor at the same time and it is still really unreliable for that use with the way so many sites try to sniff out your location
do you have the ability to remove whichever apps you dont like?
The user notitication makes sense, i guess its more secure. Btw, so everytime you switch user, you have to restart?
Yes, and it comes with very few by default as well
No restart needed, pull down twice and the switcher is on the bottom right. Usually takes just a couple seconds to switch.
thats nice to hear. I thought you need to restart to change profiles.
You’re on the 9a right? How is the battery under Graphene? I used to have the OG Pixel (codename sailfish) and try different roms on there, but the battery is just terrible.
I’m still feeling that part out since it’s only been about a week, a full charge can last me multiple days (5100mAh) and the battery in my pixel 5 (4080mAh) was pretty run down.
Fully charged 25.5hr ago & pretty heavy use yesterday and I’m at 63%, the 5 would have been twice dead by now.
Only complaints I have are when I get messages on another user than primary I can see the messages in the app but not the message content in the notification, its just a generic alert message like new messages received. Nice to have but not going to make me switch back.
I haven’t confirmed it, but enabling “Sensitive notifications” or a similar setting might fix this. Although it is more secure in theory not to have your message content visible on a locked screen.
Also I did install the Google app store to get a couple paid apps and calendar/contacts I need to move out of Google. It does sandbox by default which is really cool and i think should be required for phone manufacturers. I just disabled services/store/calendar access to the network after I let it download everything.
FYI you can use Aurora Store instead to download from Google Play, and even use it anonymously. It’s sometimes buggy, but IMO the tradeoff is maybe worth it.
Maybe we should start resurrecting symbian
2 days ago I moved from GrapheneOS back to Stock Pixel in my 8 Pro, just to see what all the hype about the new android 16 in Pixel is about. Jesus, this is way worse than I remember. i tried it for 2 whole days, and that shit just won’t allow me to have ANY control over my phone. It’s fucking ridiculous. On Android 15 I was able to uninstall Google Drive, Meet, Youtube, and many other Google apps, this time around all it would allow was “disable”. What’s next, removing the ability to disable (which I don’t trust anyway)?
Fast forward to today, I’m back on GOS, and my anxiety levels are down again. This shit is insane, and I honestly can’t understand why anyone would put up with this crap.
I’ve been considering moving to GOS because of all the Google shenanigans, but I need to make sure everything works since my job means I have dozens of MS authenticator entries for various admin tasks. I really want to try it out, but can’t afford to have to rebuild all those entries on a new system (and the notifications not work)
I had to use MS Authenticator for work and it worked in GOS, notifications and all. Now, that was about a year ago, and I haven’t tried it since. At the speed GAFAM are enshitifying everything, there’s a chance it doesn’t work anymore. I keep a Pixel 8a stock for banking and some other apps that I need (such as EV charging networks) and won’t work or are unsustainably wonky on GOS. As I mentioned in another post, RethinkDNS is worth it, but it does take some trial and error to get it to work without breaking stuff I need, but once I got there, it was all good (that’s how I keep the 8a less intrusive).
this time around all it would allow was “disable”.
This has been par for other OEM-flavored Android phones for years, unfortunately.
Disableis alright, not that the phone itself isn’t a privacy nightmare in other ways.I’m stuck with Google. No aftermarket OS supports my phone. :(
May I suggest you give RethinkDNS a shot? At first it’s kind of convoluted to configure, but once you have it set up the way you want, it’s smooth sailing from there.
Most users want those installed, anyway.
That’s a really lousy excuse in support of enshittification.
How do you know most of users want that?
Even if most of them do, that still negatively impacts literally millions of users who don’t want that.
Most is anywhere from 50.1% to 99.9%
So what are you actually saying? Because you aren’t being very precise.
Most people want to engage in hetero sexuality, so everyone who didn’t shouldn’t get to?
That’s the same logic you are using, I highly doubt you would agree that all non hetero relations should be discarded and given a giant middle finger. If you do feel that way JFC go touch grass or whatever
Those apps are installed in the squashfs image. Such images are write once, read many and thus they can’t be mutated at runtime.
Well who made the decision to put non-system apps in the system partition?
I know, and that’s exactly my point. They used to be in the user space, now they are in the system partition. They CHOSE to do this.
Yeah. That’s a good point. I don’t know why anyone would put any frequently updated app in squashfs.
I guess you can use the app right after you factory reset even if you don’t have much data which might be something? Are updates smaller since they’re just deltas?
In all honesty, I have no idea. I didn’t give the stock firmware enough time on my phone to check on anything other than the amount of tracking and the move to the system partition.
As for the reason for putting them in this partition, I’m sold on the idea that it’s to keep the levels of invasion as high as possible while removing the user’s options to get rid of them.
Google keeps making everything worse.
The obfuscated nature of compiled code does an incredible amount of heavy lifting on behalf of shareholders. Imagine a world where x-ray specs suddenly revealed source code. The flight to open solutions would be irresistible. Windows is hot garbage but it clings to its market share like a limpet, through the magic of closed source, occupying space like a flabby tumour. It doesn’t care if it kills the host because the top priority is growth and an unassailable market share. That’s the magic of capitalism.
Honestly I don’t think many people would care? Until the security holes became intractable, I guess.
Its proven Android phones are doing awful stuff, even client side, and has that slowed them down?
Mobile GNU/Linux is getting better, but I think it is 5-10 years out from what’s needed. I suppose people need to adopt Desktop first. The nice thing is you can install Android apps including Google Play on it natively, and they appear in your app drawer like a regular app
Unless they get NFC payments working on it and banking apps. It literally will never matter.
The single most common thing phones are used for at this point outside of entertainment is payments and banking.
There are Google Play Android bank apps (mine works fine), and you can use mobile sites as dedicated app drawer icons. Their mobile site is top notch.
NFC payments won’t come anytime soon to native GNU/Linux, but I don’t use them. Maybe Google Wallet works, I haven’t tried and don’t know if NFC can be passed through to Waydroid. OnePlus 6 is the best supported originally Android phone for GNU/Linux, someone with that would need to test.
I just have my card in a silicon sleeve on the back of the phone and I get the same effect. I’d rather Google not have my purchase history anyways.
What’s wrong with tapless payment with cards?
Nothing, but many users have already migrated to using stored payment information on their phones.
My big problem is banks and satnav.
SatNav need traffic info and there is none, so their routes are bad.
Banks require apps to even use their website for “secure codes”. Those apps try to detect ROMs and refuse to run, not even really being Android is going to make passing that harder.
Let alone random things like parking apps where the app is the only way to pay.
This is a political problem as much as technical. Competition is basically dead. We need government to step in and make competition possible. But they are in big tech’s pocket and the status quo suits them too. Voters either don’t care or believe what big tech says. It’s a mess.
Satnav there is Pure Maps (OSM client), which can connect to sources like HERE to get traffic data to provide voiced guided turn-by-turn instructions. Of course there is also all the Android apps like Google Maps available, and their mobile site works fine.
On the topic of mobile sites, you can also install them as dedicated app drawer icons via Gnome Web & Firefox PWA for any site.
This means if your bank app doesn’t like vanilla Android, GApps, you can use a comparable dedicated web app.
For parking, I’ve found a surprising amount have mobile sites, so I don’t need to install their bloaty Android app onto my GNU/Linux phone.
Good to know. I’d really like to try a proper Linux phone as a daily driver.
It’s a bit of a catch honestly.
OSS/community Linux graphical environments have kind of always been ~5 years out from what’s needed. 15 years ago they were behind ~5 years, 5 years ago they where behind ~5 years.
The only difference is today. I think they’re only behind by ~3-4 years thanks to the backwards movement of things like Windows and OSx staleness.
Mobile operating systems are in a worse place.
you can install Android apps including Google Play on it natively
What whaaaat? I didn’t know this! Thanks for the tip
I just saw KDE Bigscreen got reboot. While it’s not exactly the same (its for TVs, like Android TV and Steam Big Picture mode), it’s nice to see major desktop environments(DE) adopt new UI features for small and large devices. This compliments work done by groups like PinePhone, who laid the groundwork for Linux phones.
I’m thinking about getting the new FairPhone 6 when it comes out and running /e/ OS, but I’m so reliant on Google Maps and Gmail (my email account, not necessarily the app … but I do rely on the app).
I’m afraid that I’ll either install Google apps and end up with a phone just as compromised as a stock Android install, or if I don’t it will be too much of a pain in the ass to use.
There are Maps alternatives. For instance, Organic maps or the fork CoMaps. Not nearly as good UX as Google Maps… and zero traffic data available… but the upside is they work entirely offline.
Organic Maps is great in many ways. It’s maps are so much better. But the lack of traffic data is a killer for route planning in the UK. All the open source maps suffer this. There needs to be open access traffic information for there to be competition.
As far as I know, traffic data is gathered via spying on users—Google Maps and similar apps sending device location to a central cloud service. Maybe somebody could provably anonymize the data somehow to make an alternative service for the open competitors to use.
That’s what we need.
Interesting. Fingers crossed!
android peaked with the pixel 2. then everyone went overboard on bezel-less displays and fast refresh rates and smart assistant services and brought the whole damn thing crashing down.
I don’t think the issue with phones is the smaller bezels or better displays.
That’s not what’s ruining them.
Fast refresh rates are amazing. I cherished my old Razer Phone 2.
Sadly iOS is not much better
You can’t sideload on iOS at all.
You can, but it is a pita. Having to buy dev certs and sign the .ipa file, etc. But technically, if you really want to, you can.
In eu you kinda can for some degree
Can I get a rundown of the few non-flagship phonemakers that are currently out there? I have heard of The Nothing Phone. Are there more companies that put together Androids to operate within the US?
Fairphone just released the Fairphone 6.
The big problem with anything not Google or Samsung is, as it’s always been, software support. You get 2 or maybe 3 years of updates and then the device is trash. So you can save a buck on the short term but it will cost you more in the long run and you’ll have shitty devices all the way along anyway.
You can buy a 2 year old Pixel for $2-300 and it will last you another 4-5 years (unless Google remotely nukes your battery).
Just because it doesn’t have latest Android doesn’t mean it’s trash. And Fairphone also aims for 7 years support just like your Pixel example.
It doesn’t need to be the latest android version per se, but I wouldn’t want to use a phone that’s not getting security patches anymore
Not having security updates makes it effectively trash, as far as I’m concerned.
All phones that are sold in the EU now have to have 5 years of updates after the phone is no longer sold.
Basically, all phones have 6+ years of updates now.
You realize there’s a whole rest of the world that’s not the EU?
Oh my fucking god, really?!
You’re so smart, that never occurred to me. I thought that there was only 27 countries in the world, and all of them were in one continent!
Yes, I do realise that, genius. I’m not from an EU country myself.
However, I engaged my brain cells and quickly realised that most phones that exist are sold in the EU, and therefore the OEM has to make and test these updates anyway. In virtually all cases they will then release these worldwide.
Like how the EU mandated USB-C and now it’s worldwide. The EU has quietly become the market that sets international standards over the past 20 years.
I know it seems like I’m being mean in this comment, but fuck me it’s the most Reddit comment ever. A pointless comment just begging to start a pointless argument. Nobody can be bothered with that trolling shit. Do better.
the OEM has to make and test these updates anyway. In virtually all cases they will then release these worldwide
I wouldn’t be so sure. There’s a vested interest in NOT shipping them outside the EU. It’s called planned obsolescence. Just looks at Macs and OCLP. It’s so easy to keep older Macs updated that it’s actually able to be done by some random developers in their free time (not to trivialize this effort, just to say that it would be extremely trivial for Apple as the developer of the OS and one of the most profitable companies in the world to do it). And yet Apple does not ship these updates to them. Why? Because they want you to buy new shit and they know not doing so will render them virtually useless in a short time.
I know it seems like I’m being mean in this comment
You are just being mean and extremely rude. It’s completely unnecessary and I’ve done absolutely nothing to deserve such language. You are actively making this community shittier.
Be rude, someone is rude to you back. Boo hoo.
Trying to bait people into absolutely pointless arguments makes the community shittier.
I wasn’t being rude. That was only you. And since you continue to do so, you can have this argument with yourself. Goodbye.
Would Moto count? I’ve been rocking their basic-ass phones for years now. Way, way less bloatware than Samsung, etc. and only like $200 unlocked.
I think Moto is actually Lenovo now?
Yup. Motorola is Chinese Lenovo now sadly. Lenovo is absolute trash devices and support.
I think Moto’s are a pretty good budget friendly phone. Sure their update policy is lacking, but the Moto G Power or Moto G Stylus phones come decently equipped. Plus you can still get expandable storage and headphone jacks.
Trying to find a 2025 moto g stylus currently. Recently rediscovered hired much I enjoy a headphone jack. Headset runs out of power? Plug in and continue. Also expandable memory wouldn’t have lost me hours of recording that I won’t ever get back because my phone got a little wet and shit the bed
Been using Moto since Z1 and would say that their phones are fine. $200 for a phone that lasts 4 years is a decent deal.
This is false. Lenovo has some of the highest marks for reliability, customer service, and upgradability; not to mention price.
Besides Nothing Phone, you’ve got Fairphone (sustainable/repairable), Sony (great cameras), Asus (gaming focused), Nokia (budget-friendly), OnePlus (speed/value), and Xiaomi (if you can import) all working to varying degreees in the US market - tho carrier compatibility can be trickly so always check bands before buying.
Daily driving the cmf with /e/OS from Murena for few months now, warmly recommended.
I find myself using desktop Linux more than my mobile device, even on the couch with the family. Monitors on arms that can swing out of the way ftw. No cute advice for keyboards though. We have wireless ones around but I still use my wired Deck Legend on my lap. It’s an old mechanical keyboard that’s built like a tank, with the PCB literally mounted to a sheet of metal that is mounted inside the housing, lol.
It’s almost a shame, because smart phones are still absolutely amazing to me as far as the amount of scientific and technical advancement that can fit in the palm of your hand. But I look forward to the open options various parties are working on.
Up until about two weeks ago I could use wallet on my rooted pixel with lineage and play integrity fix.
Some recent change on their end and it doesn’t work at all anymore. I guess they don’t want to know what I’m buying.
I really want to try a pinephone or something with Ubuntu touch. It’s likely not daily driver ready but I’m still curious at how far along it is.
Can’t speak for Ubuntu Touch but tried PostMarketOS on PinePhone and PinePhone Pro.
The PP works well, good support for most things included SIM, camera, BT, etc but it’s big and bulky, also IMHO not powerful enough for Waydroid so no Android apps, “just” Linux. Relying on the browser to avoid using app is rarely practical as it’s too slow.
The PPPro being more powerful should cover the gap… but some lack of support, specifically the camera, makes it tricky as daily driver.
Both PP and PPPro don’t have great battery and/or power management so you can go through a day of usage, barely, and you might get stuck in a cycling loop if you depleted it entirely. That means also as daily driver, if you are not very cautious, it’s tricky.
So… we are nearly there but unless you have a very VERY minimum usage of your phone, basically a dumb phone with a bit of CLI to remote connect to your own server from time to time, it’s probably not practical for now.
Maybe the Liberux NEXX thanks to its power would have closed the gap but the failed crowd funding campaign shows that price point does not have a market fit right now.
Thanks for the write up! It honestly sounds like it’s be fine for me. My iPhone is already extremely bare and stripped down. I barely use the camera too, so like, idk I don’t feel like I’d be missing much?
If I could buy a super cheap used one for testing, I’d do it. I’m waiting for my iPhone SE to die on me anyways before making the switch.
If by any chance you can be in Brussels for a bit, I can lend you mine for a while to test.
I appreciate that! I’m in the states unfortunately
Can’t easily help there. Maybe you can find someone local who could help. Best of luck.
I’m on hyperos and every time I have to touch anything pure Google I feel like I’m on a windows PC.
Don’t get me wrong, hyperos isn’t a pinnacle of freedom, but all I do with my phone is basically using Firefox and take photos (+ signal, & SMS) and use the lichess app.
It’s so infuriating, they steal our data, but just needs more. I’ll try a Linux FOSS system next phone.
