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Google is about to make life more difficult for custom ROM fans

androidauthority.com

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Re: Google is about to make life more difficult for custom ROM fans

#61

Post by jraph »

charcircuit wrote: post #26
gostsamo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pinephone has multiple compatible os-s, while most android phones don't have alternatives and become unusable if android drops support for them. Also, Google and the big OEM-s have the incentive to break compatibility to provide you with the newest gadget, which is not true for the pines. yet.

Plenty of android phones have alternatives. It's what custom roms in the title of this article is referring to.

But these custom ROMs are hard to maintain especially as soon as when the phone manufacturer drops support.

There's no way to get the latest AOSP on these devices forever. Hard work is required to port any new version and that's not always possible because AOSP comes to rely on newer kernel versions but you are stuck with the heavily customized one (+ the blobs) the manufacturer provided.

Re: Google is about to make life more difficult for custom ROM fans

#63

Post by mcny »

Dwedit wrote: post #40

The much bigger thing making life difficult for Custom ROM fans is the "device fingerprint" nonsense making your device condemned to fail SafetyNet. Hope you never want to run a banking app.

I got a locked iPhone SE 2020 from a prepaid carrier and never inserted the SIM card. It cost me under USD 200 including the one month of service but I just wanted to use this device on WiFi.

I can now leave all banking apps out of my xiaomi phone running lineage.

Re: Google is about to make life more difficult for custom ROM fans

#64

Post by thunderbong »

nickelpro wrote: post #52
quaintdev wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's getting more and more difficult to use Android without a Google Account. Good that is how they shoot themselves in the foot. The more they do this, the more people will realise they need alternative and ditch Android.

99.9% of consumers do not care about this and are totally willing (and expect) to connect their phone to their Google/Apple account Not saying the grievance isn't valid, but don't fool yourself

Well, it's not like they have a choice, isn't it?

Re: Google is about to make life more difficult for custom ROM fans

#65

Post by palata »

jraph wrote: post #60
palata wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow... people, can you please just read a bit about AOSP before dropping such complaints? There is no "Android drops support for them". It's "Google drops support for them". Google maintains AOSP, but if they stopped doing that, probably AOSP would survive in some form. Also I am not convinced that companies like Samsung would be happy to go with a completely proprietary Google OS, so chances are that they would get…

Not really. To run Linux mobile distros on regular Android phones, you need to have an Android base because essential features of these phones are implemented in closed source user space drivers that expect an Android system. You are basically stuck with the kernel your phone came with, plus some of its user space. That's what libhybris is for. In practice, development of this is slow as far as I know, and you need s…

Sorry, I am not completely sure I understand the point you are trying to make.

Yes, devices that work with the mainline kernel are better supported. Both for Android and for Mobile Linux.

> In which ways the distinction is useful?

Because people not making the distinction tend to conclude "you should move to a Mobile Linux instead". Which is completely wrong: while there are active Mobile Linux projects, there are active AOSP-based projects.

Android, today, is completely functional without Google (I have been running a de-Googled ROM for 2 years). I played a lot with PostmarketOS, and while it is very cool, it is still very, very far from Android. Even more so if you don't run waydroid and hope for people to write good mobile apps with some kind of C++ cross-platform framework like Qt.

Re: Google is about to make life more difficult for custom ROM fans

#66

Post by palata »

thunderbong wrote: post #64
nickelpro wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

99.9% of consumers do not care about this and are totally willing (and expect) to connect their phone to their Google/Apple account Not saying the grievance isn't valid, but don't fool yourself

Well, it's not like they have a choice, isn't it?

Hmm I think it's getting pretty easy today to get a de-Googled Android phone that "just works". You can buy Murena phones that come with /e/OS pre-installed (I did that). Probably the same with GrapheneOS/CalyxOS/etc.

Users are lazy and don't want to take such a risk, but they do have a choice.

Re: Google is about to make life more difficult for custom ROM fans

#67

Post by colordrops »

nickelpro wrote: post #52
quaintdev wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's getting more and more difficult to use Android without a Google Account. Good that is how they shoot themselves in the foot. The more they do this, the more people will realise they need alternative and ditch Android.

99.9% of consumers do not care about this and are totally willing (and expect) to connect their phone to their Google/Apple account Not saying the grievance isn't valid, but don't fool yourself

It doesn't take a 100 million people to build a new phone ecosystem. Only a few thousand, if even that. If there is no alternative, it will get built and be usable. I avoid other open phone projects because I don't have the time and AOSP works fine, but if Google breaks it beyond usability, you better believe I'll be jumping onto one of the fully open projects even if it has major limitations.

Re: Google is about to make life more difficult for custom ROM fans

#68

Post by jraph »

palata wrote: post #58
jraph wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because going for a mobile linux distro does not involve jumping through hoops? Parent said " add more hoops to jump through". We are speaking about the direction and intents. Google makes it harder and harder to avoid the Google ecosystem. Mobile Linux does not add hoops to jump through. The intent is making things easier as time passes. Of course today all this is still experimental and of course you need to jump…

> Parent said "add more hoops to jump through". But parent was talking about a comparison with running a Linux mobile distro on a PinePhone. Using PostmarketOS or similar (and don't get me wrong, I find PostmarketOS very cool) is still orders of magnitudes harder than using a custom ROM like /e/OS or CalyxOS. And those custom ROMs are improving fast, too. > Mobile Linux does not add hoops to jump through. The intent…

> But parent was talking about a comparison with running a Linux mobile distro on a PinePhone

But the comparison works. No mobile linux distro adds hoops to jump through.

Of course (Almost?) nobody thinks that mobile linux is as convenient / usable as Android right know.

For many of us it's about developing an ecosystem that's truly open source / that does not rely on Google.

> But again, I think dropping support for those two (basic, let's be honest) apps is really not a problem.

No, indeed. The custom rom will survive. There seems to be correct alternative apps, and someone might even put the effort in maintaining the AOSP ones.

It's just a symptom / a clue of the broader issue.

Re: Google is about to make life more difficult for custom ROM fans

#69

Post by nirimda »

nickelpro wrote: post #52
quaintdev wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's getting more and more difficult to use Android without a Google Account. Good that is how they shoot themselves in the foot. The more they do this, the more people will realise they need alternative and ditch Android.

99.9% of consumers do not care about this and are totally willing (and expect) to connect their phone to their Google/Apple account Not saying the grievance isn't valid, but don't fool yourself

99.9% of consumers probably have never heard about custom ROMs, and I'd reckon 99.9% of consumers who do hear about custom ROMs have boring old fashioned objections like "will it break my warranty" and "if it ain't broke don't fix it" and "I wonder what's on Netflix tonight/I think I shall be washing my hair".

For the few people who distrust Google enough to install LineageOS or some such, they probably distrust Google enough to not care too much about not using Google. Who is in this sweetspot where they want (i.e. install and use, not merely aspire to installing and using) a custom ROM but having no access to proprietary Google APIs is a bridge too far?

Re: Google is about to make life more difficult for custom ROM fans

#70

Post by Grimburger »

deng wrote: post #33

Has the author of this article ever used a custom ROM? There are so many free alternatives for these apps out there. If I remember correctly, LineageOS ships with their own version of Dialer/Messages anyway. I usually replace them with the versions of SimpleMobileTools, which work just fine. The main difficulty for custom ROMs are not these standard apps. The real issues are bootloaders which cannot be unlocked, undo…

> Just look how Google effectively broke the AuroraStore App recently.

For anyone who has been hit by this, you can workaround the api issue by long pressing on a playstore http link and clicking open in app (aurora icon).

So you can't search using the app anymore, but if you have the link to what you want you can still install without playstore or a google account.

It's frustrating but isn't the end.

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