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GrapheneOS Overhauled Default Apps and Secure Clipboard

grapheneos.social

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Re: GrapheneOS Overhauled Default Apps and Secure Clipboard

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the concern? They are working with Motorola as a manufacturer. It'll probably be a hard fork eventually but why not make it work in the meantime.

Seriously, I don't see a mediocre android provider like Motorola running and maintaining a hard fork. Forking is all easy, keeping it up to date year after year as codebases diverge is a whole different story. I could see Samsung doing it. But they won't, they're too good buddies with Google. But they have the resources. A Motorola no. The grapheneos team won't either, maintaining a disparate fork and introducing new…

I think graphene could maintain a hard fork with manufacturer support (Motorola). At least for a while. Long term viability is an open question.

Re: GrapheneOS Overhauled Default Apps and Secure Clipboard

#72
post #49

Graphene is clearly bullish on Android, but I have no idea why. The writing is on the wall, Google is slowly asphyxiating AOSP.

Yes RCS is barely a standard worth implementing, let alone the best one. Make SMS/MMS and XMPP work together seamlessly in one app, forget RCS.

Remember Pidgin and Trillium?

Re: GrapheneOS Overhauled Default Apps and Secure Clipboard

#73

> RCS isn't an open platform in practice. It isn't even as open as SMS/MMS. It heavily depends on proprietary Google and carrier infrastructure in practice. We can start by replicating Google's approach and then we can work on only using carrier services for carriers where it's actually supported. What is the point of RCS though? It seems to be strictly inferior to Signal. It seems a Google product meant to serve Goo…

From [0], it seems that RCS can use the cellular signal instead of LTE or 5G: > In cases where RCS is able to operate over cellular networks without data, it supports messaging as well as file transfer, enriched calling, and more. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Communication_Services

In LTE and 5G there exists no cellular signal without data. That was a 2G/3G thing. Since 4G everything is data. The separate sms and voice services are gone. And 3G is rapidly being deprecated.

Re: GrapheneOS Overhauled Default Apps and Secure Clipboard

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only benefit is sending higher DPI pictures between android and ios

It makes group messaging work a lot better, too. Previously, group chats with a mixture of ios and android users were really buggy leading to iPhone users significantly preferring group chats with all ios, which led to some social exclusion for android users in the US, leading to market dominance for iPhones. Now, with RCS, you can make a functional group chat across platforms and you don't have to convince anybody t…

Well that is if that user uses Google messages. I certainly don't even have it installed.

Re: GrapheneOS Overhauled Default Apps and Secure Clipboard

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The preinstalled apps are part of the OS.

That cannot be true, when I install e.g., Ubuntu system, there are plenty of applications installed for me, with incompatible licenses.

Can you please elaborate on what you mean?

Ubuntu does not aim to be a permissively-licensed system. It can include copyleft (e.g. GPL) and permissive (e.g. MIT) without issue.

Permissively-licensed systems like FreeBSD and GrapheneOS cannot include GPL code if they want to remain permissive.

Re: GrapheneOS Overhauled Default Apps and Secure Clipboard

#76
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the concern? They are working with Motorola as a manufacturer. It'll probably be a hard fork eventually but why not make it work in the meantime.

If they hard fork, a lot of apps that are generally "necessary for the average person" (e.g. Uber, banking apps, Gmail, Whatsapp/Wechat/Line) might stop working.

Sure, but what could graphene do in the meantime? It's either make it work for the moment or stop those apps from working today.

I'd like to see them lay more ground work for web apps but it's a tough spot and the easiest choice at the moment is to continue with AOSP.

Re: GrapheneOS Overhauled Default Apps and Secure Clipboard

#77
post #3

Very good idea! Google abandoned these long ago. I don't really get why so many Americans want RCS to succeed though. Do you guys not remember when carriers charged 10p/text? Why on earth would you want to give any power at all back to those people?

Americans have had unlimited texting plans for much longer than Europeans. I'm pretty sure most Americans had unlimited texts before Whatsapp existed, so there was never the move to it for economic reasons.

Yes I think this is the main reason for WhatsApp's popularity in Europe. Our providers were hanging on to sms as a cash cow and they were pretty much the most expensive bits you could send.

Malicious providers like kpn in the Netherlands even sought to charge extra for WhatsApp traffic because they lost so much revenue. However the EU shot that down hard under net neutrality.

But I remember it well and this is why I always disable RCS. I don't ever want to give my provider the chance to do that again. And I don't trust Google either. SMS is completely dead here too. It's been years since anyone sent me a personal message. It's just spam and poorly implemented 2FA shit.

It's not an issue here in Spain anyway. The only phone with iPhones are rich expats. Most of the people I know use cheap budget androids.

Re: GrapheneOS Overhauled Default Apps and Secure Clipboard

#78
post #31

Certainly, with Opus 5 and GPT-6, modernizing or even completely rewriting self-contained, non-critical tools seems like a Friday afternoon job now. I wonder however how important this is, in the grand scheme of things. I use GrapheneOS and the bundled messaging app is serviceable. It isn't pretty, but it gets the job done.

They are using AI [1]. I don't think messaging app is non-critical though. [1] https://github.com/GrapheneOS/Camera/tree/compose

I dunno. If they're using AI, it's well controlled. I don't see a lot of artifacts you usually get from full-on vibe-coding.

Re: GrapheneOS Overhauled Default Apps and Secure Clipboard

#79

Graphene is clearly bullish on Android, but I have no idea why. The writing is on the wall, Google is slowly asphyxiating AOSP.

> Graphene is clearly bullish on Android, but I have no idea why.

Their resources are historically better spent hardening vs literally reinventing the wheel.

Multiple variables in that equation have changed - so it could be interesting where we end up.

Someone (else!) may yet arise chasing their stated model without Android, as well.

Re: GrapheneOS Overhauled Default Apps and Secure Clipboard

#80

I hope they replace the AOSP keyboard with FUTO keyboard. I'm mostly fine with the other stock apps, but that keyboard was the one thing I absolutely had to end up replacing due to its jenky behavior.

I wish Futo had the ability to use a typing heat map for more accurate predictions like SwiftKey. It constantly suggests "AMD" when I am trying to type "and". I have fat thumbs OK! I don't even have the caps on and I RARELY talk about AMD. It's just the one thing I miss. I do find the predictions generally less accurate as well, but perfectly usable.
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