I think it's time to visit an Apple Store and try out the Apple ecosystem. I haven't used an Apple device in a long time.
Your phone is about to stop being yours
121–130 of 927 posts
Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours
#122[deleted]
Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a pixel 10 pro and have tried no less than 5 times to get my apps to work on graphene, no luck. I'm no slouch either, I've developed for android for almost a decade. I'm not disagreeing with ya, just adding a comment so folks are aware that the "Graphene just works" crowd is sometimes a bit hyperbolic.
I've been using it for a bit over a year. Installed in a few minutes thanks to WebUSB. A bit of research needed to set the right permissions on Google Play Services. After that? I only had one application fail due to Graphene's memory allocator. No weird bugs, no need to restart like some siblings are commenting. As close to the "Graphene just works" as it could be. However, I'm not heavy into Google's ecosystem. Goo…
The interaction of secondary users with RCS is borked to all hell. It just plain doesn't work.
Firefox + stock keyboard stopped properly working three days ago, it's back to normal now. No idea what that was about. Restarting was the only way I found to get things working again during that period.
While on the stock Android keyboard, it is clear that the Google one is much better at correcting my taps than the stock one. My typo count has gone up significantly.
Every several weeks the mobile connectivity stops working and nothing short of a restart will get it working again. This might be a bad interaction of the very weird way Google Fi works with a secondary user account.
I've encountered one case of the phone shutting itself off to install an update overnight and not turning on, making me miss my morning alarm.
In the US, there's no way to side step the lack of tap to pay.
Getting apps to work with Android Auto requires some finessing.
These are the things I've encountered in the last 2 months of using Graphene.
Aside from all of that, I really like everything else about the OS. As it stands, it does lacks polish when straying outside of the common path. Not using a secondary account, nor Google Fi on an eSIM, and using the stock browser would likely improve my experience significantly.
I haven't encountered an app that wouldn't work yet (but have installed play services as I do want to use Android Auto).
I would still recommend Grapheme for normal-ish users, as long as you don't go "paranoid mode" with secondary accounts and skipping play services or don't want to use the phone for tons of things beyond phone calls and web browsing. The base experience is that much calmer than stock Android on Pixel.
Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours
#124>Android's openness was never just a feature. It was the promise that distinguished it from iPhone. Millions chose Android for exactly that reason. Google is now revoking that promise unilaterally, on devices already in people's pockets, because they've decided they have enough market dominance and regulatory capture to get away with it. This is why I've stuck with Android for the past 15 years.
For you, is the openness of Android appealing as a matter of principle or does it enable you to do things you couldn't otherwise do?
The openness of Android also acts as a check of sorts on how restrictive the walled garden can get. If google were to clamp down on useful functionality in the play store, then you could always install apks yourself. But if the latter is no longer an option, then there's much more temptation to google for the former.
Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours
#125This is a wild misrepresentation of the situation. Saying there is no opt-out is just false, they even provide the information on how users can opt-out. The "mandatory 24 hour cooling-off period" is also misleading, it's easy to bypass the cooling-off period with ADB.
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Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours
#126>Android's openness was never just a feature. It was the promise that distinguished it from iPhone. Millions chose Android for exactly that reason. Google is now revoking that promise unilaterally, on devices already in people's pockets, because they've decided they have enough market dominance and regulatory capture to get away with it. This is why I've stuck with Android for the past 15 years.
For you, is the openness of Android appealing as a matter of principle or does it enable you to do things you couldn't otherwise do?
I actually use the ability to install custom software on Android. I actually use the ability for Android apps to bundle JITs, and language interpreters, and other things that allow you to extend the app at runtime. The Apple walled garden would be unusable for me. And moves like this one to turn the Android ecosystem into the Apple ecosystem will generally be regressions.
If anything, I'd like more openness in Android. For instance, apps should not have any control over what data I can back up; I should be able to back up every aspect of every app, restore it to a new phone, and apps should not be allowed to care.
Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours
#127I don't care, I run Graphene, and my phone is definitely mine. Most Android apps just work, and the ones that don't are the kind of malware I am happy to do without.
That's a great attitude until slowly but surely 90% of apps used in day to day life won't function for you: banking, dating, social media, e-commerce, communication/messaging etc slowly freeze you out.
A hidden benefit is having to decide now whether you actually need these things.
Messaging apps will continue working.
Banking apps made by reasonable companies will also. In days of banking being competitive and rather open with many providers offering good value, it's so easy to switch providers. Granted I am relatively poor and keep my banking simple, but I doubt card providers want to increase friction either. After Revolut started requiring >basic integrity it took me appx 1 day to switch to n26 and nothing of value was lost.
Not being able to use socialmedia, e-commerce, and dating apps sounds great.
Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours
#128"Tap the build number 7 times" ... "wait 24 hours"
Throw a pinch of salt over your left (wait, no ... right) shoulder. Spin around clockwise 3 times. Read the Rosary twice.
AHA! So, they are allowing users to keep doing what they want.
Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours
#129Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours
#130Let me play out a scenario, imagine to use a Desktop Hardware like a complete built rig, you would need a specific OS like Windows 11 and you could not run Linux on it, just because it's a vendor lock-in. Why is this acceptable for phones but would not for the case above? I know a lot of people don't care, and that's ok, but we should root for an open choice for the users.
If computers were invented by the Silicon Valley of the 2020s, this would absolutely be the case.