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Your phone is about to stop being yours

keepandroidopen.org

201–210 of 927 posts

Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I get the feeling that clamping down on useful functionality is often an unfortunate side-effect of closing down paths that are being exploited by criminals to harm users. What should Google do when a change they are making to protect regular less-technical users breaks functionality needed by more advanced users?

> What should Google do when a change they are making to protect regular less-technical users breaks functionality needed by more advanced users?

Put it behind an USB ADB only toggle and be more transparent to avoid slippery slope?

Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Saying there is no opt-out is just false I can't see where one can opt-out of this new behavior and into the existing behavior, only a description of the new behavior's bypass (which is not the same thing at all) > easy to bypass the cooling-off period with ADB I don't think this is a reasonable use of the term "easy". I should be able to give my non-technical friend an apk and they can use it right then, with the…

The way you give your non-technical friends an APK and they just install it is by you signing it.

I should not have to enter into a business relationship with google just to hand my non-technical friend an APK any more than I have to enter into a business relationship with the Linux Foundation to hand my friend an AppImage.

Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours

#203
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They really aren't. The number of apps requiring Play Integrity grows every day, my own bank's app hasn't worked in years and I've long given up on it, I just use it on a second stock device now. And Google has an answer to the "just install the APK from somewhere else" workaround, too. Many apps now integrate a check that prevents them from running if they're not properly linked to the Play Store.

Are banking apps much more useful than banking websites, anyway?

Depends highly on the bank and what part of the world you're in. Some banks have only a website and no app. Some banks have only an app and no website. Some require an app to access the website. The landscape is widely varied.

Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours

#204
post #75

To be sincere, they were never truly ours. A proof of that is they were able to come up with this, and you don't have a way to reject it. What we actually need are (open) alternatives, not to double down on Google's ecosystem and Google-controlled OS. We need to control the device we bought and be able to run whatever we wish on it. Just like we do on PCs.

Is it time to bring back the Windows phone? I keed I keed! But unfortunately there really isn't a great alternative. I painfully attempted to use Ubuntu Touch and its always the same thing. The lack of available apps, the lack of app development in general for the platform was pretty eye opening. Add in having it only run on really old devices isn't much help either. Its promising, but a long ways off even from some…

I wouldn’t mind a 64-bit build of Symbian or WebOS on my phone, actually. Or, hell, Plan 9.

Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours

#205
post #16

Let 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.

To be fair, many early computers were tied to the OS.

Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours

#206
post #186

I don't see why megacorporations and governments are allowed to control the computer I carry around in my pocket, while I'm not.

Because it's their creation.

I don't know if that is sarcasm, but a chair I buy is mine to do whatever I want with it. Same goes for clothes, a mattress, paint, or any other non-software enabled physical item. Why does having software/hardware make a difference?

Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours

#207
post #68

This change has served me well! I have been a Mac OS X users for years who used an android phone. As soon as google announced their impending walled garden status, I went out and bought into the ios eco system. I have really been enjoying my iphone, ipad, and apple watch. You see, the only value that Android really offered me was the ability to run my own code on my own device. Since they are taking that away that ju…

GrapheneOS is the answer. Apple's software is really buggy compared to Android and Linux.

Or /e/
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