I have tons of apps I installed (mostly from Play Store) since like 2012, and that were grandfathered in through Samsung Switch from phone to phone as I replaced them with one another. A lot of data in them, too. Will they, and the data, just ... disappear?! When exactly do I have to do the 24 hour song and dance to prevent that? All of this sounds too bad to be true, honestly.
Your phone is about to stop being yours
351–360 of 927 posts
Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours
#352I've resigned to the fact that I'll need to use two phones, one with locked down Android/iOS for banking applications and government services (those require strong bank ID around these parts), another with some kind of a Linux or unlocked Android for literally everything else. Oh well, such is life, most people don't care enough about this to pressure Google/Apple/banks/governments into yielding. A big reason why a n…
In my informed opinion, anybody who does banking on their phone is taking a big and unnecessary risk. I wish I could say more.
> anybody who does banking on their phone is taking a big and unnecessary risk
It is not necessarily a matter of choice. Besides what the other commenter notes about 2FA, in some countries banks have been removing functionality from their online-banking website, and you can only do certain things in the phone app.
Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours
#353Okay, so buy a new phone I guess that is yours?
Sure, and don't get to go on public transport (or pay surcharges for paper tickets, depending on if your country still has that option), don't get to participate when everyone else can add music from their phone at a party, don't get to buy leftover food because the proprietary app doesn't run on there (it kicks me out for fraud detection half the time already), don't get to visit various websites that fingerprint your device and find that it might be a 'bot' (hello Cloudflare proxying about half of high-income countries' Internet), you pay extra for groceries compared to people that get discounts in some app, cannot login to government services, cannot do most things that requires being 13 years or older once this EU age verification app is implemented (no more HN for you!), etc etc. Very great option, welcome back to the soviet computing era
It's not optional anymore to own a Google/Apple smartphone in a lot of places. You can play this "just vote with your wallet" game but it's not a winning move
Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours
#354Let 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.
> Why is this acceptable for phones but would not for the case above?
PCs happened by accident.
Before the PC, people had TVs - devices not for creating, but for passively consuming content made by big corporations and the state. And we had games consoles - devices not for creating, but for playing games made by a medium-sized company, with strict approval by a huge company (who want a cut). Strictly censored to be age-appropriate, naturally. Pirate radio? Straight to jail.
Before that people had newspapers - media for passively consuming, intended for mass readership, written at the behest of rich newspaper barons with certain political opinions they're keen to push.
And after the PC, we have smartphones - devices not for creating, but for consuming content feeds, curated by big corporations, with rich owners with certain political opinions they're keen to push. A huge company eager to take a cut. A tiny screen, and a keyboard that puts curly braces three keypresses deep. Can't even debug a web page without connecting to a PC. And soon to be strictly censored to be age-appropriate.
The PC is really the outlier here.
Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours
#355Earlier quoted context omitted.
ADB is not the only option. Do the 24hs wait then the experience will not be much different than what already happens today: https://imgur.com/a/Z9hoYIh
Doing a 24h wait _is_ much different from what happens today. That's the whole point. If my two options to run an application of my choosing are to use ADB to flip a switch or to wait a day, that is ridiculous. I am only slightly comforted by the fact that desktop computing had set (some) self-ownership precedence before the current restrictive computing hegemony took control, though even that is eroding.
Wait until you find out about games consoles
Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours
#356The fact that many Android bootloaders are not allowed to be unlocked by users means, by definition, these devices were never yours to begin with. It is not Google taking away your ability to use your sideloaded apps on your device because true, unlimited device freedom was never yours to begin with.
Hence my phone selection spreadsheet having a column for unlockability, making sure I don't forget to check it. I'm so used to root, I'd full-on buy the phone just assuming it's a thing when some vendors indeed block you
That this is now rolled out ecosystem-wide by the central controlling party is a significant change from some vendors being assholes
Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours
#357Vote with everything you have/can. Money, attitude, consumption, political connections. Make these greedy (beep) regret it. Users and developers stop using Play store.
Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours
#358Let 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.
The vendor lock-in scenario for desktop hardware already exists with the latest x86 generation of gaming consoles. Gaming consoles are locked down because the hardware is subsidized with the expectation of revenue from the digital marketplaces they provide. The yet-to-be-released Steam Machine is not subsidized and is unlocked. Steam is a OS agnostic digital marketplace, so it doesn't matter what OS you install on th…
We have vendor locked-in hardware as well (blowing fuses on threadripper/epyc to disable running on a different mainboard)
Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours
#359Earlier quoted context omitted.
While not equivalent to a true iOS app, PWA is a decent option that allows you to circumvent the app store restrictions. If you are trying to build apps primarily for yourself, it's a decent option.
Doesn’t that require you to host it and have it available on the open web, though? Is there a host that allows you to, for free, not only HTML/CSS/JS but also access to arbitrary tools and bespoke scripts on the backend?
As a lark, I built a set of personal productivity apps that are delivered as standalone local webpages. Works surprisingly well on Android, haven't tested on iOS.
Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours
#360Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even after Google puts this crap in place, you can still uplodad your own apps to your own Android devices, using ADB. Doing the same for iOS, using Xcode, costs you USD 100 or more (depending on country) per year . I'm in no way defending Google here, just pointing out you're going from bad to worse and think it's a good thing.
Not. You don’t need to pay $100 to upload your app to an iPhone, even with XCode for iOS 26
Technically not but the devil is in the details. Having to reinstall the app every 7 days and a limit of one app doesn’t even pass the bare minimum.
Jolla has a prelaunch campaign, decent phones for 200€. I might just as well grab one. Sick of having a phone which is more expensive than my laptop but I can barely use.