Your phone is about to stop being yours • Hacker News Board

Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours

#531

Post by pngwen » Wed, Apr 29, 2026, 4:05 AM UTC

rybosworld wrote: post #305

fainpul wrote: post #136

Earlier 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.

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.

Actually I have been tinkering with PWA as a way to remake some of my toy apps. Though a lot of the automations I made for Android can be replicated through Apple’s Shortcuts app.

The biggest loss for me was Termux. I had lots of scripts and such that I ran, plus just having a Linux environment in my pocket was nice. Luckily I found ish which gives me alpine Linux on top of a virtual x86 machine as provided by a JITC layer. I can host PWA apps out of that environment for local use. Of course I can also ssh to my unix like machines from there too.

I am starting to tinker with swift a bit more too. As with google, I could buy a dev key to deploy my own apps only this way I have all the window dressing and end to end encryption on cloud storage.

Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours

#532

Post by beej71 » Wed, Apr 29, 2026, 4:06 AM UTC

rybosworld wrote: post #305

fainpul wrote: post #136

Earlier 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.

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.

I love PWAs. I just hope they never get too popular, or Google will kill them.

Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours

#533

Post by zackb » Wed, Apr 29, 2026, 4:10 AM UTC

WestCoader wrote: post #480

Cider9986 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

[flagged]

I agree with your sentiment, but I want 100% Linux about a year ago and it's been much better than OSX. Yes, there are downsides - I really miss the iPhone "continuity". But the bugs, gatekeeper, liquid glass, ads in system settings, etc in OSX dwarf the rough edges on Linux desktop.

For non-power users OSX is still a no-brainer, but for a programmer I feel like Apple's left us no alternative.

Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours

#534

Post by kuhsaft » Wed, Apr 29, 2026, 4:18 AM UTC

seba_dos1 wrote: post #528

kuhsaft wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just consider how many features stop working or get severely degraded on various phones when you use a clean AOSP build on them. That's mainly because of device trees. The firmware also isn't distributed via separate flash storage on the device, but I don't consider that making a difference. It's still proprietary firmware running on proprietary hardware. On Qualcomm-based Pixel devices, cellular, WiFi, Bluetooth,…

> That's mainly because of device trees. Huh? The device tree is the one thing trivially recoverable from the blob. I'm talking about drivers, the same kind as when you install, let's say, the non-free Nvidia driver on a PC. They run as part of the OS and handle various stuff, most commonly comms like VoLTE/VoWiFi, but often also camera ISPs, GPUs, fingerprint readers etc. > are all isolated and sandboxed So isolated…

I see. So it is better in the sense that the drivers are open-source. Though the drivers in Android/GrapheneOS are not open-source, I believe the drivers are also isolated from full kernel-level access.

But it still brings the point that you can't make a phone without proprietary chips and firmware from the mobile industry giants.

> You want to reflash it before use, obviously.

I think that is non-obvious to the majority of users buying a phone.

> The SoC supports High Assurance Boot, you can burn your key into its efuses and have it only ever accept software that's cryptographically signed by you.

An important consideration for consumers is that their data is secure if they lose their phone. Without a secure boot process by default, that's a hard sell for the common masses.

Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours

#535

Post by dang » Wed, Apr 29, 2026, 4:23 AM UTC

kiproping wrote: post #98

TGower wrote: post #52

This 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.

[flagged]

"Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours

#536

Post by xigoi » Wed, Apr 29, 2026, 4:24 AM UTC

unrelat3d wrote: post #286

gslepak wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or choose freedom. I've been enjoying GrapheneOS for a couple of years now and recommend it.

Uh huh. Freedom. In some empty rhetorical sense. Meanwhile you still have 99.999% of the usual obligations. Go freely walk out your local supermarket without paying. But your Android phone is unlocked #winning

Are you comparing installing apps on your phone to theft?

Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours

#537

Post by xigoi » Wed, Apr 29, 2026, 4:27 AM UTC

Cider9986 wrote: post #214

theK wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or /e/

GrapheneOS is significantly more secure, more private, and more free. Not sure why you would use /e/.

Because in order to use Graphene, you have to financially support the same company that is making Android less free.

Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours

#538

Post by xigoi » Wed, Apr 29, 2026, 4:32 AM UTC

hn_acc1 wrote: post #448

seniorThrowaway wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>CalDAV, CardDAV, and SMB are baked into iOS, whereas these are onerous to set up on Android I can only speak to SMB but it is not hard on Android. I use a longtime third party app so not sure what the state of native support is but it works just fine for me, including over VPN

Which app?

I would guess DAVx⁵.

Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours

#539

Post by warkdarrior » Wed, Apr 29, 2026, 4:42 AM UTC

lucb1e wrote: post #345

larodi wrote: post #94

Phone is yours. Software it runs not.

I realize this is a different discussion, but shouldn't it be? The way that it has been since home computers were a thing, as far as I know at least? I don't think we'd stand where we stand today if Commodore and other hardware vendors had required a license on every piece of software from the get-go (if we pretend that there was a known, exportable, and safe signature scheme back then)

Should the GPL3 software you download and run also be yours?

Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours

#540

Post by leke » Wed, Apr 29, 2026, 4:43 AM UTC

NDlurker wrote: post #30

>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.

This is going to make it more difficult for non-open source projects to get a foothold in the future because people are not going to trust a promise any more. Like, I have this thing called a smart phone. Is it open source? No? Oh well.