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Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS

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Re: Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS

#781

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I switched to an iPhone more in an act to protest Google and I regret my decision. Things didn't get easier, they got harder. I mean for christ's sake, there's no universal gesture for "back". Do I swipe from the side? Press the x button at the top left? The top right? Is there no option I can find so I just force close the app? When I swipe to text with autocorrect turned off why does it change the word I swiped AND…

I switched from iPhone to Android and I was fully expecting a world of pain but I was (am?) pleasantly surprised. The back button thing is real. When I have to use someone else's iPhone I immediately feel the lack of consistency. And KDE Connect is fantastic to use. So many things on iPhones are just annoying for no reason. I don't want to buy a 1000 dollar computer to look at my photos, come on now.

I'm not too big of a fan of KDE content but totally get why people use it.

I do want to suggest you install termux, and do it from fdroid rather than the play store.

I'm guessing you're on Wayland, so check out ydotool. (If still on x s/x/y) there's a lot of cool things to do with tools like that. Basic one is use your phone as a keyboard (like KDE connect can do, but I found it more reliable and KDEC doesn't play well with VPNs)

I wrote a similar script in Apple Shortcuts and... wtf is this bullshit. My files backup Shortcut is even uglier. I'm incredibly impressed at the hacky shit I was forced to do just to backup photos... I almost would rather pay for an app that does it. I almost would rather learn how to write an iOS app. Just to... replace a 10 line bash script -__-

Since I'm still not a big fan of Google my next phone is going to be a Pixel and I'll install Graphene on day 1. That is, unless something better comes out :)

Re: Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS

#782
post #686

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what I observe. Many non technical people have ethical concerns. This fantasy among the technical crowd here that the general public only cares about cheap and convenient, which is at best condescending, needs to die. Convincing oneself of this only takes meeting non technical people.

Every non-technical person I’ve talked to doesn’t seem to care. In many cases I think it’s because they don’t really understand or the threat is too abstract. For example, collecting information to display ads and manipulate an algorithm to influence how a person thinks, feels, and consumes, for fun and profit. Since they can’t see it, think they’re above it, and see stuff that makes them laugh, they just keep going.…

I think that group of people is divided between those who think they're above it and don't care at all and those who do care but feel powerless to stop it and try not to think about it. Both end up looking the same on the surface

Re: Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS

#783

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to be a custom rom guy in high school, and I also used to develop apps for my nexus 5. Now I have an iPhone and I save the tech nerding for work hours. I definitely would not have gotten this far without my custom rom days, but now my phone just needs to do phone things so I can work on robots instead.

I like iPhone and won't go back to android because I am comfortably using a 6 year old iPhone on the latest operating system with no real issues. Planning to keep using it until it stops getting security updates, or the hardware fails.

I think the assertion here is there are no Android phones that don't have long term support. Apple compared to Google Pixel phones are basically the same longevity today[0][1].

With a lot of Android devices they'll have a lifespan even beyond that. Although there are choices to make at that point. You just don't have the option with Apple.

[0] https://endoflife.date/iphone [1] https://endoflife.date/pixel

Re: Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS

#784
post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think so. Motorola Mobility is owned by the Chinese Lenovo, making it an adversary-owned entity in the eyes of most Western governments. Even with a fully open-source OS and first-class MDM, the company would struggle to gain significant market share. The Hardware Root of Trust and the binary blobs would still be compiled by a firm that Western governments view as a fundamental supply-chain risk.

> Lenovo (/ləˈnoʊvoʊ/ lə-NOH-voh, Chinese: 联想; pinyin: Liánxiǎng), is a Hong Kong–based Chinese-American[11] multinational corporation > Lenovo originated as an offshoot of a state-owned research institute.[14] Then known as Legend and distributing foreign IT products, co-founder Liu Chuanzhi incorporated[2] Legend in Hong Kong in an attempt to raise capital and was successfully permitted to build computers in China…

[deleted]

Re: Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS

#785

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I switched from iPhone to Android and I was fully expecting a world of pain but I was (am?) pleasantly surprised. The back button thing is real. When I have to use someone else's iPhone I immediately feel the lack of consistency. And KDE Connect is fantastic to use. So many things on iPhones are just annoying for no reason. I don't want to buy a 1000 dollar computer to look at my photos, come on now.

I'm not too big of a fan of KDE content but totally get why people use it. I do want to suggest you install termux, and do it from fdroid rather than the play store. I'm guessing you're on Wayland, so check out ydotool. (If still on x s/x/y) there's a lot of cool things to do with tools like that. Basic one is use your phone as a keyboard (like KDE connect can do, but I found it more reliable and KDEC doesn't play we…

I'll check out ydotool. I did a bunch of bullshit with shortcuts, too. I had one that would change my screen from grayscale to color when I opened the photos app. Of course it only worked, like, 80% of the time so that was great.

I have a pixel 9a with Graphene right now and I'm very happy with it. Great hardware, great price, great software. The one blindspot is messaging, which is a big problem in the US. RCS doesn't work on Graphene, and SMS is basically the worst thing ever, so I use Signal as much as I can. I'm hoping one of these days RCS becomes an actual open standard with competing implementations but... I won't hold my breath.

Re: Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS

#786

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? That seems odd, where are you looking? Through your Carrier or just for unlocked devices? Depending on who you're with, usually you can just grab an unlocked device and your Carrier to register the device. I've only ever used Google Fi and AT&T though I'm not sure about the others. Searching duckduckgo for 'Unlocked {device}' returns a lot of results on the shopping tab for phones on Amazon and eBay like the…

They are different kinds of unlocked! Unlocked generally just means "can be used with any carrier". For example this Samsung S22 I am on is "unlocked". But Samsung hasn't allowed unlocking the bootloader on their phones for many years. And they are far far from the only ones in that state. You basically have to research each specific phone far ahead of time. And beware! Because there's, for example, lots of guides te…

[dead]

Re: Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS

#787
post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think so. Motorola Mobility is owned by the Chinese Lenovo, making it an adversary-owned entity in the eyes of most Western governments. Even with a fully open-source OS and first-class MDM, the company would struggle to gain significant market share. The Hardware Root of Trust and the binary blobs would still be compiled by a firm that Western governments view as a fundamental supply-chain risk.

> Lenovo (/ləˈnoʊvoʊ/ lə-NOH-voh, Chinese: 联想; pinyin: Liánxiǎng), is a Hong Kong–based Chinese-American[11] multinational corporation > Lenovo originated as an offshoot of a state-owned research institute.[14] Then known as Legend and distributing foreign IT products, co-founder Liu Chuanzhi incorporated[2] Legend in Hong Kong in an attempt to raise capital and was successfully permitted to build computers in China…

I guess you're too young to remember Lenovo buying IBM's PC business and folks complaining about security since they were Chinese?

Re: Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS

#789
post #642

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just install Debian (or whatever) on it, instead of suffering Windows?

Because it was a work machine?

Yes...? Didn't stop me before. Unless it's some locked down, domain-joined e-waste like I have now. Public sector IT policy literally prevents me from doing certain tasks at my job, and makes others take four times as long. Not even my email works properly.

Last job was a lot of SSH and webshit like Jira, Confluence, Odoo and Google apps. They didn't care if you used Amiga OS as long as your work got done.

Re: Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS

#790

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not too big of a fan of KDE content but totally get why people use it. I do want to suggest you install termux, and do it from fdroid rather than the play store. I'm guessing you're on Wayland, so check out ydotool. (If still on x s/x/y) there's a lot of cool things to do with tools like that. Basic one is use your phone as a keyboard (like KDE connect can do, but I found it more reliable and KDEC doesn't play we…

I'll check out ydotool. I did a bunch of bullshit with shortcuts, too. I had one that would change my screen from grayscale to color when I opened the photos app. Of course it only worked, like, 80% of the time so that was great. I have a pixel 9a with Graphene right now and I'm very happy with it. Great hardware, great price, great software. The one blindspot is messaging, which is a big problem in the US. RCS doesn…

That's good to hear about graphene. I've been able to get most of my friends to move to signal but yeah the walled gardens are annoying. Does graphene not support the same RCS that Google does?

As for Android, I think the real magic happens when you just realize your phone is another computer and you can do normal computer things with it. It just starts unlocking so many doors. One thing I like to do is have my desktop sit behind my TV. Big screen for movies and games. For everything else, there's ssh. Your phone is just another terminal in that environment. But the modern version of a terminal means your local machine can actually do meaningful things too. Tbh, it's really what the big tech companies are doing too, they just pretend they aren't.

Also, since you're new to Android check out revanced. I'm not sure if you need this on graphene but you can recompile apps. Mostly used for removing ads but there's more to it than that.

I'm hoping one of these days we can just treat computers like computers. Stop creating these walled gardens. It really slows down innovation and honestly, I believe the big companies would make more money doing it. After all, their whole business sits on top of open source work. The computer is nothing without the program. The smart phone is nothing without the app. Why can't we recognize that the success of these machines is that they're environments. You can't create a product for everybody, but building environments doesn't have the same limitations

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