this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2025
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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You bought a phone but is leasing the software. It's not yours to do with as you please.
Have you considered using fully open source android versions?
The few options that exist (along with their negatives) can't be installed on my phone. N20U is still pretty much locked down.
Then do what I do when buying your next phone, find a custom ROM you like, check their "comparability" page, find devices that are fully compatible, preferably officially supported (community build usually work fine as well) and use that as a shopping list when browsing for phones.
Open source Android is a thing??? TIL that might be my solution to this long term since I sideload apps regularly.
Just be mindful of what ROM you're putting on your device. That ROM can still have access to everything you have on there so it should be a source you trust.
Search for your device name and "custom ROM" to see what's out there. Some are completely Google free, others retain different levels of Google play support, including downloading existing purchases.
No custom ROM on a recent smartphone technically gives you a fully open source Android system when they rely on vendor-provided proprietary blobs in order for basic hardware functionality to work at all. Unless you want to go without a modem, GPS, and likely more depending on your model, at which point it's functionally no longer a smartphone.
Open-source custom ROMs are at least far more open-source than the alternative in most of the ways that matter most, including the ability to change the code in order to remove app installation restrictions, to avoid Google's telemetry, etc.
Would the proprietary blobs in the baseband hardware stop the end user from installing software, which is the topic of concern?
If no, is this a irrelevant "achtually"-reply?
I'd argue it's worth knowing what you risk losing from your device in the name of sideloading software so it's not irrelevant to point out your phone might not be a phone by the end of the procedure.