this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2025
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Android

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[–] cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca 4 points 6 days ago

BREAKING!

can't stand when this is in a headline lol

[–] anon5621@lemmy.ml 71 points 1 week ago (18 children)

Era of tinkering, customization for better privacy ,performance is end,each day there less and less phone vendors which let to unlock bootladers,now we left with oneplus,google pixel and xiaomi with 9 circles of hell to unlock it

[–] rikudou 18 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Also Sony, their open device program is pretty sweet.

[–] wazzupdog@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Asus is good too

Edit: not any more

[–] smiletolerantly@awful.systems 14 points 1 week ago (2 children)

They don't let you anymore, do they? There was a whole controversy about the Zenfone 12

[–] ximtor@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 week ago

Zenfone 10 already doesn't unlock.

Source: got a zf10, thinking i can unlock it, because they were "rereleasing their unlock tool, any moment now" -_-

Oh i didn't know about that, i bought a zf9 a few years ago, how unfortunate i know they also dropped a bunch of features and crammed a ton of ai garbage on it so i paid it little mind.

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[–] smiletolerantly@awful.systems 16 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Just waiting for the pain to be enough to switch to Linux on a phone.

Main drawbacks right now:

  • I have one health-related (open source) app that I NEED to work flawlessly
  • Navigating the various UIs seems incredibly awkward and inconsistent
[–] rikudou 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Have you checked SailfishOS? Their Android-bridge is pretty decent, it might work well. If you tell me the app name, I can check whether it works or not.

[–] smiletolerantly@awful.systems 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Thanks, that is a very kind offer!

The secific app is xdrip+. But it's probably not possible to test it out, because starting/working is not the issue, the issue is making sure that it has a 100%% stable background connection with my blood glucose sensor, recovers from failures, restarts in the background on closure,... Eventually, I'll get my hands on a linux handheld and try for myself :)

That being said - how's your experience with Sailfish been so far?

[–] rikudou 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Ah, in that case it probably won't work, the Android apps on SFOS don't have access to Bluetooth, you would need a native one.

SFOS is fine, I like it, it's smooth, has sleek UI and generally works very well, sans the occasional bugs. The Android layer is also splendid, though there are cases like this where it simply won't work. Same with any app needing to pass SafetyNet checks which many bank apps do.

But if you're lucky and you don't need any app with hardware access and your bank doesn't mind being ran on Google untested device, it's really great!

Ah, too bad! But thanks, that's good to know.

Not gonna lie, I'm a tiny bit jealous of you πŸ˜„ It's gotten to a point where having to use Android is a constant, low-intensity source of stress just because of how closed and privacy-unfriendly it has become.

[–] OccasionallyFeralya@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I’m not sure how you’ll be switching to Linux on a phone you can’t unlock properly though

Ah, true. I honestly think we need to get to a point where smartphones intended for use with linux are profitable / widespread.

But that's a catch 22 with UX and HW both being required for companies to invest in the other.

[–] 0ops@piefed.zip 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

There haven't been any roms for OnePlus phones in a few years since they stopped publishing the MSM tool for new phones. Iirc, the 9 was their last phone to truly support custom roms.

Apparently the MSM tool was leaked for the 11, so there are a couple roms for it. But the old OnePlus and their community is unfortunately long dead.

[–] anon5621@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 week ago

I am sorry to hear that then :(

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Motorola is pretty solid from a bootloader unlock perspective. It is dead simple and some devices support relocking with custom keys.

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[–] baguettefish@discuss.tchncs.de 46 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

But at least this time it secures the phone against cellebrite & other hacking tools, right? ...right?

(for those unaware: there are tools built by cellebrite and other companies that can dump the internal storage of your phone and decrypt its contents without your consent. they're in use by most police in the US at least, probably other countries as well and definitely airports. They can hack just about every single phone, except for maybe the newest iphone with a really long pin and advanced protection enabled, and recent google pixels with grapheneos.)

[–] omniman@piefed.zip 4 points 1 week ago (3 children)
[–] PleaseLetMeOut@lemmy.dbzer0.com 23 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Cellebrite was used to crack the first Trump shooter's phone. At the time, they openly talked about the latest iPhone being uncrackable and still in the "In Research" phase. So if the shooter had one, they'd have been screwed.

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[–] mobotsar@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 week ago

They sell a lot of copies of the software for it not to work.

[–] Empricorn@feddit.nl 39 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Ugh. Samsung already has the worst, most intrusive Android UI. This reinforces my determination to never give them another cent...

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[–] spongebue@lemmy.world 20 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] limerod@reddthat.com 18 points 1 week ago

1st they removed the sdcard from the A56, now this.

Except updates there are even lesser reasons to consider samsung. Especially, when chinese OEMs beat them in the hardware game.

[–] Horsey@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Google needs to get their shit together and put an actually competitive chip in their phones. I’m not buying a late cycle phone with a tensor processor that can’t even match the current snapdragon or A-series.

[–] skuzz@discuss.tchncs.de 31 points 1 week ago

Google is busy locking android down to remove any freedom of choice.

[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

nah they want it to be AI/tensor, thats why i went with oneplus instead.

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[–] hornedfiend@sopuli.xyz 15 points 1 week ago

They were set on doing it when Knox was first introduced anyway.

Normies don’t give a shit anyway as they see it as a necessary step in securing their own lack of understanding of anything technology, besides brainrot and doomscrolling.

Thanks for the reminder of why I stopped caring about Samsung phones 10 years ago.

[–] DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Hasn't been unlockable for the past... 5 years? In the US at least. (Bought directly from samsung.com)

[–] Eagle0110@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago

Samsung only had locked bootloader in the US market because of the carrier mafias in the US having wayyyy more power than they should have, even over OEMs. They can't charge you extra for basic features if you can bypass the artificial locks with root empowered tools, or shove adware/bloatware down your throat if you can remove them, can they?

All other market's models always had unlocked bootloader, even their China/Hong Kong and EU models. Although it's still not entirely open because Samsung have extremely customized ROM, that also have Samsung's security suite Knox and Samsung Pay deeply integrated all over the place, where a lot of encryption and obfuscation were included, because they are purpose designed security solutions. So with bootloader unlock you are still going to lose a lot of core OS features (even if you don't actually mod the boot image to have root access, and just have the bootloader unlocked), there are tools that can restore some, but not all features can be restored.

Well that is, until now, apparently.

But then, on the other hand, Samsung devices are the closest you can get to Apple's ridiculous walled garden in the Android ecosystem, so you'd you ever want that nonsense anyway lol

[–] idunnololz@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago

I have a S24 because it is the smallest phone on the market that year. Can someone please make a small Android phone. I am running out of options 😭

[–] Mwa@thelemmy.club 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

my A55 Will be the last Samsung phone i will ever get

[–] ikidd@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)
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