Google can get fucked. I feel like there will be a nontrivial market for de-googled or older and unlocked Android phones after this. If they manage to kill off custom roms with their previous AOSP rug pull I'll go back to using a (subpar) Linux phone or maybe even one of those cheap flip phones.
this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2025
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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My phone is not an airport. It's a garbage collection machine found in a trash, with a battery so it looks portable. I don't need an ID to use it, nobody will ever need.
fuck google!
Who can I donate to that is working on making alternative OS accessible on android or iphones?
I know there are alternative OS already out there but they aren't as universally accessible compared to how Linux can run on any PC.
Problem is we need vendor like pinephone maybe fairphone,which will able to run give us freedom what to run on device hunting and seeking for vendor which allowing to unlock bootloader and then install custom os it sleepery slope because it's not know how longer they will let to do it
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How about we abandon proprietary locked-down launcher sandboxes on our phones and just run regular old Linux on them like we do on the desktop?
Isn't that what PostmarketOS is? Is there some bullshit firmware issue in the way of that? What exactly is stopping us?
The difference is that mobile phone hardware is commonly more locked down by default than x86 hardware. Whatever phone you have now likely has some weird shit on it that makes it really difficult to do anything but what the manufacturer wants you to do. What Microsoft is trying to do with Win11 and TPM 2.0, has basically already been done with many brands of smartphone. I've been trying to research affordable smartphones to daily drive that are also de-googled, and hours of research has resulted in me struggling to use a pinephone. The hardware, the software, they're just not there, either. It's not like desktop Linux where really it's better than Windows if you give it a chance. Mobile FOSS OSes might be daily drivable if you try really hard.
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Any developer of piracy or emulation related software will not apply for the registration, because the trail will point to they official identity, opening a flank to legal actions. This will kill piracy in Android.
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Looks like I'm gonna just carry a stock phone, give it nothing but the most basic information and tether it to a laptop over a VPN. They stop tethering? I'll use VOIP and a hotspot.
Welcome back to 2011. Maybe messenger bags will come back into fashion in foss culture.
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Let Google know what you think: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfN3UQeNspQsZCO2ITkdzMxv81rJDEGGjO-UIDDY28Rz_GEVA/viewform
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This is complete BS
What does this mean for F-Droid?
Every developer wishing to offer applications on F-Droid will have to register their identities and package names to Google for Android devices to install their apps, regardless of the distribution platform (F-Droid, Obtainium, GitHub releases, etc.)
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So looks like graphene is the future. Away from android and iOS. Any other alternatives OS and phone to look at?
Isn't graphene having a challenging future because they have vendor locked themselves into pixel phones and said vendor is pulling the rug by not providing drivers going forward?
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lineageos does support far more phone vendors; who knows what pixel phones will be like in the future
I'm hoping on fairphone to get graphene support 🤷
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That's a sure way to get me off of your OS. FAFO I've already dropped M$ products.
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2026 year of the Linux phone?
If you’re technical enough to sideload Android apps, you’re probably technical enough to install Graphene too.
If google is gonna ban sideloading, surely they will lock their bootloaders first.
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If Android sideloading needs to be verified by googld for "Security" then Maybe IOS seems like a viable option (except for the price and price to repair) but man i wish Linux on smartphones Has a good ecosystem of apps.
iOS is still worse, because you're then confined to whatever is in the App Store, which Apple take a 30% cut of.
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And in one fell swoop, Google just took a baseball bat to its own kneecaps.
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