Custom ROMs have had just about enough of being Android's second-class citizens

Ironically, if Graphene would succeed, it would lead to a system that's every bit as locked down as a manufacturer's Android. GrapheneOS would also not allow you to have root etc.

IMO Graphene wants a place at the big player table. They're not in it for user freedoms.

graphene sandboxes Google services so they don't run as root on your device. I haven't encountered an app I can't get running on graphene yet and having Google play installed as non root is a far sight better than stock.

my biggest problem with lineage was compatibility with banking apps so I reluctantly switched but graphene is a solid choice in operating system for privacy and security.

Myself, I use my bank's web portal via my mobile browser. Not as instant as an app, but it gets the job done.

same bs with apps not running jidt because root or apps not being visible in playstore because of it. Netflix isn't even showing up as existing in playstore just because i have root. it's nuts. and there are tons of apps like this.

I have been using stock for a while, but I remember using magisk root to hide root to the bank app and I never had an issue

What's changed to make banking apps more necessary?

Second phone just for these things wouldn't work for what you need?

It has been pretty depressing to me that the tech literate have been so easily lulled into accepting such things in the name of “cool toys” and “security” virtually everywhere in modern life besides the PC/laptop/server spaces.

From my exposure to supporting said folks with PC related problems, its easy to see the reality here. Phones provide a streamlined experience with zero frills. They don't want super flexible computing devices, they want appliances. More to the point, the level of care and maintenance needed to have a top-shelf PC experience is time and effort most people would rather not expend. Doing this right was inconvenient to begin with, and left the field wide open for anything that would be easier.

The PC was stolen fire from the gods. aRM snapdragon X will take back our fire, turn PC into smartphone on the desktop.

Google shouldn’t cannibalize its children.

Afaik GPL 2 would be stopping google from making android closed source anyway, unless I got something wrong about the license terms. But if anything that supports your argument. The main reason google is generally supportive of open source is that they recognize that they benefit from it. The moment that changes, google will try their best to close off anything it can (granted I don't think it's that likely to change, but they're already abusing their position plenty).

There is another side to this coin though,

Android roms took googles work. The community could have assisted with other mobile os systems like Firefox OS or Ubuntu mobile but didn't.

Instead ROM developers wanted a cookie cutter solution.

In practice, Android is actually fairly open. Republicans have a weird obsession with Google (remember that weird hearing where they clearly didn't understand technology). You can even disable the inbuilt apps

This could lead to a situation like windows where 50 popups are added. It's could backfire and it benefits Apple a lot. That's what I'm concerned about. I'm worried that I'll end up paying for Gmail or more for Android. And Google will get blamed for it

Furthermore, if the manufacturer wants to pretend that they're selling you a perpetual license to use the hardware or whatever legal bullshit they came up with on the back of a cocktail napkin between lines of coke then they can't advertise using the words buy, own or anything similar without explicitly indicating in the largest font that you aren't the owner of the product.

Unfortunately that line of thinking stops at the divide between hardware and software. You can legally make a phone manufacturer let you unlock a phone's bootloader so you can install other software, and you can forbid them from denying hardware warranty because you installed other software. Both of which apply in the EU.

But you can't make them have their software support or play nice with the other software that you install.

You also can't force manufacturers to open up drivers if they're under NDAs and proprietary licensing (which they often are, due to extensive cross licensing because everybody's owning patents that can lead to everybody suing everybody if they were ever used).

Thankfully there are FOSS alternatives for apps like Authy. I recommend Aegis

For your banking app, you can use this list to check if it's compatible: https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compatibility-with-grapheneos/

Using the web app might also be an option.

Welcome! I've been on it for a month or so and I'm still so thrilled

I've been using graphene for years at this point and it's the best operating system I've ever had on a phone. Before this my favorite phone was a jail broken iPhone 5c. I even got a pixel tablet to take notes on for college recently and put graphene on it as well.

Only thing Google has right atm is leaving the bootloader on their phones unlockable.

I plan on doing the same thing, any tips on finding cheap recent-ish Pixels?

I would totally buy a Pixel too but apparently most Pixels here are black market and the IMEIs are banned so I don't wanna risk getting one that can't connect to cell networks

I would totally buy a Pixel too but apparently most Pixels here are black market and the IMEIs are banned so I don't wanna risk getting one that can't connect to cell networks.

Enjoy! For future reference I'd recommend just getting the latest Pixel as you'll get the longest software support. E.g. a Pixel 8a is supported till May 2031, which is plenty of time to get a lot of usage out of your phone.

We can get same experience quite soon on laptops too when arm laptops&desktop will arrive toensd users.It gonna be lock down same as phones nowdays.

Yeah it would’ve been like that for pcs too if they weren’t around for quite longer.

They are steamrolling usability for elder people with that kind of security measures. I can't understand how they can get away with this, those bastards.

Does the bank staff all work on mobiles?

I would close my bank account if they did that and move my money to a better bank. I don't do financial stuff on mobile phones.

Stockpile did this too. I quit them (i did not like them anyway but that was the last straw)

Which one?

Same with iOS, I don't know why you are singling out Android here. My favorite game back when I used an iPad stopped working after certain update. It was a puzzle with rails and colored trains, can't remember the name now.

Windows and Linux are quite a lot better in this regard.

I've got old apps that won't work any more.

I'm actually for this. The bar to entry for the Play Store is too low with too many low quality and unmaintained apps. I'm all for booting insecure and super old apps. They cheapen the ecosystem.

How we all wish there was a third option, I would genuinely take less functionality in favour of privacy and performance. I don't need AI and fancy image processing. I want to use my phone to pay the old way, like when samsung copied the magnetic strip info, not like now where google gets a copy of my receipts.

Sucks iOS is the alternative, nearly gave in last week but the price was just too much for what I was getting.

I’ve got old apps that won’t work any more.

That's true for every operating system. Old apps aren't updated to use new system APIs and such and they eventually stop working.

Software that is 10 years old and unmaintained is likely unsafe to use and therefore shouldn't work. Windows has a lot of issues specifically because it's backward compatible with ancient software, actually. Security and a path forward should matter more than clinging to old software that must stop working someday regardless of how hard you try to delay it. Emulation/VMs are and should be a way to work around that on desktop and it would actually be nice if mobile OSes had that too. That way at least the ancient software can be sandboxed and not a security weakpoint. The right approach though is not to do this horrible patchwork of APIs like windows which creates a security nightmare

I've got old apps that won't work any more.

People give Windows a load of shit... but it's a million times more usable than Android

Where do you run your old Windows Phone apps nowadays? What about new Windows Phone apps?

The problem of being stuck on an old kernel isn't because of Google or Android, but because of chip makers (e.g. Qualcomm) not providing drivers.

I feel that the mobile world is ripe for disruption. There has not been excitement for new devices in a while from me and my friends who are all into tech. I remember 00s and early 10s where we used to discuss new devices all the time.

Most of us are STUCK with Apple and Google because they have both built walled gardens. It is not just the apps, it is also moving away from open standards, moving away from even files. e.g., 10 years ago mp4 files used to hold all the metadata related to a TV Show/Movie so if you put that into a device (iTunes for example) it'll have all the metadata, now this info is in a separate database. SMS for all it's flaws was open, now google wants us to believe RCS is also open (LOL).

This has led to a basic degradation in all the basics, echoing your example that it is impossible to find a decent music app.

Even apples own music has has ACTIVELY DEGRADED. Bottom bar of apple music app was "Albums", "Songs", "Artists", and "Playlists" and YOU COULD CHANGE THE BOTTOM BAR. Now it is literally "Home" == Ads, "Browse" == Ads (pls buy apple music), "Search" == Ads. and LITERALLY only 1 page called "Library" where you can access your own purchased library. Same happened with apple books.

Android has seen similar shitty stuff, I remember being excited about actually FUN android games, tiny thief, vector, cut the rope, where is my water, etc. Now it is all ads, paywall nonsense.

Not to mention the Today page of the Playstore ACTUALLY USED TO BE USEFULL for highlighting some apps. And is not LITERALLY ONLY F***** ADS.

I feel/hope/pray that we have a SteveJobs 2007 type iPhone event around the corner, because everyone is ready for it.

I hope some OEM (especially those opposed to google) picks up and develops mainline linux like Pine Phone.

Huawei is being forced to do it. But like Android, their HarmonyOS is not 100% open-source. There's also KaiOS, which some Nokia and Alcatel, and all Jio, devices use.

even Dalvik and the android runtime itself is an inefficient relic of 10+ years ago when mobile devices had at most 2gb of ram and a tiny low power ARM processor.

Both the ones I mentioned are designed to be more memory efficient. KaiOS in particular is aimed primarily at feature phones and entry-level smartphones.

I could see things as simple as...

Last I heard, the McDonalds' app doesn't work, of all things.

https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/9123-the-mcdonalds-app-doesnt-work/

You could use sandboxed google play on the main user or second user.

I'm sure Google contactless payment works really well when the phone is dead. Or you drop your phone in a toilet or off a bridge. It's far easier to loose a phone than a card in a wallet in your pocket. If you lose your phone, you also lose access to all your money.

I've never used contactless on my phone, I already had a contactless debit card. Why are you, and others, using their phones to pay?

Agreed. I always loved the idea of the HTC Mini +.

Put the sim in your laptop, that's the connectivity hub. The mini phone piggybacks the LTE connection so you don't have to pull out your laptop for simple calls, texts, navigation or music actions.

There are community made projects for the framework laptop that add LTE using an expansion card

You can put a SIM card in some older thinkpad laptops with that upgrade option. Some thinkpads have the slot for a SIM card but not the internal components to use it. So make sure to do some research if that sounds promising.

There are VOIP phone line services like JMP that give you a number and let you use your computer as a phone. I haven't tried JMP but it always seemed cool and I respect that the developed software running JMP is open source.. The line cost 5$ a month.

Skype also has a similar phone line service. Its not open source like JMP and is part of Microsoft. Usually thats cause for concern for FOSS nuts, but in this context its not a bad thing in some ways. Skype is two decade old mature software with enough financial backing from big M to have real tech support and a dev team to patch bugs, in theory. So probably less headaches getting it running right which is important if you want to seriously treat as a phone line. I think Skype price depends on payment plan and where you live, so not sure on exact cost.

I don't even understand. Am I getting this wrong?? Does the payment processing happen inside the banking app?! Because if so, that's the bigger problem isn't it? All the checks for correctness should happen on the servers that the banking app connects to, not the banking app itself. If that's already the case, then what are they worried about? I'm probably missing something here, but honestly I just don't understand why they would do that.

Spin off the Android team into a nonprofit. I'm pretty sure OEMs would be all over funding that.

FTC act is the most useful against this sort of behavior and only the FTC can file suit for that, not individual companies. I don't think this could be filed as a violation of the Sherman act. See here for an overview: https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/antitrust-laws

Even just being rooted on the stock Pixel rom is a fight.

That, I can see being more of an issue than an unmodified, trusted 3rd party OS. If I remember right, rooting makes the device fail Verified Boot:

It establishes a full chain of trust, starting from a hardware-protected root of trust to the bootloader, to the boot partition and other verified partitions including system, vendor, and optionally oem partitions.

https://source.android.com/docs/security/features/verifiedboot

Why is stuff like that included not included in every plan by default? As a European, I can't even imagine paying extra for that. If I want to hotspot my data, my operator can kiss my ass and simply allow it, I'm paying for the data anyway.