The days of custom Android ROMs are numbered, and Google is to blame
CalyxOS, a privacy-oriented Android fork, has announced a pause on updates. But given the challenges most custom ROMs face, will it return?
I hate the noose of technology.
It is an awful state of things that you have to have a smartphone these days (increasingly for 2fa for banking and such) and now only two American tech companies are allowed to control them.
This is bad for society and humanity. This type of capture will lead us further into fascism and tech dependencies that are anathema to freedom and liberty.
Man I remember installing custom roms on my GALAXY S2 back in the day. I had done so much research on what was the best one, and the steps it took to correctly do. I was so nervous the first time, scared that I would brick my phone.
The little white text on the black screen..... Made me feel like a movie hacker lol.
the i9100 ? It was my first Android phone, I also installed tons of ROM on it. I still have the phone, it is still working, ROM is XWMS1 4.1.2 Chameleon v3.0.4 Samsung/AOKP hybrid, my kernel is Siyah v6.0b5
My first one was ZTE Blade V880, updated from 2.2 straight to 4.4.2, that level of support won't be possible now.
Maybe we'll see more donations regarding Linux mobile? The development needs to be even faster now.
I'm afraid the carriers will just stop allowing devices on their networks unless they're approved and locked down with a spy ROM.
Helium has the chance to do something really funny right now /s
Sadly that's a high possibility, though I hope it won't come to that or at least there would be a network that allows this.
It'll be their own downfall. Telephony is handled perfectly fine through tcp/ip. So if carries don't support it, we'll start seeing components that turn the phone part of phones to Internet connectivity modules.
That will be harder than expected as the telco networks are an international standard with no way to verify anything about the local device except that it has the required cryptographic cert contained within the sim.
Well then no compliance. I'll take a dumb flip phone if it came to that. And with tethering I can use whatever I damn well please behind it.
If the day comes where it’s impossible to at the very least, clean off spyware stuff you don’t want, or install custom ROMs if necessary, then I’ll stick to older units that have the ability still. And if that ever becomes impossible, then stop using a smartphone.
And all the arguments in the world about how everything requires a smartphone - I don’t care about. That cannot be literally required, at least not for anything important because it’s not possible to assume/ensure that every person has one and that it is fully operational etc.
If this creates a nuisance for providers of various services, so be it - in fact, all the better because they can potentially be a source of pressure to maintain the availability of customizable devices. But that’s a very very miniscule likelihood; more likely is that they say well, too bad, if you don’t have a smartphone then this hospital can’t treat you. There may come a point where it literally will be impossible to functionally integrate in society without being spied upon 24/7. And in America at least, this will be welcomed with open arms because - well, you know: sheep.
But even then, there will develop a bigger and bigger fringe subculture of off-the-grid individuals who still value the concept of privacy.
So - like every sci-fi dystopia depicted in film and literature throughout history. Well, anyone who complains won’t be able to claim they weren’t warned a million times literally.
Whoa, papers please. Not the physical ones, I need you to hand over your smart phone and we will scan your access.
Increasingly more services are moving away from SMS 2FA for security reasons. App based authentication tokens are the more secure wYhy to process multifactor authentication. You would need at the very least, a smart device capable of installing an authenticator so you can continue to use banks and sign into email providers that require it (most business emails). There are ways to do this without a smart phone but it will only make your life more complex.
That cannot be literally required, at least not for anything important because it’s not possible to assume/ensure that every person has one and that it is fully operational etc
哈哈哈. You can go months in China without seeing a RMB, like 90% of businesses only accept Alipay, Wechat, and Unionpay.
The level of enshittification of wechat and alipay is suprisingly low for now, but most Chinese phones are getting harder to flash a custom rom on, presumably to stop resellers from flashing global firmware and reselling in more expensive countries.
Who in their right mind would prefer sms 2FA???
At least prefer hardware passkeys or something but not sms...
For banking there still are these tan generator devices that use optical sensors that read a flashing image that is displayed on the screen of your online banking software. This doesn't seem to go anywhere.
After reading the article seems like a sensationalized headline. One of the major ROMs is on hiatus and may never return. And the process of installing custom ROMs is challenging. Not good, frustrating, but different than "soon no one will be able to do this"
All custom Roms rely on AOSP being freely available.
If email tried to make it today rather than the 90s/early 2000s, that shit would have never been adopted by the big players. They'd all have come out with their own proprietary mail system. Google's doing their take on embrace, extend, extinguish
Google needs to be destroyed and broken up
