&gt; losing access to normal android devices would be a big blow to the momentum of the F-Droid community.For me it seems the opposite - if these &quot;normal&quot; (GMS spyware) Android devices lose the access to F-Droid and it will only be possible to install malware&#x2F;adware from Google Play, then maybe that will push more people to value unlocking the bootloader..

&gt;You can’t use stuff like banking apps on a modified deviceIME such apps are few and far between. The most trouble I ran into is play store refusing to show apps because they claim the app isn&#x27;t compatible with the device, but that can be worked around with aurora store.

I wonder then if the workaround for THAT (losing access to Banking &#x2F; &quot;Google trust-deriving apps&quot;) is to get a second device, wifi-only no-SIM G-Android.Cumbersome, but any other deterring reasons why &quot;not a good workaround&quot;?

I know this isn&#x27;t the case with all banks, but for whatever my anecdata is worth I&#x27;ve been using a number of banking apps on mine for years, so it&#x27;s incorrect to say that banking apps can&#x27;t be used.

Yes, but there are issues.You can’t use stuff like banking apps on a modified device and losing access to normal android devices would be a big blow to the momentum of the F-Droid community. GrapheneOS might not be a big enough community to sustain work on the projects delivered by F-Droid.

Sadly forget about it - GrapheneOS will only work on Motorola __flagship__ devices, and most of their budget phones are not even made by Motorola, but rather by the odm such as Tinno, where it&#x27;s not even possible to unlock the bootloader without exploits.GrapheneOS will sadly stay unaffordable for many.

Not much, as it only works on very few high end phones not sold in most countries. Hopefully their Motorola partnership will expand its availability but I&#x27;m not confident that&#x27;ll happen anytime soon.

Ideally yes, otherwise any other AOSP-based ROM. There are many, and they support far more devices than Graphene, though implementations of e.g. Google Play services is more hacky.The most well-known: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.lineageos.org&#x2F;devices&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.lineageos.org&#x2F;devices&#x2F;</a>

This isn&#x27;t referring to the efforts Google has gone to try to thwart sideloading.It is another requirement of Google&#x27;s, where all developers must be registered to them and apps must be signed by them and anything that isn&#x27;t will be blocked.

Sounds a bit like trying to transfer my own money to myself at the bank.  I.e. it seems designed to prevent old people getting scammed.

I see zero trouble as long as it requires no additional identification, no additional payment, and no mandatory time limit for the sideloaded apps.That is, fine by me. I can wait for 24 hours once in a few years when I acquire a new mobile phone.

&gt;Wait 24 hoursSomehow bank vaults and heroin storage boxes don’t take this long.

You left out the crucial bit:<pre><code> Worse: this flow runs entirely through Google Play Services, not the Android OS. Google can change it, tighten it, or kill it at any time, with no OS update required and no consent needed.
 And as of today, it hasn&#x27;t shipped in any beta, preview, or canary build.
 It exists only as a blog post and some mockups.</code></pre>

To be fair, that&#x27;s a one time process. You do not need to do that for every app you want to sideload.The malware issue that the flow is designed to mitigate is a very real problem. Perhaps there is a better way, but it&#x27;s not immediately clear what that is.

From TFA:<pre><code> Delve into System Settings, find Developer Options
 Tap the build number seven times to enable Developer Mode
 Dismiss scare screens about coercion
 Enter your PIN
 Restart the device
 Wait 24 hours
 Come back, dismiss more scare screens
 Pick &quot;allow temporarily&quot; (7 days) or &quot;allow indefinitely&quot;
 Confirm, again, that you understand &quot;the risks&quot;

 Nine steps. A mandatory 24-hour cooling-off period. For installing 
 software on a device you own.</code></pre>

Less savy and unmotivated users.. maybe? Whats the main use cases for newpipe? Let me guess: get premium features for free (no ads, downloads etc).Do you think people wont click 9 buttons and wait 24hs for this?Its like people forgot how pirated windows&#x2F;sw used to run on millions (billions) on devices in the past until ads (and some convenience from non-so-cheap-anymore subscriptions) became the norm

From NewPipe : <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;woheller69&#x2F;FreeDroidWarn?tab=readme-ov-file#solutions" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;woheller69&#x2F;FreeDroidWarn?tab=readme-ov-fi...</a>I wouldn&#x27;t consider this &quot;a few buttons&quot;, it&#x27;s enough to turn off the less savvy users

In addition to what others have said, it means some developers who were building for Android are going to stop. You can&#x27;t install an app when someone is obstructed from building it in the first place.&gt; every Android app developer must register centrally with Google before their software can be installed on any device. Not just Play Store apps: all apps.&gt; Registration requires:&gt; Paying a fee to Google&gt; Agreeing to Google&#x27;s Terms and Conditions&gt; Surrendering your government-issued identification&gt; Providing evidence of your private signing key&gt; Listing all current and all future application identifiersGoogle is not an entity you can can trust with this.

Isnt the title a bit dramatic? I remember reading you can still install apps but you just need to click a few buttons.

Yes, but not because of those changes in the GMS stock OS, but because the ability to unlock the bootloader (and install the OS you can actually control) is being increasingly limited.Stock GMS Android was never yours, you only had access to basic permissions, privileged&#x2F;signature permissions were only accessible to Google&#x2F;vendors anyway.

What apps?(idle interest; I use Graphene, but few apps, and everything worked so far)

I&#x27;ve been using it for a bit over a year. Installed in a few minutes thanks to WebUSB. A bit of research needed to set the right permissions on Google Play Services.After that? I only had one application fail due to Graphene&#x27;s memory allocator. No weird bugs, no need to restart like some siblings are commenting. As close to the &quot;Graphene just works&quot; as it could be.However, I&#x27;m not heavy into Google&#x27;s ecosystem. Google Pay will not work but I&#x27;m not a user, some Google features won&#x27;t tell you why they don&#x27;t work but I&#x27;m not using them either (Quick Share for instance), none of my apps require the highest Play Integrity level. Maybe the person who say this are a specific type of person where use-cases don&#x27;t overlap with what breaks on Graphene.

How many apps do you have that don&#x27;t run there? Would you be willing to share them? I have been using GrapheneOS for a couple years and almost everything works seamlessly (except when e.g. a bank decides to ban GrapheneOS).

I have a pixel 10 pro and have tried no less than 5 times to get my apps to work on graphene, no luck.I&#x27;m no slouch either, I&#x27;ve developed for android for almost a decade.I&#x27;m not disagreeing with ya, just adding a comment so folks are aware that the &quot;Graphene just works&quot; crowd is sometimes a bit hyperbolic.

Are banks and e-commerce going to get rid of their websites? I imagine some will, but I can’t imagine using one that did.Dating… well, the goal for most people is to exit the dating pool anyway.Social media is bad.

A hidden benefit is having to decide now whether you actually need these things.Messaging apps will continue working.Banking apps made by reasonable companies will also. In days of banking being competitive and rather open with many providers offering good value, it&#x27;s so easy to switch providers. Granted I am relatively poor and keep my banking simple, but I doubt card providers want to increase friction either. 
After Revolut started requiring &gt;basic integrity it took me appx 1 day to switch to n26 and nothing of value was lost.Not being able to use socialmedia, e-commerce, and dating apps sounds great.

That&#x27;s a great attitude until slowly but surely 90% of apps used in day to day life won&#x27;t function for you: banking, dating, social media, e-commerce, communication&#x2F;messaging etc slowly freeze you out.

They’ve announced a partnership with Motorola to have it installed on some of their phones in the future, so not just Pixels for long!

I agree about &quot;I got around the system so I don&#x27;t care how bad it is.&quot;, but it is at least still a form of saying &quot;an alternative to this problem is Graphene&quot;, and that can&#x27;t be repeated enough until a whole lot more people are using it, or anything else like Lineage.Graphene (or anything else) will only stay a useful option if a whole lot more people use it so that government agencies and banks can&#x27;t ignore that many people. A whole lot more people need to feel they aren&#x27;t completely alone if they thought about using it, that it&#x27;s actually a real option and not a kooky crap option.Right now agencies &amp; companies can totally ignore them all, and everything that still works today is just luck.I haven&#x27;t used Graphene myself. At the moment I have a stock rom that&#x27;s merely rooted using the official manufacturer supplied bootloader unlock, and my small local credit union bank apps work, and the LG app that controls my air conditioners and microwave does not. Even if the bank apps didn&#x27;t work it wouldn&#x27;t matter because they have working web sites, and I never wanted an an app for my appliances in the first place.But any day that could change.It&#x27;s just luck the banks have web sites that work in firefox on linux, and just luck there are no functions I need on those appliances that require the app.

&gt; &quot;fuck you, I&#x27;ve got mine&quot; is not only sad as a position in general, it is also a bad tactical choiceI don&#x27;t think the parent was saying that.My opinion is that it is actually the real fight: it should be mandatory for manufacturers to make it possible to have an alternative OS (which includes allowing to unlock&#x2F;relock the bootloader and add custom signing keys) and it should be mandatory for big companies (e.g. banks) to not ban those alternative OSes with Play Integrity or whatever goddamn checks they make.Fighting about what Google does on the Google flavour of AOSP is a distraction, IMO.

&gt; But beyond whether the OS is good or not, &quot;fuck you, I&#x27;ve got mine&quot;...What about, &quot;I got mine and you can have it to.&quot; Nobody is preventing access to graphene.

I use GrapheneOS too. Most of the time it works great, with some weird bugs around group messages and needing to restart every now and then to get to a fully functional state between the browser and keyboard properly working with each other and the network connectivity going away. I do enjoy full control on network connectivity and notifications.But beyond whether the OS is good or not, &quot;fuck you, I&#x27;ve got mine&quot; is not only sad as a position in general, it is also a bad tactical choice, because over long enough timeframes you can&#x27;t assure that you can keep yours if others are deprived.

First they came for the stock Android users, and I did not speak out for I was not a stock Android user.

That&#x27;s the real fight. We should fight to make this illegal. It should be mandatory to provide the technical ability to install an alternative OS on a computer, period.

They could conceivably lock the bootloader, but Graphene now has a partnership with Motorola.

They&#x27;re partnering with Motorola to build devices with official GrapheneOS support. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;grapheneos.social&#x2F;@GrapheneOS&#x2F;116159602850585685" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;grapheneos.social&#x2F;@GrapheneOS&#x2F;116159602850585685</a>

Google could lock out Graphene too, whenever they like, with no warning. I hope Graphene has a plan.

It always feels like my phone experience is just a pleasant intermezzo. My banking app (ABN Amro) works, government apps (DigiD) work, everything just works, and I get security and a certain degree of distance between me and Google. I can use F-Droid to install useful apps, and incidentally use Google&#x27;s app store for apps I need because the rest of the world uses them. GrapheneOS rocks.Borrowed time. I hope not, but that&#x27;s the prevailing feeling.

Happened to me. Stopped working on GrapheneOS because of some goddamn check they make, but still runs on an outdated &#x2F;e&#x2F;OS signed with the Google test keys (i.e. without a proper secure boot).The real fight is to prevent companies (like those banks) to do that kind of shit. And to force manufacturers into allowing us to install alternative systems, instead of preventing unlocking&#x2F;relocking of the bootloader for instance).

If that happens you could buy a cheap Android like a Moto G for that indispensable banking app and keep using your GrapheneOS device for everything else. Not ideal, but many of us have old devices lying around that can be used for that.

I&#x27;m running GrapheneOS too and while I&#x27;ve experienced the same, I&#x27;m dreading the day any of my banking apps update and suddenly start demanding full Play Integrity API support (GrapheneOS only has Basic) causing them to fail to open. Hasn&#x27;t happened yet but it could.

Devs have been warning F-Droid about this for years:It&#x27;s quite problematic that someone can currently upload a package name belonging to another organization to the Play Store and that should have been stopped years ago since it was used in many cases for scamming and squatting on package names clearly belonging to others. Package names are meant to start with a reverse domain belonging to the owner such as app.grapheneos for our grapheneos.app domain. They could enforce this based on domains authorizing usage without enforcing ID verification and that&#x27;s what we would have proposed.This is one of the ways F-Droid has ignored standard best practices including security practices in a way that&#x27;s already causing problems but is now a massive issue for them. If they had started doing things properly many years ago when it was first brought up, then they&#x27;d be in a much better situation today. They&#x27;re going to need to deal with this by renaming all their package names to org.fdroid. to avoid issues with the proposed changes. This is problematic because existing users will stop getting updates. It&#x27;s better to use a prefix than a suffix where a developer could end up changing their mind about whether it makes sense resulting in conflict over the name, which is fair since they still own it if it&#x27;s their reverse domain.

Being a Graphene user is fine and all, but if this continues it will have a chilling effect on OSS Android development. And that will still effect you.

Same as you can trust Google. Though GrapheneOS is entirely open source, and Google is not. And Google has been screwing you in the past.

It&#x27;s open source [1], and they&#x27;re pretty transparent about everything. You can ask the devs anything, and they will probably give you a really useful and informative answer. They have extensive documentation, and they&#x27;re pretty open, even about stuff like their servers [2], configurations [3], everything.[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;grapheneos.org&#x2F;source" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;grapheneos.org&#x2F;source</a>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;grapheneos.org&#x2F;articles&#x2F;grapheneos-servers" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;grapheneos.org&#x2F;articles&#x2F;grapheneos-servers</a>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;GrapheneOS&#x2F;infrastructure" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;GrapheneOS&#x2F;infrastructure</a>

How can you trust graphene or it&#x27;s contributors and supply chain?

You should care because the install base could reduce drastically.  Reducing the amount of Devs and contributions to the FOSS scene.  This will degrade your experience

Which is because other manufacturers don&#x27;t allow you to unlock&#x2F;relock the bootloader, right?

Ironically, you’ve had to pay Google for the privilege of opting out of their new rules.

&gt; I don&#x27;t care, I run Graphene, and my phone is definitely mine.It helps, but your modems are still closed chipsets you have no ability to control constantly in communication with and controlled by third parties who can execute code on your hardware at any time without your notice or consent.

I think the real issue here is hardware attestation. GrapheneOS will not protect you.I will believe the GrapheneOS-Motorola project is a thing when I receive the phone.Google hates real competition. They blasted out Chrome when Firefox was really taking off and normies were discovering adblocking. Chrome allowed adblocking as a honeypot until everybody was safely in their garden.The goal in this for Google is to support digital ID. Every totalitarian goal currently being employed requires a digital ID and phones are how they want citizens to access their digital ID (the actual digital ID is created, owned, and managed by the regime, though they will outsource). However, this requires a phone they completely control. Google doesn&#x27;t care about GrapheneOS or Agoristic users and will lock them out without even thinking twice about it.

I don&#x27;t care, I run Graphene, and my phone is definitely mine. Most Android apps just work, and the ones that don&#x27;t are the kind of malware I am happy to do without.

Because you can conceiled carry a smartphone? Please explain.

From the state&#x27;s perspective, probably along the same lines as why long guns are allowed with permit in many countries where handguns are banned.

To be fair, many early computers were tied to the OS.

If computers were invented by the Silicon Valley of the 2020s, this would absolutely be the case.

That’s odd, because I remember being a user of MUSIC on the university System&#x2F;360. I imagine it also sounds odd to all those people who ran AT&amp;T Unix on their PDP&#x2F;11 systems instead of a Digital OS like RTS&#x2F;11. Or the people who ran Xenix on their PCs. Or the folks like me who installed OS&#x2F;2 on what was sold as an MS-DOS machine. Then there were the folks who ran A+ on their Atari.

Steam Deck exists and works quite well. No lock-in necessary.

It’s the same situation as game consoles. Custom built hardware that is only meant to run the one specific vendor OS. There have been many other computing devices like that in the past as well. The general purpose desktop computer that allows a choice of operating systems is actually less common than the other way. Historically, people didn’t expect to run alternate operating systems on a mainframe, 80s and 90s computers like a Commodore 64, Power PC Macs, Amigas and DOS&#x2F;Windows machines until Linux came along.

We have vendor locked-in hardware as well (blowing fuses on threadripper&#x2F;epyc to disable running on a different mainboard)

The vendor lock-in scenario for desktop hardware already exists with the latest x86 generation of gaming consoles. Gaming consoles are locked down because the hardware is subsidized with the expectation of revenue from the digital marketplaces they provide.The yet-to-be-released Steam Machine is not subsidized and is unlocked. Steam is a OS agnostic digital marketplace, so it doesn&#x27;t matter what OS you install on the machine.Microsoft doesn&#x27;t see a threat in allowing other OSes on their Surface hardware because the majority of their revenue comes from M365.It&#x27;s just market forces really. In the end, phones provide enough utility for the majority of users while being locked down. There&#x27;s nothing stopping you from buying a fully-open phone, but there&#x27;s just very little utility in it for the majority of users.

I think it’s because the Microsoft Store barely has any apps that users use. The Microsoft Store didn&#x27;t support the Win32 API, so developers had to rewrite their apps.iOS was a new SDK from the start.

No need to play this scenario in your head, here it is in the real world: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Windows_RT" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Windows_RT</a>Few interested hardware vendors, discontinued after 4 years. &quot;mixed reviews at launch, while critics and analysts deemed it to be commercially unsuccessful&quot;Windows 10 S was another attempt that &quot;Similarly [restricts] software installation to applications obtained via Windows Store.&quot; Cancelled after one year.Exactly the fate I wish upon closed ecosystems. The only question is why iOS is different. I am inclined to say it&#x27;s the brand status that overpriced luxury goods have that draws rich people initially, making it lucrative and perhaps even a tad prestigious to be there, but surely it&#x27;s more than that?

That&#x27;s really not true at all. Are you aware of the entire home computer industry of the 70s and 80s? Before PCs, you had a beige box you plugged into your TV and typed in games line by line out of a magazine. They DIY scene was enormous as a percentage of total users.They also blur the line between &quot;computer&quot; and &quot;console&quot;, since the NES is practically the same architecture as many contemporary &quot;computers&quot;. Homebrew games existed, and weren&#x27;t that far out of reach. Homebrew has existed on pretty much every console ever.PCs weren&#x27;t an accident in any way. They are a direct descendant of &quot;home computers&quot;. That&#x27;s why they were called &quot;personal computers&quot; in the first place.

Alongside TV we had cameras, and families across the country filming birthdays and other special occasions.Alongside newspapers we had &#x27;zine culture and mail-order pamphlets.There has always been the option to contribute - the Apple iPhone is quite possibly the first exception.

I think this was because of the “IBM PC Compatible” market. IBM was using off-the-shelf components for its PC system and other manufacturers reverse engineered and cloned the system and started selling IBM clones. Interestingly Microsoft who controlled the OS became the monopoly and gatekeeper of that market, not IBM (hardware). MS was making a ton of money by selling OS licenses and online software stores was not a thing since the Internet was nonexistent&#x2F;limited. “Developers, developers, developers” were the king in that business model so they didn’t need to give a cut to MS or IBM to build on a PC system.Saying that I think the situation in the smartphones today is less about the business model and more about control and surveillance.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;IBM_PC_compatible" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;IBM_PC_compatible</a>

&gt; Why is this acceptable for phones but would not for the case above?PCs happened by accident.Before the PC, people had TVs - devices not for creating, but for passively consuming content made by big corporations and the state. And we had games consoles - devices not for creating, but for playing games made by a medium-sized company, with strict approval by a huge company (who want a cut). Strictly censored to be age-appropriate, naturally. Pirate radio? Straight to jail.Before that people had newspapers - media for passively consuming, intended for mass readership, written at the behest of rich newspaper barons with certain political opinions they&#x27;re keen to push.And after the PC, we have smartphones - devices not for creating, but for consuming content feeds, curated by big corporations, with rich owners with certain political opinions they&#x27;re keen to push. A huge company eager to take a cut. A tiny screen, and a keyboard that puts curly braces three keypresses deep. Can&#x27;t even debug a web page without connecting to a PC. And soon to be strictly censored to be age-appropriate.The PC is really the outlier here.

&gt; we should root for an open choice for the usersI see what you did there... and agree completely. If you don&#x27;t have root, it&#x27;s not yours. All my Androids (none from this decade) are rooted and I plan to keep them that way.

Out of all the things that have computational power, PC is pretty much the only one that comes with a built-in way to replace its own system. Xbox, PlayStation, Telsa, Smart Fridges, etc. don&#x27;t have this ability from the beginning.So yeah, the society has largely accepted this. PC is the exception.

You can absolutely install Linux on a Mac. Back before Apple made custom CPUs they supported and even advertised installing Windows.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Boot_Camp_(software)" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Boot_Camp_(software)</a>

You _can_ run other OSes on Macbooks. They&#x27;re not locked in at all, it&#x27;s simply that the drivers aren&#x27;t open source and the hardware is undocumented, but with enough effort (e.g. Asahi) you can run technically anything on it.

&gt; They perform the specific functions that they were programmed to performThat&#x27;s the thing. You may have bought a device that was meant to perform a task but after some time the company decides that now it should do a different task. I think that&#x27;s what stops making you the owner. You can&#x27;t really choose what to do with it.

&gt;which will result in fragmentation.Why? And how does that bother you?

all appliances used to come with schematics and repair manuals, there was no prevention of modification or repair. We&#x27;re talking cars, washing machines, dryers, radios etc.Separate from computers and phones locking down devices is a much wider issue, usually it is only implemented to reduce liability of the manufacturer or to allow for planned obsolescence.

So you mean, Macs and macOS?All modern devices are appliances, not computers.They perform the specific functions that they were programmed to perform, and do not allow arbitrary execution of calculations on the underlying hardware.Many people, mostly folks who adopt the Apple ecosystem, see this as a positive thing that allows them to delegate undifferentiated decisions on security and ways of working to the vendor.I am one of those people and hope that Android remains open so that people don&#x27;t expect Apple open up their hardware, which will result in fragmentation.

Because phones aren’t computers first and foremost. It can be hard to see it at this forum, but phones aren’t computers, they are intended to be general purpose devices to solve a set of problems for the vast majority of people on the planet. And a subset of those problems involve things like money and personal information. So the device needs to be secure, even (perhaps especially) from the end user themself because it needs to try to withstand compromise even when the user is drunk or sad or in a rush.I am not arguing you need to like where this has led, but you have people in sibling comment threads here arguing we need to push back on things assuming you will use a phone when the whole revolution has been getting most of the world online by making phones widely available.

In general, vendor lock in is the natural state, especially under capitalism. Being able to (so easily) install Linux on a PC is an exception.On the topic of Windows, it took lawsuits to allow OEM&#x27;s and users to remove IE.Open choice will always be an uphill battle.

I think historically it has existed like this due to regulation regarding radio sending equipment and the integration between the platform (CPU) and modem in phones.Due to this the equipment manufacturers where never incentivized to have a &quot;open&quot; ecosystem for the CPU+modem combo. That&#x27;s why there is no OS war on a per device basis, most phones supports 1 OS officially.

Let me play out a scenario, imagine to use a Desktop Hardware like a complete built rig, you would need a specific OS like Windows 11 and you could not run Linux on it, just because it&#x27;s a vendor lock-in.Why is this acceptable for phones but would not for the case above?I know a lot of people don&#x27;t care, and that&#x27;s ok, but we should root for an open choice for the users.

Google is altering the deal. Pray Google does not alter it any further.

I could still push an app to my phone via adb after this nonsense gets implemented?

Google doesn&#x27;t want millions of people to have every cent of their money stolen.This measure is about making it harder to pull off a specific type of scam that is plaguing South East Asia. No conspiracy.For actual information on the purpose of this change rather than conspiracies, I refer you to <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;android-developers.googleblog.com&#x2F;2026&#x2F;03&#x2F;android-developer-verification.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;android-developers.googleblog.com&#x2F;2026&#x2F;03&#x2F;android-de...</a>Since the victims of these scams do not typically own a traditional computer&#x2F;cannot be pressured to get to one quickly, ADB will remain a thing.

For how long will ADB work? Obviously Google doesn&#x27;t want user to install apps outside of their control

Ugh such overreaction. ADB is still a thing. Apple doesn&#x27;t even have an official command like tool where you can just push an IPA to your phone. Goodness.

There is still a point to making a choice. Inconvenient sideloading is still better than no sideloading.In principle I could never reward Apple with my business for having originated and normalized this.And pragmatically, I&#x27;d like to hold on for as long as I can to the next set of rights that Apple will take away five years before Google does.

I&#x27;ll chime in with a really basic example. On my Android phone, I can have syncthing run as a background task. I can point other applications to use a data folder, in my syncthing share, and store their persistent state there. The Camera app, for example. Or Obsidian, my current favorite note taking app. Syncthing, by virtue of being always on and manipulating a decades old, very well understood filesystem concept, &quot;magically&quot; syncs all of these changes to every other device I own. Entirely offline, even if the internet is out, because the devices can just talk to each other.So far, I have been utterly incapable of getting my iPad to do anything remotely similar. It can run syncthing, technically, but not in the background. Apps don&#x27;t have a shared filesystem structure, so it&#x27;s difficult to get anything else set up to &quot;save within my shared folder&quot; in a way that would work, and that disregards that the syncing cannot occur when anything else is open. There&#x27;s all sorts of cloud backup options, but those require the internet and even when they&#x27;re working, there&#x27;s this awkward import&#x2F;export flow that adds friction to the whole dance.In isolation this would just be a small papercut, I guess, but these sorts of limitations are all over iOS. It&#x27;s just terribly hostile to anyone not fully committed to the Cloud-first, Apple-hardware ecosystem. Android doesn&#x27;t care, and doesn&#x27;t have to care, because it lets me run the software I want. It&#x27;s a really small set of programs too, at the end of the day. (Firefox with real extensions is the other one.)

You can download torrents on an android and plug usb media devices into it. When I was bicycle touring Europe with my wife a couple years ago we constantly downloaded books for direct input into our kobos and shows and movies to fall asleep to at night you could play from random, often old and crappy, hotel and airbnb televisions. You can’t do any of that on an iPhone.That said; iPhone is my main phone, has been for a decade or more. But I deeply appreciate what you can do with an android.

The openness of Android also acts as a check of sorts on how restrictive the walled garden can get. If google were to clamp down on useful functionality in the play store, then you could always install apks yourself. But if the latter is no longer an option, then there&#x27;s much more temptation to google for the former.

I actually use the ability to install custom software on Android. I actually use the ability for Android apps to bundle JITs, and language interpreters, and other things that allow you to extend the app at runtime. The Apple walled garden would be unusable for me. And moves like this one to turn the Android ecosystem into the Apple ecosystem will generally be regressions.If anything, I&#x27;d like more openness in Android. For instance, apps should not have any control over what data I can back up; I should be able to back up every aspect of every app, restore it to a new phone, and apps should not be allowed to care.

I developed my first Android app when I was around 16 years old and I remember distinctly wanting to publish it on Google Play, but couldn&#x27;t because they required developers to be 18+, and this was even before they introduced strict identity verification requirements. And iOS was a lost cause as XCode famously requires an operating system that only runs on very specific hardware for which I had no money. No matter, I published an apk on a website and ended up reaching a few tens of thousands of users that way. My app ended up transforming a (niche) industry and making a real impact on the world.If Android isn&#x27;t open, we lose the last open mobile operating system, which will have immeasurable negative effects on computing as a whole. People will need permission from either Apple or Google to create any mobile program. If you don&#x27;t fit into their neat little system, you don&#x27;t get permission. If I hadn&#x27;t been able to publish my app for another 2 years I probably would&#x27;ve shelved it, decided it was stupid, forgot about it, got busy with other things, and never published it.

Not op, but I used to be a mobile app.I use this to occasionally build and install Android apps from github.These are often out of date and need some tweaks but I can do it on a whim (I certainly wouldn&#x27;t bother if there was a paywall).

I used to build custom apps for my Android all the time, install APKs, transfer files over USB, use USB tethering on my Linux computer, torrent, use a mouse and keyboard (I think iOS can do this now though), use the integrated terminal, etc.A few years ago, iOS lacked basic features like widgets, NFC, calculator on their tablets, etc. And iOS still has a completely inferior keyboard (I used to write code and essays on my Android while walking) and a completely inferior notification system. Androids are also the only phones still offering a fingerprint scanner, which is way better for me. These nice things all combine well with the oppenness.What&#x27;s worse is that we&#x27;re clearly in a progression of restriction. Bootloader restrictions, app installation restrictions, &quot;age verification&quot; requirements, etc. Openness is being locked down from every angle with serious momentum, it&#x27;s not anticipated to stop here.

&gt;For you, is the openness of Android appealing as a matter of principle or does it enable you to do things you couldn&#x27;t otherwise do?Both. I don&#x27;t like the idea of locked down computers and that includes phones, especially now that they&#x27;re so prominent in our lives.I dabbled in Android development for fun a decade ago and I loved how there was no barrier to entry. I&#x27;ve loaded apps that aren&#x27;t available on the Play Store and have loaded apps that my friends have made just as fun side projects.There was a handheld gaming system in the early 2000s called Cybiko. Cybiko and Sega Dreamcast homebrew opened my mind up to the power of computers and having control of your hardware. These things should not be locked down. I liked messing around with making little programs on the Cybiko and downloading homebrew games for it and the Dreamcast. The openness of Android really excited me when it was new because I thought of it the same way as a Cybiko or Dreamcast or PC and not a locked down device where I can only run software approved by the hardware manufacturer.

Both, very much both, and I would assume that the &#x27;actually being able to use the device in whatever way I want&#x27; feeds back into the &#x27;this should be a thing we can do with purchased-to-own hardware&#x27; feeling

I modify several apps for my own use in ways that wouldn&#x27;t get accepted upstream (or are proprietary), and I modify OS components to reduce the impact of opinionated Google UI design (and Apple is worse in this context).

For you, is the openness of Android appealing as a matter of principle or does it enable you to do things you couldn&#x27;t otherwise do?

Don&#x27;t buy the FUD claiming this is about &quot;secure app management&quot;.

&gt; Millions chose Android for exactly that reason.Millions? Are you sure?Even so, Android has billions of users who want secure app management by default.

nah it was considered more open for users.

&gt; This is a very HN view of Android.Just because you&#x27;re HN dweller doesn&#x27;t make it HN view. The openness, freedom, customizability and accessibility (money wise) were the tenets that differentiated Android from Apple devices.

&gt; can I download an app off a random website and install itThis is a straw man. This change hurts third party app stores such as F-Droid the most. I vastly prefer it to Play Store for the same reasons I prefer GNU&#x2F;Linux to macOS or Windows (discounting the fact that Linux no longer needs hacks to &quot;just work&quot;).

When a platform ditches openness, you lose more than a seemingly insignificant market segment that makes no money. Using money as the only metric is stupid and myopic.

This is a very HN view of Android. The &quot;openness&quot; of Android was for mobile device manufacturers, not app developers and end-users. Android&#x27;s prominence was driven by the myriad of low-cost Android devices by multiple device manufacturers, whereas iOS is only available via iPhones.The vast majority of users don&#x27;t care about &quot;openness&quot; of the OS. They care about the utility of their phone in everyday life.Can I access digital payment systems, social media apps, and entertainment apps? How&#x27;s the camera on the phone? How big is the screen? Is it waterproof? How expensive is it?These are the questions the majority of phone buyers care about. Not, can I download an app off of a random website and install it?---I would say that the majority of developers don&#x27;t care about the &quot;openness&quot; either. They care about accessing a wide audience and getting revenue from their work. Free apps without ads or in-app purchases (zero-revenue apps) are the minority.Google is also fine with losing the zero-revenue app developers because they provide no value for Google. Actually, they are probably a loss for Google, since Google provides Google Play Services.

&gt; Millions chose Android for exactly that reasonCitation needed.But even if millions did bought an Android phone for ill-defined defined, about 15 billion Android phones were sold over the years, which could very well make those millions a minority, with most having other reasons for their purchase.

That would be good, but somehow didn&#x27;t work all the other times.

This is going to make it more difficult for non-open source projects to get a foothold in the future because people are not going to trust a promise any more. Like, I have this thing called a smart phone. Is it open source? No? Oh well.

&gt;Android&#x27;s openness was never just a feature. It was the promise that distinguished it from iPhone. Millions chose Android for exactly that reason. Google is now revoking that promise unilaterally, on devices already in people&#x27;s pockets, because they&#x27;ve decided they have enough market dominance and regulatory capture to get away with it.This is why I&#x27;ve stuck with Android for the past 15 years.

Some more discussions:2 weeks ago <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=47778274">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=47778274</a>February <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=47139765">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=47139765</a>October <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=45742488">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=45742488</a>

Better to share how to install apps and alternative app stores instead of fearmongering around very reasonable security measures.

It feels like you can draw a pretty clear comparison to the Google Shopping case: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.stibbe.com&#x2F;publications-and-insights&#x2F;google-shopping-self-preferencing-can-be-abusive" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.stibbe.com&#x2F;publications-and-insights&#x2F;google-shop...</a>It&#x27;s not enough to provide some crappier way for competition. Just using your dominance to influence the market at all is already monopoly abuse.And of course, businesses are affected. App developers are frequently businesses.

It&#x27;s not because you can still install apps outside the Play Store. The EU commission buys these &quot;safety&quot; arguments (also worked for Apple, they don&#x27;t care that you still can&#x27;t install IPAs) and the DMA is made for businesses, not for end-users. I once wrote them about the Chrome Web Store monopoly but they insist that everything is fine because businesses aren&#x27;t impacted. They are of course also interested in centralized censorship because they can order Google to block apps they don&#x27;t like.

They replied to me they did not see any legal problem with notarization.We need a DMA 2.0 which address the oligopoly of dominant Operating Systems, including the freedom to install alternative OSes (no more signed bootloaders, proper hardware documentation, etc...).

This feels like something where the EU Commission should step in. This is directly counter to the Digital Markets Act, it&#x27;s Google abusing its gatekeeper position.

This is correct. The people who will refuse to pay $25 and sign their stuff are people with a political objective, not businesses.

I agree; I expect that&#x27;s already true?In the GP I&#x27;m talking about people releasing FOSS and similar projects.

ZERO. ZERO developers who don’t comply will make a living selling applications and services to the general public.

There is a negative network effect: The opt-out is so complex and time-consuming that it will deter almost all users (even if some on HN say they will do it).With so few users, many fewer developers will release apps that don&#x27;t comply with Google&#x27;s requirements. Then the value of opting out will decline significantly, which will reduce the number of people doing it, which will reduce the number of apps released ...How do corporate users distribute custom apps on iPhones? Must they distribute them via Apple&#x27;s store or is there some corporate mode, maybe involving X.509 certs and device management, that enables large-scale professional users to sideload?

Yes. That attack is a very real attack. The attacker gets access to the victim&#x27;s phone and sideloads additional apps that appear to be the victim&#x27;s legitimate banking application. The victim logs into it and sees a fake balance (as the app is fake). Pressure and other social engineering tactics are invoked and the scammer walks away with all of the victim&#x27;s money.

As if there are no scam apps on Google Play.

And I kind of buy the intent behind the cooling-off period anyway. IIRC it&#x27;s to prevent people from being pressured into installing apps by scammers that could then take their phones hostage

The way you give your non-technical friends an APK and they just install it is by you signing it.

I will say, an underrated use case for even small, local LLMs is making command line tools drastically more accessible to laypeopleI now know zero people I don&#x27;t think should use linux, and people I know seems to run quite a gamut of technical know-how compared to most other technical folks I know

&gt; I can&#x27;t see where one can opt-out of this new behavior and into the existing behavior, only a description of the new behavior&#x27;s bypass (which is not the same thing at all)I don&#x27;t understand this, the ability to bypass new behavior in settings menus is basically the defenition of a new feature having an opt-out. Can you elaborate?

&gt; . I should be able to give my non-technical friend an apk and they can use it right thenUnfortunately that is the same vector that scammers use to drain people&#x27;s bank accounts

ADB is not the only option. Do the 24hs wait then the experience will not be much different than what already happens today: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;Z9hoYIh" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;Z9hoYIh</a>

&gt; Saying there is no opt-out is just falseI can&#x27;t see where one can opt-out of this new behavior and into the existing behavior, only a description of the new behavior&#x27;s bypass (which is not the same thing at all)&gt; easy to bypass the cooling-off period with ADBI don&#x27;t think this is a reasonable use of the term &quot;easy&quot;. I should be able to give my non-technical friend an apk and they can use it right then, with the one &quot;are you very sure&quot; screen.

Yeah, saw that; rubbed me wrong. &quot;If you disagree you are manufactured, a shill.&quot; This kind of condescension has never been very convincing. And I mostly agree with the petition.

&quot;Please don&#x27;t post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you&#x27;re worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we&#x27;ll look at the data.&quot;<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;newsguidelines.html">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;newsguidelines.html</a>

&gt; Saying there is no opt-out is just false, they even provide the information on how users can opt-out.The article states that you can&#x27;t opt-out of the update, which AFAIK is correct.

You still need Developer&#x27;s Options enabled and plenty of banking and other apps complain if you do that. Why do I need the Developer&#x27;s option enabled to run an app I developed myself, to be used by myself? It&#x27;s clear they&#x27;re heading to a walled garden and this is just a step towards that.

This is a wild misrepresentation of the situation. Saying there is no opt-out is just false, they even provide the information on how users can opt-out. The &quot;mandatory 24 hour cooling-off period&quot; is also misleading, it&#x27;s easy to bypass the cooling-off period with ADB.

That&#x27;s the depressing part.  I keep looking for something I could potential run the likes of kde mobile and maybe waydroid on, but there&#x27;s really just nobody doing this.  You are basically locked into a vendor kernel if it&#x27;s even available.

I&#x27;m doubtful, I for a bit bought a lot of the Pine64 devices thinking about this eg. not just Android&#x2F;iOS... but the lack of feature parity eg. missing drivers, lack of apps, old hardware.Unless people are paid to do it vs. volunteer

I&#x27;ve been a happy user of several of those &quot;effectively inexistent&quot; devices for nearly two decades now and I&#x27;m typing this on one of them. Whether they &quot;exist&quot; for you or not is your choice.

Dont get me wrong: I&#x27;d love the linux phone &quot;rebel&quot; community to be as large as the android one. But... i doubt it will be anytime soon? The problem is getting the hw investment done first.Android ecosystem is equivalent to windows one: its open enough to sustain a large number of vendors and tinkerers.I doubt this scare-campaign (OP link) will drive people constructively towards (effectively) innexistent linux alternatives. It&#x27;s more likely to do nothing or push people towards iOS

I imagine most of us here will look elsewhere when we next upgrade. But are those numbers large enough to form a viable alternative?

Algorithmically removing words from a headline with confidence that what comes out will be better is the precise intersection of stupid and arrogant that defines the modern tech industry.

Will your 4 unpublished apps be in your android-alternative apple device?Android will still have the ability to install non-google-distributed programs. The problem is the ominous momentum, but it is still more open than the apple alternative

I&#x27;m on this path too. Waiting a few more months to see what happens. If they indeed block my 4 apps on my phone (which aren&#x27;t published anywhere), I will simply move to Apple.

If there are two walled gardens, you might as well choose the prettier one.

For an Android user, iOS offers better privacy (which can change at any time), but it also comes baked in with better support for some open protocols. (SMB on Files, and CalDAV&#x2F;CardDAV for Calendars&#x2F;Contacts&#x2F;Notes integration). This has been the case for years, while aspects of the &#x27;walled garden&#x27; have eroded over time.It&#x27;s natural that this huge Android regression might be enough for someone to dip their toes into the other side.

So you moved into a walled garden in an attempt to escape what&#x27;s essentially a 3 foot picket fenced garden.

This is not true, running your code on your phone with Xcode has always been free.

While not equivalent to a true iOS app, PWA is a decent option that allows you to circumvent the app store restrictions. If you are trying to build apps primarily for yourself, it&#x27;s a decent option.

Isn&#x27;t keeping ADB enabled (most people who do this don&#x27;t enable it and then promptly disable it) a huge security problem? ADB enabled means an adversary can completely own your device and &quot;back it up&quot; by simply plugging it in.This is much worse than nagging about &quot;untrusted sources&quot;.

Sorry, even as a developer, &quot;but, you can use ADB&quot; is a big big copout.What&#x27;s the next step when ADB requires some hoops to enable? Will we say that but the eMMC has an unencrypted EXT4 partition, we can just desolder and write into it?

Not. You don’t need to pay $100 to upload your app to an iPhone, even with XCode for iOS 26

Yeah but where you were losing a lot, you&#x27;re now losing only a little bit.And on the other side, the benefits of using iOS over Android spyware outweighs the cons now.

No. You can upload your apps on your iPhone for free. You just need an Apple ID.

Even after Google puts this crap in place, you can still uplodad your own apps to your own Android devices, using ADB. Doing the same for iOS, using Xcode, costs you USD 100 or more (depending on country) per year.I&#x27;m in no way defending Google here, just pointing out you&#x27;re going from bad to worse and think it&#x27;s a good thing.

I&#x27;m considering switching to GrapheneOS... What&#x27;s this about RCS not working?

(4) is 100% you having a particular user preference and not a real bug with the system.

Agree and many more. I had an iPhone 15 Pro for about six months last year and one of the most infuriating things was that you can&#x27;t get to Camera settings from Camera, you have to go out to Settings.

&gt; Apple maps is hot garbage. I had to install Google Maps anyway to get decent performanceI hear this and wonder how much must be regional. I&#x27;m experiencing the opposite. Apple Maps has gotten quite good, while Google Maps seems to just be rotting away. Both do work reasonably well in my home area of the PNW, but Apple Maps is a bit more polished. But in some places, like recently when I was on a business trip in Austin, Google Maps was comically terrible at routing. I get that partly this is probably because Texas has interesting ideas about designing a road network, but still, Apple got it working just fine.

&gt; the vastly superior apple experienceAfter switching away from GrapheneOS to iOS after RCS stopped working for me, I can safely say my experience has been the opposite. The camera is the only thing better for me on iOS - everything else is buggier and worse. A few of my favorites:1. Safari is buggy as hell, and requires installing apps to run things like ad blockers.2. The settings are ALL over the place and very hard to navigate3. The gestures are clunky - often have to try a couple times to get one of the settings quick menus to drop down4. Why is the date not displayed at the top of the screen with the time outside of the lock screen?5. The pin unlock is horribly broken - I have to slow way down to use it compared to Android.6. Apple maps is hot garbage. I had to install Google Maps anyway to get decent performance.7. The handling of audio devices seems intentionally malicious - like if I call someone from my car through car play, it shouldn&#x27;t send the audio out through the phone earpiece. If a call begins with phone earpiece audio and is underway, it shouldn&#x27;t switch several seconds in to bluetooth headset half a house.I&#x27;m going back for my next phone.

GrapheneOS is the answer. Apple&#x27;s software is really buggy compared to Android and Linux.

Now you just have to deal with Apple&#x27;s hostile repairability situation.  Cryptographically-mated parts are just the beginning.

Ah yes macOS, the notoriously open platform.

In the words of a Great American:<pre><code> &quot;Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.&quot;</code></pre>

I hear what you&#x27;re saying, especially around just moving to iOS not being a better argument. However with 
&gt; And if I&#x27;m already this motivated I&#x27;m certainly motivated enough to wait 24hs on future (more locked down) devices.But I don&#x27;t think that&#x27;s the point. It&#x27;s a continual erosion of people&#x27;s ability to use hardware _they own_ in ways _they want_ under the guise of &#x27;security&#x27; - which to be fair google does fuck all to actually prevent malicious, scammy and misleading apps from appearing on their play store.Like, why make it harder _at all_? I develop Android apps for a company that is used only internally. I don&#x27;t want to have to release apps to the play store so that they have to go through a bs review period before I can get them out the door users. Currently I have a &lt;10m turn around from starting the build to having an app in user&#x27;s hands, ready to go... Every other time we&#x27;ve had to use the play store it&#x27;s 2+ days, and they don&#x27;t test or verify anything meaningful.I recognize my experience isn&#x27;t universal, but I&#x27;m pretty opposed to changes like this. I&#x27;m not American so I don&#x27;t really have underlying rhetoric around freedom etc, but this is an impingement and part of continuing anti-consumer trend. Google&#x27;s not the only one, but certainly the one under the spotlight here.

It&#x27;s the slippery slope that&#x27;s the issue, 24hrs is just the first iteration of the restriction. After couple of iteration of restrictions, they could force everyone to have govt-id approved by goog to install any app.

&gt; stop being yoursAs if most android maker phones don&#x27;t already fully own your device - preventing you from unlocking of bootloader and installing an OS that actually doesnt enforce the restriction google is introducing in their flavour of android.To pretend that with this change android becomes exactly like iOS is... ridiculous? I can pick any 10yo old android phone from my drawer and develop for it, no problem and without asking for permissions. And if I&#x27;m already this motivated I&#x27;m certainly motivated enough to wait 24hs on future (more locked down) devices.Do you think people who download NewPipe and alike - to circumvent ads and enable premium features - would think twice because they need to wait 24hs? Will NewPipe devs stop developing (anonymously) because of a small fraction of users who refuse to (or won&#x27;t) go through unlocking steps?Show me all these &quot;rebel&quot; apps on iOS ecosystem that can be easily distributed on any channel: fdroid, github, telegram groups, etc.But sure, if you thinking moving to iOS is the same, sounds like you never really made use of any of the freedoms android used to and will continue to provide

Android does indeed still look better. 
But, I would not consider having to send a copy of my government ID to Google, or having them be able to block apps when so ordered by government, to be acceptable.

Comment about point 2:
As a CEO who recently tried to make personal Android and iOS Dev accounts for my hobby apps on my +20 year old Google and Apple accounts, let me just say that the processes are alot more complicated to apply than is pointed out here.The key difference being that when I needed help I called Apple Support who transfered me once to their EU Developer support who, while I talked to him, setup and approved my Dev account.
While my Google account still is in pending limbo with their new verification system with no support to contact... I have since giving up getting access after multiple tries.So Google changes do hit alot harder than the summery makes it seem.

Nitpick: It’s written Xcode. Lowercase c.

Here is a table I just made (edit: changed to list as HN wraps code blocks now), of iOS vs Android (now) vs Android (after Sep 2026 or 2027 or whenever these announced changes take effect):•1. Where most users can install software from:↠↠ iOS: official store (App Store) + (in EU) other stores↠↠ Android (now): official store (Play Store), other stores (e.g. F-Droid), arbitrary APKs↠↠ Android (after changes): official store (Play Store), other stores (e.g. F-Droid), arbitrary APKs•2. Who the developers of software can be:↠↠ iOS: registered developers ($99&#x2F;year)↠↠ Android (now): any developer↠↠ Android (after changes): registered developers ($25 one-time) + hobbyists (small distribution) + any developers (for advanced users)•3. Installing your own apps on your own phone, without becoming a registered developer:↠↠ iOS: using XCode: need to reinstall every 7 days.↠↠ Android (now): using ADB↠↠ Android (after changes): using ADBThe second row (•2) is what is changing in Android. I think &quot;the ability to run my own code on my own device&quot;, narrowly speaking, is closest to the third row, which is not changing.

So basically—both Apple and Alphabet love the way you think.

This is literally the dumbest take I have seen!iOS charges you and limits your custom app until a few days and you have to &quot;renew&quot; Even before this change, I have my custom apps running forever.

Apple still doesn&#x27;t allow you to control individual app volume to silence&#x2F;dim certain applications in multi-play mode though, right?As someone who hates disturbances this is the killer feature that has kept me with samsung - well that and fdroid which is currently endangered.

You have bought a walled garden lock, it can be picked with a walled garden lock.

It&#x27;s unbelievably useful within its own walled garden. There are lots of instances where commands, tabs, and other pieces of data transfer seamlessly between your phone and computer. You can bring your phone up as a digital version ON your laptop so you can call, text, etc. straight from it while your phone sits in the bedroom charging or whatever. Everything works really, really well. Their walled garden has always been pretty top-tier.

Dumb question, can you explain the benefits of IOS? I&#x27;ve only tried using an iPhone ~10 years ago before I got into tech

I will do the same if they lock down Android. If I must be in a walled garden, then I&#x27;m going to choose the better kept garden, and it sure as hell isn&#x27;t Google&#x27;s. There is absolutely zero reason to tolerate the shittiness of Android if they take away the relative freedom it gives us. GrapheneOS is the last hope of the Android ecosystem, and if Google keeps locking things down that&#x27;s not going to last either.

I did this too, but it happened almost 10 years ago when Google started locking down Android in the name of battery life. I saw the writing on the walls and said if Android is going to be just like iOS because we collectively can’t have nice things, then at least I’ll live out that sad reality on better hardware.

iOS still more locked down than Google.  When I started reading this I thought you were going true open source

As a wise man once said - Android when you want to do thing TO your phone, iOS when you want do to thing with your phone.

No, Android still offers way more features than iOS.Replace the lock screen with a custom appReplace the home screen with a custom appSet default apps for SMS, phone service, assistant, camera, photo gallery. all things you can not change on iOSAlways on widgets and dynamic wallpapersIt has a much more customizable inter app communication system so that you can get more apps to be the default viewersAt allows true background tasks like say a BitTorrent clientIt supports shared storage like SMB and a user accessible file systemCustom NFC appsUSB host modeMultiple users&#x2F;profilesAnd about 70 other things

They are absolutely not taking away your ability to run your own code

You&#x27;re in an even worse ecosystem now, an apple phone never even has been yours.

Leaving one abusive partner for another is hardly a win. It&#x27;s pathetic.

You just proved that the ability of installing whatever apps you want isn&#x27;t that vital, don&#x27;t you?

Some want ownership, some want experience. People differ, who might have thought.

I used to own a house, I could decorate it the way I wanted. It was hard work, but it was mine!Then they locked it, so I went to live in a luxury hotel, it&#x27;s more expensive, I can&#x27;t decide how I want it and I don&#x27;t own anything, but it&#x27;s such a superior experience!

I&#x27;m so tired of this false dichotomy. Sent from my daily driver Librem 5 running GNU&#x2F;Linux.

I still remember how Google execs were using the word &quot;open&quot; almost as a comma. Android was Open, Google was Open, this was so different from the Closed Apple World. Everything would be Open!I hope we will remember this lesson and learn from it. Calling something &quot;open&quot; doesn&#x27;t make it so, and anything owned by a large corporation will eventually succumb to the direction taken by the corporation. And large corporations have goals where you, the user, are not a consideration, you are just a part of their money-making machinery.

I have recently made the same move... mostly because it allowed me to stop using my google and microsoft accounts. Moved all personal (and family domain) and business from google workspace &#x2F; O365 all into fastmail. Bought an iPhone (already worked with macs and an iPad for more than a decade. Not about particular preferences but this setup allows me to only be dependent on one bigcorp. Android still requires a google account, the rest was not necessary but I have above all else made a mental switch to simplify.I do not feel iOS is particularly better... some things are, some things are not. Yes android was more customizable, and yes the universal back and home buttons are still better than the multi tap and hidden gestures on iOS. But overall some pleasantries such as shared clipboard, seamless headphone switch over, and overall simplification so far, is working very well for me.I simply need a phone on a major platform, as my job (and life) requires to have certain apps which only run on (non-rooted) Android or iOS phones. And I am tired of fighting and adapting.. so I now just use most of the default apps everywhere, and whatever does or does not work, I take it mostly as-is. For now it seems to allow me to just worry less about it and focus on the things I actually want or need to do .. send email, read message, visit a website, listen to a podcast and not fret about the tiniest of UX details.I would love to live in a world where I could run around with a customized linux laptop and some sort of privacy respecting phone (e.g. Graphene) but the hurdles are not really worth it to me anymore. Sad in a way, as without counter pressure.. things will not necessarily get better, I know. The 22C3 talk by Rop and Frank I think was depressing, and true.We lost the war.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;events.ccc.de&#x2F;congress&#x2F;2005&#x2F;fahrplan&#x2F;events&#x2F;920.en.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;events.ccc.de&#x2F;congress&#x2F;2005&#x2F;fahrplan&#x2F;events&#x2F;920.en.h...</a>

&gt; the only value that Android really offered me was the ability to run my own code on my own device. Since they are taking that awayExcept they are not. And you can actually do that on iOS.

This change has served me well! I have been a Mac OS X users for years who used an android phone. As soon as google announced their impending walled garden status, I went out and bought into the ios eco system. I have really been enjoying my iphone, ipad, and apple watch.You see, the only value that Android really offered me was the ability to run my own code on my own device. Since they are taking that away that just makes it a crappier shadow of the vastly superior apple experience. And, as it turns out, ios is less restrictive than it was 18 years ago when I left them for Android!

I wouldn’t mind a 64-bit build of Symbian or WebOS on my phone, actually. Or, hell, Plan 9.

We need a Wine-like compatibility layer for android alternatives

Is it time to bring back the Windows phone?I keed I keed!But unfortunately there really isn&#x27;t a great alternative. I painfully attempted to use Ubuntu Touch and its always the same thing. The lack of available apps, the lack of app development in general for the platform was pretty eye opening. Add in having it only run on really old devices isn&#x27;t much help either. Its promising, but a long ways off even from some of the non-standard roms I&#x27;ve used like Evolution X which is a Lineage fork.If this really does cripple a lot of the known custom roms out there without any solid alternatives other than Graphene? It could really be a huge turning point.

I really don&#x27;t understand this mentality at all. Freedom is about the ability to do more stuff, not the requirement to do more stuff. Meaning, everything you want to do with a locked down phone, you can do with an open one.There&#x27;s no, like, gun to your head saying you HAVE to side load apps. You can just... not... do that. If you think side loading is insecure. You can download 100% of your apps from the play store. In fact, that&#x27;s what 95% of people do.I mean, what&#x27;s the threat model here? That you somehow forget your own belief about side loading being insecure and then accidently side load an app? Does that even seem possible?I can kind of understand this argument for granny who doesn&#x27;t know where she is. Kind of. But for you, it makes no sense. I mean really, think about what you&#x27;re saying here about you as a computer user or even as a person.

Great for you. But what about the rest of us?

Security is essential for an appliance like a smart phone. I fight the general purpose computing battle on my desktop with Linux, but on my phone I just need something that won’t be hacked.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;postmarketos.org" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;postmarketos.org</a> is working on developing a Linux distribution for mobile devices (including smartphones), aligned with these goals: free open source software, empowering users to control their own devices.I won&#x27;t deny that a lot of application support still needs more work. But this is definitely moving in the right direction.

To be sincere, they were never truly ours. A proof of that is they were able to come up with this, and you don&#x27;t have a way to reject it.What we actually need are (open) alternatives, not to double down on Google&#x27;s ecosystem and Google-controlled OS. We need to control the device we bought and be able to run whatever we wish on it. Just like we do on PCs.

On one hand, having a free for all is very good, especially for developers, and for programmability of our devices as such. Screw iPads.On the other hand, malware which coaxes normies into installing unverified apks, is an undeniable fact of life. It&#x27;s nice to be pontificating as a power user who has never been phished or whose devices never became botnet zombies in their life.On yet another hand, higher-end malware (made by those who can afford the store fees) is there on the freaking play store and app store, so, I guess, shrug

Should the GPL3 software you download and run also be yours?

I realize this is a different discussion, but shouldn&#x27;t it be? The way that it has been since home computers were a thing, as far as I know at least? I don&#x27;t think we&#x27;d stand where we stand today if Commodore and other hardware vendors had required a license on every piece of software from the get-go (if we pretend that there was a known, exportable, and safe signature scheme back then)

The regulation has blatant loopholes, as usual. While it did force Apple to allow third party app stores, all apps still have to go through a review process by Apple themselves before they can be installed from any source, and they retain the ability to block any apps they don&#x27;t approve of. Google is just following in their footsteps.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;support.apple.com&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;118110#notarization" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;support.apple.com&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;118110#notarization</a>

this change makes Android more restricted than it was but still not as restricted as Apple.  If anything I&#x27;d guess the EU vs Apple situation made Google more confident that they could get away with this change.

I don&#x27;t understand, there was all this regulation for force apple to allow alternative app stores, and now google are pulling this move?How is this not the same walled garden approach apple was forced to change?

Your phone is about to stop being yours