This defeats the entire purpose of me having android
Like I’m just going to switch to an iPhone now. Not because Apple is any better, but because I have more family with them.
They took away our SD cards, they took away our removable batteries, they took away our headphone jacks. Now they’re taking away side loading apps, and that’s it. I’m done. The death of android.
Removable batteries are coming back, as they become mandatory in the EU in 2027.
Or you can already get one with a Fairphone (which also has SD card slot).
As for the headphone jack, I’m afraid it won’t come back. Bluetooth alternatives are far better these days (I got both, so I know from experience), and good adapters (like Apple one) are barely more than $10.Bluetooth alternatives are far better these days
Disputable.
- they are cable-less, thus need to be charged separately
- they are cable-less, thus it is easier to lose them
- bluetooth implementation is a potential security vulnerability
- transmission by radio will always be less energy efficient than transmission by wire
I liked the whole not having to charge headphones thing more than anything.
i’m a musician, have a trained ear and even with mild tinnitus have yet to see any BT audio transmission that matches the fidelity of cables.
That aspect did pop into my head but I am not qualified to comment as I never use any wireless headsets, nor are my ears trained enough for fully appreciating hi-fi quality.
BT 6.1 introduced Randomized RPA (Resolvable Private Address) which should help with some of the security issues. That said I wouldn’t expect to see headphones implementing 6.1 for quite some time. It just came out in May.
I have two devices, one is my phone, and one only plays music. I only ever use my phone as my phone, and my music device as my music device in my car, and both run over Bluetooth.
It is a crapshoot as to which role my car will assign to which device. Sometimes I have to put my phone in airplane mode so that the car won’t try to assign it the media player role in Bluetooth settings. I’m not impressed.
check the Bluetooth settings on your phone. on mine, I can disallow roles that a peripheral could get, like media audio, phone calls, etc
they are cable-less, thus need to be charged separately
Not a major drawback, IMO.
they are cable-less, thus it is easier to lose them
True, but I haven’t lost any in the something like 6 years I’ve been using them.
bluetooth implementation is a potential security vulnerability
What’s your threat model? Who’s going to be attacking your security via your headphones? What happens if they succeed?
IMO this is a pretty ridiculous drawback, it’s like saying “wired headphones are worse because the wire can be used as a garrote”, which is true, but not an actual drawback for 99.999% of people.
transmission by radio will always be less energy efficient than transmission by wire
So what?
IMO the drawbacks of wired headphones are:
- The cable often gets tangled, and it’s a pain in the ass to untangle it
- The cable can often get snagged on things, and if that happens the best thing that can happen is that the headphones can go flying out of your ears. The worst thing that can happen is that the phone goes flying out of your pocket and smashes on the ground.
- The cables can get dirty and frayed, and if they get too frayed they can break or get worn down so they have an iffy connection.
- Even when the cable isn’t tangled, just arranging the wire so it’s out of the way, long enough to get to your ears, but not so long it gets tangled can be frustrating.
- Trying to use your phone for anything else while your headphones are attached can be a problem. Say you want to take a picture of something, or pay for something using NFC, you have to be careful of the cable. If you had the cable tucked into your shirt or zipped up in your jacket so it’s out of the way, now the cable might not be long enough anymore.
- Because of the wire, you’re limited in where you can put your phone, and your head has to always be within a short distance to your phone. With a wireless headset you can choose to put the phone in a knapsack if that’s more convenient, and when you put down the knapsack you can take a few steps away from it without losing your connection and interrupting whatever you’re listening to.
- If you’re doing something like working in the kitchen while listening to music or a podcast, you can’t put your phone down on the counter and use it to look at a recipe, because as soon as you have to move to go get another ingredient, or to move from the cutting board to the sink, you have to pick the phone up again. And that can be a real issue if you have goop on your hands and you’re moving to the sink to wash them off.
- In cold weather / winter you might want to have your phone in a jacket or something. If you go inside and take the jacket off you either have to pause things while you transfer the phone to another pocket and rearrange the wire, or you have to do this complicated dance where you clear the wire and move the phone without accidentally yanking the wire out of the phone or out of your ears. With a wireless headset you just take the phone and move it to a new pocket whenever that’s convenient.
The headphone wire is a potential personal security vulnerability as a ninja can use it to garrote you.
The drawbacks for a wireless headset are:
- They tend to have batteries that can’t be replaced, so eventually they lose their ability to hold a charge and need to be replaced. It can get really annoying to use them when the batteries are starting to fail and they hold less than an hour of charge.
- They tend to be much more expensive than wired headphones.
- Wireless buds are easier to lose, and easier to drop. If you drop them they can bounce and roll under things, or into the street or who knows where.
- They do eventually run out of charge, and you do have to charge them, and sometimes they can be low on charge / out of charge when you want to use them.
- There’s a fair amount of lag, which can be annoying when you’re trying to skip commercials on podcasts and so-on.
- they are cable-less, thus need to be charged separately
I’ll give you that, but my bone conduction headset lasts a few days with the amount I use
- they are cable-less, thus it is easier to lose them
Meh. I’ve put corded earbuds in my pocket and probably worn them out faster that way. Bluetooth headsets I tend to leave on (much to my wife’s annoyance) and that makes them last longer in my experience.
- bluetooth implementation is a potential security vulnerability
Aha, that van outside must be tapping into me listening to The Dandy Warhols! I knew it! (In all seriousness, if security is that critical you probably shouldn’t be doing whatever it is over WiFi, which is pretty much unavoidable with a phone)
- transmission by radio will always be less energy efficient than transmission by wire
Are we really talking about saving energy here? That’s like… Moisture in the bucket levels. Not even a drop in the bucket
they are cable-less, thus need to be charged separatel
If you wish for ANC you’ll need a battery anyway, and most people do want ANC these days
they are cable-less, thus it is easier to lose them
I’m loosing my wired headphone far more often, for a simple reason: wireless ones having a battery allows me to make them beep, given they are near, of course.
bluetooth implementation is a potential security vulnerability
Sure, and so are wired headphone as they act as an antenna, broadcasting to anyone with an appropriate receptor anything you say and/or hear.
As for the implementation vulnerabilities, at least it can be patched.transmission by radio will always be less energy efficient than transmission by wire
Sure, but is it that much of a problem? It would take years (if not decades) of constant listening to even use a dollar of electricity for wireless headphones. Even if you factor the data transmission from the phone into that.
And wired headphone are not energy neutral either. They works by pulling energy from the phone battery.I prefer the wireless headphones ease of use to headphone I have to untangle every time I want to use them. I keep my wired ones for home uses.
Bluetooth alternatives aren’t better, that’s laughable.
You cant buy beyerdynamics DT-990s with Bluetooth, you cant get Sennheiser HD 490 Pros with Bluetooth, you cant buy Audeze LCD-5s with Bluetooth. I could go on and on but you get the point. Good headphones don’t use Bluetooth.
The nice headphones a lot of us have had for years, well before the headphone jack was removed don’t have Bluetooth.
So when you say they’re better 1. You’re wrong. And 2. You’re missing the point.
If you prefer Bluetooth, fine, but phones with headphone jacks still have Bluetooth. You’re only ok with it because it doesn’t effect you and I think that’s appalling.
Imagine phone manufacturers remove the ability to use Bluetooth headphones and I say “that’s fine, wired headphones are better anyway”. It’s not about that, it’s about removing your freedom to choose and it should NOT be tolerated
You are right. But for >99% of users Bluetooth is a perfectly sufficient connection format for headphones.
I work in IT and pairing bluetooth is sometimes so finnicky i give up for a few days. I can accept that I’m not that great at IT but I don’t think 99% of people don’t have these problems.
And it’s not a thing you do one time, most of these gadgets need re-pairing every sone time for whatever reason.
Oh I’ll agree that sometimes Bluetooth pairing can be finicky.
But the person I replied to was talking about how Bluetooth is not good enough for audiophile quality headphones. But most people don’t care and can’t even notice the difference.
There are a lot of very good Bluetooth headphones from Bose, Sony, and the like. If you take a look at lab tests, most of lf them got a frequency response pretty close to the ideal curve, and ANC helps a lot to isolate outside noises that would drown out the music on wired headphones.
But I do agree about choice, just not on the blind refusal of using USB-C adapters. That’s unfortunate that they removed it, but it has some good reasons. A headphone jack wasn’t made to be waterproof, and if some managed to make some of them waterproof-ish, it is often by enclosing it into its own little sub-enclosure, with a good short-circuit protection (because even a tiny water drop in there mean a short), both of which takes place.
Same goes for the DAC, we got so far into miniaturizing it, and inside interferences are so high now with new technologies, it probably wouldn’t be viable anymore to have it inside the phone itself. Even larger device, like the Steam Deck, have problems preventing interferences on the headphones jack, so that must be an even bigger problem on something as tinny as a phone 😅citing bose and sony vs sennheiser audeze and beyerdynamics, dude, you don’t know headphones
I trust in independent reviews, reproducible tests and hard numbers, not in brand cultivated images and subjective choices. I don’t care if it comes for Audeze, Sony, or a Chinese Knockoff, numbers doesn’t lie.
did… did you just call sennheiser a chinese knockoff? dude, know when to bow out
Hell no. I’m well aware it is a good audio brand (german I think, but may be mistaken)
What I wanted to say here is that I prefer an objective good quality product, adapted to my needs, to a brand name. Even well known brands sometimes make bad products.
As an example, I have a Sony WH-1000XM3. But if I’d be interested in an XM4, there is no way in hell I’d buy an XM5, because of some shitty choices they took (no more foldable design, forced adaptative ANC). Maybe the XM6 will end up of interest to me, I did not yet check its specs, but considering I recently changed my current XM3 battery, I won’t be back on the market until the XM7 or XM8.
Phones that run Linux and have a headphone jack:
2026 will be the year of the Linux phone!
Hmmm. Then I would need to figure out how my authenticators would work. I have like 3 different ones for a total of like 18 accounts. It’s annoying as all hell
I’d love for that to be the case, but without a lot more polish and the ability to run Android apps in some kind of sandbox I don’t see it happening.
2026 will be the year of the Linux phone!
or 2027. Or some Chinese variant of android on Chinese/Taiwan phone that allows sideloading, perhaps with alternate playstore and maps. I don’t yet understand how draconian this actually gets implemented, but death of android/google (to me) is possible. If hardware is good enough, then android emulator will be fine for legacy apps.
Bluetooth is better than…it used to be? Because I promise you there is no earbud on planet earth better than my open back cans.
No, bluetooth is not better. Bluetooth has latency which is bad for anything that needs realtime audio, like video games or any kind of live performance. It also runs on 2.4 like every other electronic Wireless devices making it prone to interference. And it’s yet another device to keep charged all the time.
USB C is also inferior because you need dongles which increase complexity of your setup, it’s more prone to failures. Like audio cutting off every x minutes because connection is just slightly loose or other electronic gremlins. I’m saying this having just had a gig and the MD’s phone we relied on for the metronome started acting up during the performance not recognizing the dongle until a reboot.
Audio jacks were simple, analog, worked perfectly fine and delivered high quality audio. What we have now is overengineered slop that is less reliable and more expensive.
I never had one of my wired earbuds fall off the platform at the train station and disappear in the gravel, nor did I ever have isues with forgetting to charge them, let alone their case being brolen and not charging at all. And if I want to switch my favourite headphones over from my PC to my phone, I’m really glad my old phone still has a jack.
I still have a headphone jack. Rare but Androids with them exist if you go out of the mainstream bullshit.
saying “bluetooth alternatives are far better these days” ignores the uses cases for cable.
I have a fp4 and it is VERY annoying to not have jack(I don’t wanna use bluetooth because jack works, doesn’t need a battery and is low tech), so now I only listen to music on my computer, but I’m planning on making an mp3 player with a raspberry pi pico.
Fairphone is too big, i don’t want a phablet in my pocket
They won’t become “removable” like in ye old Nokia days. It’s not like you can carry extra batteries and just swap them on the go.
They just have to be swappable without special tools or specialist equipment.
The Apple adapter is very good. I used one on my Linux machine that had a finicky built in port. Obviously works great on a phone. If you need one in a car at least MagSafe/qi is available now but not ideal.
I don’t love the idea of “removable” batteries being mandated if that means like the batteries in an old flip phone. We needed them then because the capacity was so bad and power banks didn’t exist. I would prefer that manufacturers require them to be third party replaceable instead.
They have to be user removable, not hot-removable. Take a FP6 as an example, you have to remove a couple of screw to get to it, then another couple to remove it. What are forbidden will be glued batteries and back panels.
That’s convenient to swap a battery but I feel like my phone is more likely to get soaked than need a battery swap at any time in the next two years. The FP6 is IP55 rated.
Looks like FP6 battery is £45 and iPhone 14 is £60-£90 depending where you buy it. I know I can get that done in the next hour or two where I live, so I don’t see it as a big deal.
The replaceable camera feature is more compelling because a broken front iPhone camera can effectively brick the device.
My phone is IP68 and you can replace the battery. Does require removing some screws to get the case off but I think that would pretty much be required to waterproof it anyway.
Shame they discontinued Cat phones
A replaceable usb-c port is great too. My previous Nokia 8.1 died because of that, and my previous FP5 needed a replacement after 2 years of use.
But I agree that Fairphone have work to do on waterproofing their phones. It was hard with the previous hand removable back panel, but now that they added screws to the back panel, it wouldn’t be that much of a a stretch to add some o-rings to further waterproof it. I’m sure they could get it to IP66 rather easily, maybe IP67 with a little more work.
Tbf, you can a very cheap android phone for around $100 USD, the cheapest iPhone starts at around
$400(edit: Actually I got curious and looked it up, apparantly the iPhone SE is gone and the cheapest new iPhone right now seems to be the 16e which start at $600). Also, Apple developer account cost $99 per year, Google developer account cost $25 one time fee, so the cost is gonna trickle down to the user, sometimes you find free apps on google play and then you look at apple and it cost a few dollars, its most likely due to the recurring costs to maintain a developer account.Also, Apple doesn’t allow torrent clients, You can’t use firefox with ublock origin on iOS.
(But then again, these advantages could also go away in a few years… 👀)
Wait no Firefox on iPhone? Fuck that I’m back in
There is a “firefox” but its just a re-skinned safari basicly, because Apple has some weird requirement of using their “webkit” or whatever, and no extensions allowed on the “firefox”. I used an iPhone before (because I was a young adult and iPhones looked shiny) and I was so sad to find out I couldn’t use uBlock Origin on it. And then finding out torrent apps are non-existent just made me cry.
Yes they do have “adblockers” like Brave or those Adguard thing on safari, but those are dogshit and they broke like half of the time, and many ads get through anyways, especially on youtube (where as uBlock Origin only break sites like 5% of the time).
Orion sorta lets you use Firefox addons. I use the built in adblocker it has tho.
I just get a flipphone, and try to build some portable computing device from a Raspberry Pi CM, even if they made it 5V, for “industrial purposes” (read: likely some industry people wanted to stop people from building their own portable devices), which is less ideal for battery operation.
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Their arguments are kind of lame. To install APKs from outside the store is already an involved process that generally makes it harder for the uninformed to sideload. Make sideloading a bit harder, but possible. My xiaomi makes me wait and read warnings before installing APKs, for example.
Side loading will still be possible but the apps themselves will need to be signed by the developer through Google, so Google ultimately still controls what can be installed. Maybe someone will crack it.
It’s a great way to workaround them being forced to open the ecosystem a little and allowing alternative stores and that stuff. It only took more than a decade, they obviously not happy about it, so gotta screw people in another way.
That’s apple. Android has traditionally allowed sideloading. They aren’t be forced to open up anything, they’re just adding restrictions.
I know it’s not really ready for it yet, but I guess I’m gonna be looking into a Linux phone before I thought I would.
If Google is going to lock down my device to the point where I can’t install apps without their permission, I might as well dump Android and go straight to Apple. I sacrificed my phone being good for the openness of the platform, but if Google loses that openness, why shouldn’t I go with Apple?
Because the cheapest new iPhone is $600 and you can get a cheap new android phone for around $100-$200 and get 6 years of security updates (Galaxy A16 for example)
If a smartphone is no longer a computer where you can install whatever you want, why bother investing so much money on a very locked-down phone? You can use the hundred of dollars you saved to spend on a small portable PC or something to run any software you want.
Yeah but my banks don’t support my small portable PC, nor does my mobile phone provider. If I wanted a small portable PC I’d get a small portable PC. What I want is a smartphone.
$600 is pocket change for a phone these days. And for that $600 you’re getting a flagship phone. You couldn’t pay me enough money to put up with a non-flagship. Been there, done that. They’re too slow and frustrating, and apps keep closing due to lack of RAM. Never again. I much rather spend $600-800 on a high-end device that’s a couple of generations old.
A $200 phone in 2015 is not the same as a $200 phone in 2025. I know from experience.
Those phones in 2015 were awful, but in 2025, they feel more like mid-range phones.
Edit: And $600 is pocket change? Sound like someone lived a privilaged life.
This 100%
I have used tracfone since 2012 and only bought phones from their store, sub $150. The budget phones today are so much better than the last 10 years.
I just can’t wrap my head around sinking that much into a phone when you replace it every year and it cost as much as a decent budget computer, but worse.
I make $19/hr and live paycheck to paycheck. I’m just being realistic about the current cell phone market.
Openness isn’t just a nice to have. It is essential.
The difference between general purpose computing and gatekept walled garden computing is night and day.
Identifying the devs is not in the “need to know” for Google. Google sells or helps to sell a general purpose open device where it is on us to exploit that device however we will.
Now Google wants to switch to a walled garden, moderated development model.
If Google promises it won’t use those dev IDs to moderate development, their promise is only worth the wind it moves and the sound it makes.
You might say their words are like farts in the wind
now while at first view, your sentiment is understandable, i actually kinda differ.
when you buy any product at any store, i believe that there has to be a legal entity behind the store that sells you this product, and the legal entity needs to be identifiable. i.e. if you run a shop and give packages to people, you need to show ID to open up that shop. i believe it is the same for charity organizations which give away packages for free.
now, why would it be different for apps? apps are software packages, and if they’re given away, there should be a legal entity behind it that is identifiable. this isn’t to surveil or suppress people, it’s just how business has always been done, and for good reason so. businesses need legal representatives to operate, even if it’s a charity, because otherwise there’s nobody to “talk to” when there’s issues, and also imposters would have an easy game.
that doesn’t mean that you can’t donate packages away on the streets. just put it in front of your front door and wait until somebody passes by and takes it, or give it directly into the hands of your friends, you don’t need to open a business for that. just, if you do it regularly, interacting with people you don’t personally know, there is a legal entity that represents that recurring activity, like a business or charity.
If i understand it correctly, even with the new changes, what can be done is that open software distribution sites like F-Droid can sign the packages instead of the original developers and therefore circumvent the identification of the original developers, and also you can still install unsigned third-party apps if you enter a command on the command line to disable ID certificate checking. it’s just an extra step, not a block-all.
The only answer is money at that point. I don’t know how much phones are these days, but aren’t iPhones like $1400, but Android is like $900?
I may be wrong though. Last time I bought a phone was 2018, and it was $600. Still using it.
I already tend to buy the expensive flagship models of phones. I buy unlocked and it lasts me ~5+ years, so I get the best phone I can get at the time and make it last, so money isn’t as much of an issue if I were to move to an iPhone.
Apple hardware has always been a generation ahead. Even when android/qualcom catches up, next generation is out already. The reason to avoid apple was it being a closed system money grab.
Apple hardware ahead of Android? I’ll have what you’re having!
Please show me a single benchmark with a flagship android beating a flagship iPhone.
a18pro beats M3 max in single core. Compared to 7840hs, it has 40% high single score geekbench 6, though 50% less multicore. Even beats ai395max at single score. Android competition catches up to even in gaming/gpu, but single core/responsiveness is still light years ahead. a19 next month, likely. M3 ultra has competitive aspects to xeon and epyc. Apple definitely has a lead on arm implementations.
This change requires you to attach your real name when publishing software. That’s all. You can still publish to and install packages from anywhere. This doesn’t come close to Apple’s complete control.
Google already scans packages you’re installing for malware and alerts you and allows you to install them anyway. This gives that scanner one more tool to identify bad actors.
Apple now allows sideloading of apps and Google is trying to get rid of sideloading.
What… the Fuck?
Apple now allows sideloading of apps
Apple allows as much sideloading as google wants to next near.
Yes, you can install from .iPa files, but you still need to pay 100€ a year to be able to sign the IPA files, otherwise you cant run them. as much as with googles new policy you now need to pay 25€ + your full name to get a signature, to sign the Apks with
Now we have to get EU on the case 😀
Apple now allows sideloading of apps and Google is trying to get rid of sideloading.
afaik only in the EU?
Yea but Apple got sued into allowing that
To be fair, they are now both on the same level. Both now allow sideloading from “trusted” sources, aka developers verified by Apple/Google.
If they only cared about thwarting malware they could have just relied on code signing via public certificate authorities, like with binaries on Windows.
Code signing offers slight protection from malware but not as you might think. If a company signs an installer, or executable then it tells you it came from them but not what it does. It could still be malicious, or it could be inadvertently bundled with malware in DLLs or scripts and you wouldn’t know. You’re just hoping the company has done its due diligence and you trust them to run.
Microsoft does have an antivirus system on top and fingerprints downloads too and applies some kind of trust score that is better if an exe is signed. There is probably no single mitigation that stops malware infection but apply lots of smaller mitigations in in depth and most people will be safe.
The irony is Microsoft still lets people run files ending with .scr way too easily. Much of the malware on torrent websites is a file ending with .scr knowing the OS will hide the extension, e.g. movie.mp4.scr appears as movie.mp4 in File Explorer and people click through and get infected.
These arguments would apply the same to Google’s approach. My argument is that Google appears to have another agenda.
The point is so that most people can’t or won’t figure it out or get discouraged. So that in time, google’s “unwanted” software will be starved of attention and funds to continue being developped and these “weeds” in their garden slowly wither and die
This is the risk of “trusted computing” architectures. Who is governing the “trusted” part of that.
These cryptographic signatures are not as much of a death knell for Android as some would have you believe. The trick is to get a common code signing cert into your device, that is then used to sign any third party APK you want to run. You can avoid the Google tax this way. I assume that’s how most sideloading sites and apps are going to handle this.
The question is, how do you add that certificate? Is it easy and straight forward (with plenty of scary warnings), as a user? Or is it going to be a developer options deal? Or will I need root to add the cert?
I’m not sure what that answer is right now.
I just want to finish this post with a few words about trusted computing models. Plainly: Apple has been doing this for years … That’s why you download basically everything from an app store with Apple. Whether on your Mac OS device, your iPhone, iPad or whatever iDevice… Whether the devs need to sign it, or the app gets signed when it lands on the store, there’s a signature to ensure that the app hasn’t been tampered with and that Apple has given the app it’s security blessings, that it is safe to run. Microsoft and Google have both been climbing towards the same forever. Apple embedded their root of trust in their own proprietary TPM which has been included with every Mac, and iDevice for a long ass time. Google also has a TPM, the Titan security module, I believe that was introduced around pixel 3? Or 4?.. Microsoft made huge waves requiring it for Windows 11, and we all know what that discussion looks like. Apple requires a TPM (which they supply, so nobody noticed), Google has been adding a TPM and TPM functionality to their phones for years, and now Windows is the same. None of this is a bad thing. Trusted computing can eliminate much of the need for antivirus software, among other things. I digress. We’ve been going this way for a long time. Google is just more or less, doing what Apple has already done, and what Microsoft will very likely do very soon, making it a requirement. Battlefield 6 I think, was one of the first to require trusted computing on Windows and it will, for damned sure, not be the last that does. The only real hurdle here is managing what is trusted. So far, each vendor has kept the keys to their own kingdoms, but this is contrary to computing concepts. Like the Internet, it should be able to be done without needing trust from a specific provider. That’s how SSL works, that’s how the Internet works, that’s how trusted computing should work. The only thing that should be secret is the private signing keys. What Google, Apple, and Microsoft should be doing, is issuing intermediary keys that can sign code signing certs. So trusted institutions that create apps, like… Idk, valve as an example, can create a signature key for steam and sign Steam with it, so the trust goes from MS root to intermediary key for valve, to steam code signing key, and suddenly you have an app that’s trusted. Valve can then use their key to sign software on their store that may not have a coffee signing key of it’s own. This is just one example based on Windows. And above all of this, the user should be able to import a trusted code signing cert, or an intermediary cert signing cert, to their service as trusted.
Anyways, thanks for coming to my Ted talk.
Thanks for sharing all of that. I got to think a little bit about stuff that normally I would take for granted.
So yeah we’ll do a decentralized Linux phone of sorts, if Google is going full 3rd Reich with Android we’ll move to a Linux based OS phone.
Simple as that.
Who is we? what group of people has the dev funding and time to produce FOSS hardware and software to compete with the average android phone?
We the people that want a finished product with distribution and a good eco system from day zero. It must be next gen hardware and be priced more than competitively.
It’s good to want, and I say that as someone who would dance for joy if an open source phone became viable. If you think starting a new ecosystem and expecting it to be “good, next gen, priced competitively” is feasible via volunteer work anytime soon, I want whatever you’re smoking :)
It was a sarcasm.
You forgot your /s
Expecting sarcasm to be understood in text is dumb. Too many dipshits exist to assume people arnt serious
I wouldn’t call it dumb but maybe expecting too much from people now that convenience and hand holding is expected at all times.
*Canned laughter that fades into awkward reflective silence.*
Dude. On what hardware? My 1 years old AND 4 years old Samsung phones now lock their bootloader.
Random, fly by night China phones won’t have enough documentation or enough consistency in hardware to be a viable rally point for firmware devs, will they?
Don’t get me wrong. I will buy exactly that Linux Phone for my next device if it gives me three browsers and enough untracked fundamental functionality like calculators and contact lists.
But I’m genuinely worried there won’t be a hardware vendor in the game in my market (the land of Y’allQaeda) to sell me a compatible device that plays nice with the three mobile providers that still exist here.
Will this kill FDroid ? I imagine yes since you have to install it from a download.
Sideloading being so easy on iphones and now becoming very difficult on android. Wow
Yeah but don’t you have to boot up your PC and connect your phone to iTunes once a week to re-enable developer mode to be able to sideload? Is there a more permanent method that I’m unaware of?
Jesus, how the heck is this called “sideloading is so easy on an iPhone”?
That’s a nightmare procedure, and completely unnecessary.
Obviously Apple makes sideloading as hard as possible.
No i dont have to connect my phone to a pc. It refreshes from the phone and i sideload from my phone
They are converging to become the same thing.
Its not any better on iOS, fyi, they too require Apple’s final approval.
They don’t require apples approval at all not sure if youre talking about the EU. Im talking about sideloading with sidestore and live container
Its like Microsoft and Google are teaming up to drive me closer to Linux.
Windows 12 phones are going to come. Microsoft will have their own RISC chips to run mobile platforms. Their relationship with Intel has limited them too much while the rest of the Tech giants grew too powerful with their own branded chips and devices.
(non-Android) Linux phones aren’t really ready for daily driving even for relatively advanced users - but it looks like we’re gonna have to deal with it anyhow
$1000 USD for a mobile phone…no thanks.
It used to be a pocket computer, now its just a mini-prison-cell.
If anyone is using currently using a flagship phone, when your phone dies and you need a replacement: consider just getting a cheap $100 android phone then spend the rest of the money you would’ve spent on a flagship on a portable PC instead
Spot on! +1
> be me
> buy new phone, chose android cause I can install anything on it
> get free iphone from work
> sell iphone on ebay cause I can install anything I want on my android
> google doesnt want me to install anything I wantFuck me. I kept the wrong phone.
So in your world, a completely locked down phone is better than a phone that you can easily open up again by flashing a ROM or replacing Gservices for MicroG with adb + Magisk?
not every android phone’s hardware even allows installing custom ROMs, as far as i’m aware of. and even if the phone technically does allow it, that doesn’t mean that any good custom ROMs are even available for it. so the issue is a bit more difficult than that.
Adb can uninstall Gservices and Magisk has a MicroG module
They are both now on the same level. Both iPhone and Android now allow sideloading of apps of “trusted” developers, so developers verified by Google/Apple.
My problem with this is when I now don’t have freedom from surveillance in my country because I mainly use F-Droid to install my privacy conscious apps.
