It appears Google tries to degrade alternative application stores to just another app offered through the Play Store, and therefore subject to Google’s policies (including an annual $5,000 fee for policy and security reviews). So I wouldn’t be surprised this is very much intentional: as to force application stores through a channel controlled by Google, to technically allow competition (at Google’s discretion) while ultimately killing “side-loading” through other sources.
Remember when Microsoft was forced to give a “select your web browser” prompt when setting up a Windows computer?
Quaint times, those were…
Guys, work on improving Linux phone instead. Google is taking Android away from you and it just isn’t worth arguing with them about it. Let them hang themselves. Build a better alternative.
The endless challenge is that a phone needs to talk to the phone network. The radio manufacturers are deeply in bed with the surveillance state and they are absolutely opposed to free communication. Which means they will never allow a cell phone radio to work with free software.
Calling is something that works in e.g. Postmarket OS. The trickier parts are NFC payments, lack of apps. So it comes with huge drawbacks. Some apps can even require that your device is verified by google and you have no way of hijacking it.
Proprietary camera software is also a huge thing. Software can do so much thing and you pay for the software also, not just the hardware but you lose the software when you install something other than the factory default.
And battery optimization is very young in desktop grade linux OSes, you won’t get that good battery life as with android.
NFC and battery life are absolutely huge concerns. Cell tower stuff isn’t great either but if you absolutely had to many of us can live without cellular and just do VOIP.
Apps aren’t that big an issue, waydroid is a thing and the appification of the internet is detrimental anyway. Do it in a browser.
For myself I don’t consider NFC payments or the few apps that require device integrity auth. Not everyone falls into this category but a good percentage are. We need more modern open hardware. To the larger software point there is a lot of good Foss software out there even for phones. What we need is a open software center like a flathub that makes them easy to find and deploy.
That part works fine
Including voicemail, and RCS? Wow I need to check out this ecosystem again, thats exciting!
I dont even need a phone that can make calls anymore, i guess there’s a lot of sms TFA
I’ve said this before, there should be a way to make VPN-Style VM that on the spot/on the fly emulates Android and is tricked into thinking your phone is a certain model gives it all bullshit details or is fuckin’ stupid enough you pay 1$ a year for a service plan that has a bunch of burner androids and you connect to one and your graphene is temporarily using an emulator that is also live connected to the device (like live booting from USB) to use said device’s verified details to trick the android servers into giving you permission to use the apps through graphene on the emulator.
Idk but at that point you’re better off having a burner android to reverse engineer the apps you want for graphene.
You could spin up an android VM on your home server and sort of pocket-Citrix that.
Misleading title. After reading the linked Gitlab discussion it’s more likely a backend change from Google side. Aurora does use burner account but early reports seem to suggest they are not flagged or rate limited.
Seems like clickbait but the graphene devs recommend against aurora store in favor of using a second profile with the sandboxed play store
because graphene devs don’t know what they are talking about, they never do
where’s your Pegasus-proof OS, then?
Nothing is 100% pegasus/quadream/candiru proof. Up-to-date and BFU Graphene is Cellebrite proof, though.
- GrapheneOS isn’t John Android. Stop black and white thinking. You don’t have to fit in with people when you post to .ml.
- If you have read the thread you are posting (relevant message 18 hours ago as opposed to this post 13 hours ago), you would have seen that you can just press “reload accounts” to fix it.
people treating graphene like the only android OS drives me up the fucking wall, i’m sure it’s great but holy SHIT lineage has existed for years and years but… now it’s suddenly irrelevant?
Leaves a bad taste in my mouth
Just wait til the next time you’re arrested and the cops easily get into your phone.
It’s working fine for me while logged in. It’s always been crap when logged out. This is nothing new.
Isn’t the whole point of it to get apps without login/anonymously?
Install it so I don’t have to have Google Play. Yes, Google can see what apps I have installed, but they don’t have their code running on my device. I consider it a 99% harm reduction.
I hadn’t considered that. I might have to do that myself now that you mention it
for some people maybe, but if that was the whole point of the project then why would they even have the option to log in?
So that is why my Aurora store have been having trouble latley :(
Yup can confirm. Some apps return this error (example tutamail and windscribe vpn). Fix it by downloading the apk in fdroid or github/ gitlab directly.
Well, it took Google long enough to take away this workaround, if you think about it. I wish Alphabet burned in hell, let it be clear.
GrapheneOS user here. It seems to work right now.
Graphene also doesn’t really need Aurora, it’s fine.
I’m having trouble installing most apps from Aurora since last Sunday.
Seems to be working for me (in the EU).
Seems to be working again, but the last couple of days there was no good solution.
mine is working so far. ab testing the breaking change?
Aurora still works for me for now on Samsung stock OS. I now mostly install Google Play apps with APKPure over Obtainium tho and only use Aurora for those not on APKPure. And most of my apps are from GitHub/GitLab releases and F-Droid. I disabled Google Play and didn’t login to Google account. I don’t want the requirement of a Google account to install an app and Play Integrity to run an app. It is by no means acceptable that a company, using a closed source implementation that also tracks user and breaks Android security model, can censor what apps a user can install and decide what security and privacy compromises a user needs to agree to just use the normal phone functionalities that they pay for and by no mean require those compromises technically. They are turning Android into a service and a prison like iOS did rather than a software.
Time to install it. They wouldn’t block it if it sucked right?
Oh I was wondering why Aurora had stopped working
