You must log in or # to comment.
I’m on the fence with getting a new phone. Should I buy something now, like a Pixel 10 or Fairphone 6 and flash Graphene/eOs on it, or wait for next gen which might have these restrictions?
Has anyone tried a Murena (/e/os) phone?
I am thinking about it.
This move doesn’t look like a co-incidence,first google acquires android ,then you now have to use your ‘‘google account’’ as user detail to signup for most services, Now they’re tip toeing towards This techno Lockdown kwowing full well how many pesrsons use Adroid phones…Who owns google Satan?
Time to popularize Linux phones. I read that the security model is lacking, but especially given that Android is Linux too, it shouldn’t be too difficult to catch up. The EU is also interested in tech independence, so that could be one of the sources of funding. And there are a few viable early projects, like Ubuntu Touch and Sailfish.
There need to be enforced of competition law here. Companies aren’t going to voluntarily support a platform with few users. Users aren’t going to move to a platform without critical apps.
We live in a dystopia were you have to have the banks app to do online banking even on your desktop. You can’t charge your car without an app. You can’t navigate your car without a map app that has traffic information. Etc etc. I want FOSS alternatives to all these, but there isn’t and Google could take even having a FOSS platform at all.
This something we need regulators to fix. It is a politically problem, not a technical one.
America screwing up trust should wake up Europe to dealing with American tech monopolies. Now it’s not something just nerds and economists complain about, it is a geopolitical problem.
Corporations are getting WAY too much fucking power over our personal lives, it’s at critical mass where their power is superseding that of our basic democratic rights.
We all knew it would happen, and here we are. We need to fight the fuck back with everything we’ve got, and coordination and planning is the first step.
There has to be something already happening, where do we sign up, who do we get in contact with? Where’s the team?
Does anyone know or have any leads on that? I have the possibility to devote my life full time to it and I’m feeling like me and many others are not being utilized the way we could and are capable of.
The fight was always going against these monopolies.
In the UK with have OpenRightGroup to some extent the Greens. In the US EFF, FSF, SFC. In the EU ESFe, Pirate Party, Greens.
There are many groups fighting the political cause. They have had victories over the years, but winning the odd battle doesn’t win a war. They all need support.
Until now, a lot of open source has tried to be nonpolitical, but that may be changing:
https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/SFKNTZ-welcome_to_fosdem_2026/
Fully agree, there should be regulations, temporary at least, that require/incentivize critical companies to make a mobile Linux version of their apps, as well as strategic funding and incentives to make the platforms viable. We as citizens should contribute too, increasing pressure for this to happen, spreading the message, becoming early adopters where possible, submitting feedback, contributing to development, etc.
We need to support political groups fighting for us, not just think in terms of technology. In the UK it is OpenRightsGroup, maybe the Greens party, in Europe there is the Pirate Party, Greens, Free Software Foundation Europe, and more. We should be trying to get politicians into this.
you have to have the banks app to do online banking even on your desktop
I have never heard of that. Can you give an example?
HSBC business. There is no fob. You have to get a code from their app to login online. That app refused to run on LineageOS with MicroG, regardless of the boxing and lying to it I tried. It does work under GrapheneOS with boxed Google services.
That sounds obnoxious they don’t support the usual MFA platforms
And at the same time there’s Fidelity (and others) using voice authentication as the sole verification of account ownership when calling in (I think they finally fixed this a couple years ago)
It’s pretty rubbish. I was under pressure from a few angles to compromise more with Google. GrapheneOS is were I am. But I want to be on a prober Linux. But it’s just not possible without competition law being enforced. It’s political problem not technical.
Sailfish is not very alive. Ubuntu Touch too.
But honestly yes. I think the problems are mostly in hardware support.
The political problems driving the push for independence are fairly recent, so the current state is unlikely to be extrapolable.
There are devices using these operating systems that are also gaining popularity, like Jolla, Volla and Fair phone.
Android is not Linux (the OS), it just uses the Linux kernel. That means almost nothing is transferable from one OS to the other unfortunately.
You can run Android apps on Sailfish via AppSupport
That’s all Linux is though, arguably
not even arguable, you’re right
IDK, I’d think the best path forward would be to just fork Android and move on from there. That’s what Graphene OS already does. Just standardize on Graphene OS for everything and get them more devs / resources.
GrapheneOS has strict standards for what phones they support, which is why you can currently only install it on Pixels.
How about phone as terminal for home pc.
yeah I will start deeply researching this because I refuse to use a closed down operating system for my phone my whole life. Fuck android fuck google and fuck apple
The only response I’ve seen so far from F-Droid is that they’ve put up a banner to Keep Android Open. Has there been any kind of plan for next steps?
They responded to it when it first came up 4 months ago. I’ll paste my appropriate comment from that time.
The f-droid team spoke to that in a recent post. The post basically said that if that change isn’t stopped on a government level there’s no way for them to continue working. They didn’t mention roms.
Edit for the link: https://f-droid.org/en/2025/09/29/google-developer-registration-decree.html
Sorry to piss off all the Apple shills on here, but sounds like an opportunity to me. I think there’s enough of us that want something better and some traction with Graphene and some Linux options. This should be a spark to ignite some fires. I’m disappointed but unsurpised by this news, but also a little excited about the window of motivation and opportunity this opens.
Honestly, I’m worried. Current Linux options are expensive and or shitty. IDK if Sailfish is still a thing. I can’t use Apple. If I keep taking good care of my not-so-shitty Xiaomi phone, maybe I have a couple more years until I’m pwned.
PostmarketOS seems promising, though.
PostmarketOS is already in a good state for a secondary device, though I don’t think it can completely replace an Android phone just yet. Most devices still have some fundamental hardware support issues even on the more well supported phones (camera is the big one, call audio is also problematic on a lot of devices). However, as a pocketable Linux machine, it is wonderful. I got a second cheap SIM card so I can have data on my OnePlus 6 postmarketOS phone as there are a lot of tasks that work better on Linux than Android. I keep an Android daily driver but am trying to do less and less on it and more on the postmarketOS device.
If you care about using third-party Android apps, I have good news for you, but grim news for the ecosystem. You will still be able to use third-party apps. But it’s going to be harder. You’ll probably need to use something like Shizuku or an ADB tool. The first wave of those affected won’t be you and me; it’ll be people who aren’t quite as technically competent. Then, slowly, a chilling effect will echo across independent development.
I look forward to LibrePhone coming online. I hope it comes soon …
“Librephone — Free Software Foundation — Working together for free software” https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/librephone
SailfishOS is still very much a thing and they have a brand new phone on the way. Since it hasn’t been released yet it’s hard to get into specifics, but early interest seems to point in a positive direction at least.
Could you go over what Graphene is for phones? Is it easy to switch to an alternative to android?
Its a version of android OS that can be installed on Google Pixel phones. Its a relatively easy switch if you’re technically inclined, but the device needs to be carrier unlocked.
If it’s just a fork of Android, doesn’t that mean 194 days from now they either need to branch off entirely and write their own code from here on out…
Or…
Never advance the base code?
Neither is true, that’s not how forking works. But there is some truth to it in that it can start to become significantly more difficult to keep in sync as time goes on, depending on how obnoxious the security becomes and how many places they have to remove it.
Consider the trivially naive case where Google implements this feature in a single function: “function app_is_signed() -> bool” then the fork just adds “return true;” to the beginning of that function, and happily merges every other update Google makes from then on with zero issues. Even if the code for “app_is_signed” itself changes, nobody cares, because the first thing it does is return true and everything else Google ever tells it to check or do is ignored, the function can still be used everywhere throughout the code, it just no longer actually checks anything in Graphene, whereas it does check things in Google’s Android.
Of course the reality is much more complicated than that, but the principle is the same. It’s only a question of how obnoxious and difficult Google chooses to be about it. They could move the function around every update, or use many different functions, make a whole system out of it, make it do crazy cryptographic validations and checksums in various different places of the code, have watchdog tasks that are checking that the validation code is getting used. They could be really, really obnoxious about it, if they want to be, and they have more resources than the Graphene OS developers probably do to undo and keep undoing all these obstacles, so if they really want to devote that much time and energy to making Graphene’s position untenable, they can. But they could also be doing that now, and they’re not. Crackers have been fighting these sort of battles against copy-protected software for ages, it’s the same principles, and much of the same economic choices go into it. How much does Google want Graphene OS to go away? How much is it worth to them? It has to have a dollar value to them, and that dollar value might be significantly higher than they’re willing to bother with.
Worst case scenario where Google makes it extremely difficult going forward, what is the hard part about just never rebasing onto future work from Google?
From what I’ve seen there hasn’t been significant core work on Android for a long time. It’s been mostly changing from rounded corners to square corners to rounded corners, or shoving AI into every nook and cranny.
I’d think a small dev team like Graphene could maintain their AOSP fork moving forward.
I absolutely agree they can maintain an AOSP fork going forward, and I think that’s completely realistic and I would be surprised if that is not the case.
But I was answering OP from a strictly technical perspective about the potential difficulties they could, theoretically face while doing that. Since you asked what is the hard part, I’ll answer along those lines (again, with the caveat that I don’t think these are going to pose realistic obstacles for the GrapheneOS team in the near term) My point is not to say it’s impossible but I think it’s important for people to be aware that this approach comes with risks, and those risks will grow over time especially when you’re up against a non-cooperative upstream that is one of the largest and richest tech companies in the world.
For one thing you’re never going to support any new phones without either pulling driver support from AOSP or reverse-engineering the hardware and drivers yourselves, or accepting that some parts will just… not work. So you get stuck on older and less capable hardware. Maybe you don’t care about that too much, and that works fine for awhile, but eventually the cracks start to show. Now you have to either start figuring out how to get into the newer hardware, or you have to start getting custom newer hardware of your own, which is $$$.
Using closed hardware this way as leverage is a pretty common way of getting in the way of open source development, and Android hardware is very closed. Similar tactics are already even being used against x86 PCs now with things like TPM and Secure Boot. It doesn’t completely brick your system on day one of course, but the erosion of support begins when they start writing software that intentionally relies on these features to say “oh, sorry, this software you want to use? it won’t actually work on the open source OS/open source client because they don’t have access to this hardware… what a shame.” One or two pieces of software, no big deal. But they won’t stop there, eventually it’ll be like half the software, then over time it’ll become 90% of the software, you won’t be able to find alternatives. They can often afford to be more patient and relentless about this shit than we are. The battle will continue, and there’s no sure path to victory. Forking is one tool we have, and that’s great, but we also have to remember that it’s not a flawless, unstoppable long-term solution that we can play as a trump card whenever corporate interests do something bad. They don’t just give up. They have other means of getting their way.
No. As long as the base remains opensource (AOSP), they can remove the bad parts. Graphene has made numerous contributions to AOSP, I’m confident they can manage that. And if the user base growths, I hope their fundings will follow.
It would be a good thing for the world if AOSP was forked with big resources behind an open project with an open governance. But that needs lot of resources.
deleted by creator
I’ll switch in a heartbeat if they support a nonGoogle phone
They’re working on it. Unfortunately most phones have poor security hardware, which is why its limited to Pixels at the moment.
Good news!
Isn’t carrier locked phones exclusive to America? As far as I know, no other country lock their phones to a specific carrier.
It’s Android with all of the Google removed where possible and sandboxed where not. You can choose to install the Google Play services and use it like any other Android phone or use it without any Google software.
Some things won’t work, namely things like some banking applications and NFC payments, because they require on hardware attestation that Google will not allow Graphene to pass. Essentially everything that isn’t banking/payment related works exactly like any other Android phone.
It is just a secure phone (though you can still install Facebook on it if you want) that is designed around mitigating attacks that could violate your privacy and security.
Very easy to install, you just buy a Pixel directly from Google (don’t buy from the carriers, they’ll be locked). Enable OEM Unlocking in the Developer menu and then plug it into USB and you can install it directly from the Graphene site via WebUSB. It takes about 5-10 minutes, then your phone will reboot (It’ll give you a scary looking screen about not running a Google OS that you’ll see every time it reboots but it’s just informational, it doesn’t affect anything and the system will boot into GrapheneOS in a second or two).
The more complete instructions and WebUSB install process:
What really bugs me about it: The first step from “how to ungoogle your phone” is “go, give money to Google” by buying their hardware.
It bugs me also.
My thinking is that the part of Google that I think is bad is their advertising and algorithmic recommendation systems which are built on private data that I no longer wish to divulge.
The Pixel is made by a company that used to be called HTC before they were consumed by Alphabet. That company produced good hardware that was smartly designed and innovative. That legacy continues with the device that Google has sells as the Pixel.
There are a few things about the phone that Alphabet has tainted, such as the inability to use NFC payments because hardware running GrapheneOS isn’t allowed into their secure hardware attestation chain. Not for any real technical reason, only because it allows Alphabet to disincentivize people away from a competitor by abusing their many monopoly powers.
GrapheneOS takes advantage of the excellently designed HTC hardware to create an operating system that is designed from the ground up to be secure. It then leverages the complete control over your hardware to put Alphabet’s other software inside of a little box where it constantly lies to the software in a way that lets your applications work without them actually being able to access everything on your device.
Yes, it is technically an Alphabet product and giving them money can feel distasteful. However, in this case by buying their hardware you can cut off their software, which is the actual thing that is negatively affecting everything.
I’d buy any other phone that fully supported GrapheneOS’s requirements for future devices.
Until then, I’m less worried about giving HTC money than I am about having a device that I know is under my control and that works to protect my privacy.
Buy refurbished. GOS support will be coming to a (yet unnamed) OEM.
Why do banks need a hardware attestation, out of curiosity? I’d assume that banking apps are just clients so all that matters is if they have creds or not.
The banks don’t want their payment systems being accessed by devices that are compromised by malicious actors.
The attestation chain allows for Google to tell the apps ‘Yep, this system is running a known safe image that has been crytographically verified using the secure hardware on the device’. The apps will only allow their payment systems to be accessed (like, to send an NFC payment) if this check can verify that.
If you want technical details: https://developers.home.google.com/matter/primer/attestation
They don’t NEED it for NFC payments to work, this is a way of limiting attack vectors on their payment infrastructure (or, cynically, a way for Google to ensure that no competing OS can exist because people would rather give Google all of their privacy so they can pull a phone out of their pocket rather than a credit card.
traction with Graphene
What kind of traction? Is it missing something? Or do you just mean more developers behind it?
It’s missing a robust user base imo. More developers too.
If this happens, I guess it’s Linux Phone time for me… I’m pretty certain GrapheneOS will be able to get around this abuse of power for a while, but it wouldn’t take much effort from Google to kill them too ; they almost already have…
Or maybe dumb phone time ? But I like browsing Wikipedia and playing chess and RetroArch on my phone, I don’t want to lose that just because big G$ said so…
The new requirements will “only” apply for “certified” Android devices. I’m pretty sure, devices running a custom ROM aren’t certified, especially if you don’t even have Google Services installed. Nevertheless, I’m looking forward to a bright future for Linux phones.
Fwiw, just because a dumb phone doesn’t give you access to “smart” features doesn’t mean the capabilities aren’t present on the phone. It’s just a matter of what could be hidden on the circuit board (lots can be hidden in chips), and what can be hidden in usual expected traffic (if bandwidth requirements are low, even timing of packets could be used to encode hidden data that would never show up in any logs).
Plus the simple tracking of cellphones is necessary for them to function at all.
I wonder if there is a dumb phone with tethering currently. Cause if you don’t mind carrying 2 devices, that may be viable for your use case
If you just need a mobile data connection there’s alot of sim based wifi routers
Good point!
You can still use a dump phone. You can play and browse Wikipedia on a Steam Deck which has WiFi. If you are outsid, you can use a Mifi device of a USB LTE/5G dongle for the SteamDeck.
Steam decks are expensive and relatively bulky when compared to a phone. I don’t think it’s really a practical solution for most of us.
The new Jolla phone can’t come soon enough. I truly believe the future of tech independence lies with linux, for us, europeans. Anyone welcome ofc.
I do hope it’ll be a good enough device, even if there will be no NFC phone payments possible.
/e/os
Do you really think that will survive ? It’s next on the chopping block with GrapheneOS if they keep going this way.
Not sure how I should feel about this, if I should support the cause to keep android “open” (when it’s everything but), or if I should be happy that this piece of shit OS finally shows it’s true colours and people (including me) will finally be forced to find an alternative or stop using this trashware all together.
And hopefully developers finally get serious about GNU/Linux phones.
Until Linux Phones get good, we are seeing a very rough sail ahead. Or just hard fork Android ig if it’s a logical option.
I understand, but there’s a good argument that android is the reason why GNU/Linux phones don’t get good.
The death of android as an “open” platform would put some pressure to actual develop an alternative.
It won’t die. My country alone will have almost a billion Android users and those cheap Androids are all they can afford and know.
I meant that it would die as an “open” platform, so power users would be compelled to stop using android.
I hope that but power users don’t dictate the technological development 🥲. Everything is made for people who want it “user-friendly”.
We need alternatives to big tech. They’re reigning in and locking everything they can down, and the states are loving them for it as it solidifies their ability to control us.
They’re kind of already is. It’s the free and open source community.
The problem is phones are actually incredibly impressive pieces of hardware and the fact that we can Mass produce them has diluted that opinion. I’m actually to look into building my own phone and I wanted to have at least some near-flagship specs. I know how to design my own circuit boards and get someone to print them. But acquiring CPUs that perform at least 1/4 as well as Pixels or iPhones is objectively not possible, these companies have deals with manufacturers for exclusive products. And even if you could these chips are so precise you will never be able to figure out the signaling yourself.
Maybe things have gotten better now that we have ai and you don’t need to be any sort of expert in anything you just need to be good enough at decision making problem solving and communicating to acquire the skills and knowledge to work on these chips. And by the time you’ve done all the work and acquired all the hardware you might have spent close to 3 to 5K on a device you could have just bought for $800. All for what, to circumvent privacy breaches that should be illegal in the first place?
And that’s the root problem we’re trying to solve. Another symptom of these companies being able to engage in the bad behavior that they do is that they gain the ability to overvalue themselves. There should be no safety or privacy concern when engaging in the purchase of any device for the same reason that people should not fear food poisoning every time they go to the grocery store.
That’s what the regulators are for. This is a legal issue not a technical one.
But the only underlying cause for why we’re not regulating tech companies is because fear of privacy violations is not reducing market activity. Apparently people are still going to use their phones even if their phones are listening to them having private conversations. Apparently people will still buy shit off of their phones even if their phones are going to use that data to show them ads.
Apparently the harm of your privacy being breached does not hurt enough to prevent you from doing good things.
Now if Android takes away my F-Droid, Tasker and Termux I’m gonna throw a fit. That’s not privacy that’s self-determination, I bought an Android because I can customize it to be as low friction for me as I need, if my phone starts giving me friction then we’re going to have problems.
What we need is a good linux phone that is affordable, has hardware that isn’t slow, and isn’t over sold to an annual pre-order.
Sadly, if the first two are true, the third one becomes an issue.
What we need is a large company to see that is a sign of huge pent-up demand. Apparently, HP and Dell are both talking about switching to Linux as their default OS for desktops. Once all the desktop manufacturers find themselves in the business of selling hardware with Linux on it, either mobile manufacturers will copy, like Samsung, or the desktop folks decide to make their product smaller.
What everyone has wanted from the beginning was a desktop in their pocket. The amount of time that no one has produced that despite major demand, and the amount of development that has gone into building any other stack, just feels like willful suppression at this point.
Is there some government somewhere telling large-scale manufacturers that they can’t build something as free and open as a desktop that isn’t at least the size of a laptop? Because it actually takes less technology to make something that’s open than something that is closed. And there is just as much appeal for the consumer to not restrict them.
What we need is a good linux phone that is affordable, has hardware that isn’t slow, and isn’t over sold to an annual pre-order.
That’s not enough, sadly. That phone must support, at the very least, all the national ID and banking software. And that bit might be tricky.
This always gets brought up, and is the chicken-and-egg problem, but only sort of.
Supporting software designed for different platforms is not the phone’s responsibility. It should be the government and bank developers’ responsibility to build software for platforms their citizens and customers use.
Android and Apple do not jump through hoops to run Windows desktop software, for example, and the notion is kind of absurd to begin with. Yet this argument is used for Linux smartphones all the time.
Some of this also applies to people without phone / with dumbphone.
It’s a kind of “yes, but actually no” situation.
Way back when, smartphones were a relatively new thing. Nobody gave a crap, so building a new OS that had similar capabilities to the competition was easy. We had a bunch of those over the years.
However, every new OS means new architecture, every architecture means developers having to take it into account when building apps.
Eventually, the smartphone market essentially defaulted to Android and iOS - long gone are Windows Phone, Blackberry OS, and a dozen others.
They didn’t die off because they somehow had to - they died off because they couldn’t keep up with feature parity with Android and iOS.
Nowadays, everything is being made for these two OSes. And by “everything” I mean things that are actually crucial to people - banking apps, ID apps, train ticket apps, parking lot apps - things that they either cannot replace with “not in a smartphone” solution, or can, but it would force them to juggle cards and papers.
Any new OS coming in must take that into account. If Linux comes to mobile phones but can’t run national ID apps or banking apps, it will have a market share of maybe 1% - the hardcore fans, and the “technological preppers” who are always anonymous, always off-grid - and that’s that. No users further users will switch, and because no users switch, no developers will take it seriously enough to make their apps work on it.
Windows Phone is a great example of this. At its height it had around 20% of the European market share. And what happened? Snapchat (massive at the time) and Google actively worked to undermine and destroy it, because they knew that - in the long run - it’ll be cheaper than having to hire a third group of developers. With 3rd party alternative apps being constantly blocked, the OS eventually went down to sub 5% in its biggest market, and sub 1% in the US, and Microsoft finally pulled the plug.
An OS coming in without critical app support won’t ever get to even 1% of market share in any region larger than “local Linux fanclub”.
Android apps do solve a lot of UI problems a that are unique to the phone interface. If only Linux could run APKs. Oh wait, it can. Linux can run anything.
Europe is slowly working on that. Ironically, Trump’s policies were kind of a blessing to Europe, because it forced politicians to finally start working towards strengthening the independence of the region.
Those who have the expertise should start contributing and working more on Linux for mobile. Postmarket has made great progress it just needs more manpower
What kind of roles do they have for people who don’t know how to code? I’ve considered helping translate things before, but my languages are among the most popular, so it’s almost always already translated.
You should checkout their contibuting guide. There are many ways to contribute as non programmer.
They aren’t competitive with Android or iOS phones presently — don’t have the scale of userbase — but there’s only one way that that’s going to change, and that’s people starting to use them.
(“Linux” here as in “GNU/Linux”, as opposed to “the Linux kernel”, which Android phones also use.)
EDIT: Another option is to try to shift software use off of mobile devices as far as is practical, if you’re willing to carry a second, larger device like a laptop. Just use the smartphone as a phone and as a modem for Internet access via tethering. I’ve generally been aiming to do that myself. I realize that that’s not practical for everyone.
That approach does have some perks — you can get your audio jack, because the space constraints of a phone go away. You aren’t dependent upon your hardware manufacturer for N years of updates before your hardware is forced to become out-of-date software-wise. The devices are generally a lot more capable and upgradeable. The hardware is more modular, and there are considerably more options. You can run whatever software you want.
But…it’s bigger, the software library isn’t generally optimized for small touchscreen use, so one-handed use while waiting in line isn’t generally ideal, and it consumes more power. You can run some Android software via stuff like Waydroid, but I’m sure that software that requires a trusted hardware stack won’t accept that.
(“Linux” here as in “GNU/Linux”, as opposed to “the Linux kernel”, which Android phones also use.)
I feel compelled to point out that PostmarketOS, one of the popular Linux phone options is not, in fact GNU. It’s based on musl and BusyBox, not glibc and GNU utils.
That’s generally true. Personally, I enjoy using a laptop way more than using a mobile device of any kind.
However, modern life is beginning to require mobile apps (Android or iOS). More and more things simply aren’t available as a website or FOSS. You have to have a vanilla mainstream mobile device to do certain things like using your bank account. I really hate that.
Hardware peripherals are another area that really sucks. If you want to enjoy the comforts of modern life, many people just bow down and use one of the two mobile platforms in order to use their smart ring/scale/lights/curtains/heating/car, etc.
Resisting all that is getting increasingly difficult, because there’s so much to resist. On the other hand, resisting is also becoming increasingly appealing as enshittification intensifies.
carrying a laptop won’t help. If it helped, I won’t mind running a termux os via proot also. I dont mind if it isn’t optimised for small touchscreen yet.
right now most mobile payment options in my country only work with android/ios. My bank requires a phone for its device token (2fa).
The food and cab ordering platform is also exclusively on mobile only.
very sad
My bank requires a phone for its device token (2fa).
In most cases (at least in the US…I suppose that there might be places that require use of a state bank or something) one can pick their bank. None of the banks I bank with require this, and I have never installed a banking app (though I think that they all have an app as an option). One may need a phone of some sort to respond to a voice call or an SMS to validate oneself, but not an app. I believe that Bank of America has the most customers in the US, and they’ll even do YubiKeys via a browser.
The food and cab ordering platform is also exclusively on mobile only.
I think that GrubHub and Uber Eats are the most-common food delivery options where I am. It looks like both permit ordering from the Web (though I’ve never used their services).
Waymo, which in the US is, I think, the most-advanced robotaxi service (and probably currently the only really practical one where I am), does require an app, so I don’t know if there’s a good Web-based robotaxi option. Lyft looks to me like it requires use of an app. Uber looks like it permits Web-based ordering. I’ve never used anything but traditional cab companies (not that I especially object to the newer services, just never bothered to use them), and I’ve never run into one of those that requires an app — I just call up a human.
This isn’t to say that the same situation is true of where you are. But just pointing out that for many people, there are options…though it may require using an alternative service. Those services will be aware of how many people are ordering in what way, so if people are using different methods of ordering, that will cause them (and others) to tend to provide that route.
I’ve ordered an Uber from the mobile site when I got a flat on a long bike ride. It worked fine and I haven’t had the app installed since. I only use it 2-3 times a year. I would have preferred to use Lyft, but it didn’t tell me I couldn’t use the mobile site until after I had already jumped through their hoops reinstated my account. Fuck you Lyft!
Linux phones look more and more attractive
Couldn’t agree more Especially when the Pine Phone Pro is improving every year since its has came out and with Posh shell and Waydroid nothing will stop Linux from succeeding in the modern era
sadly
The PinePhone Pro was officially discontinued in August 2025, as it didn’t sell well enough to keep production going.[7]
Aw shucks now that’s something you don’t see often on the internet
So what can I buy now?
I’ve been following this for a while.
You have two main branches to follow
Bare‑metal (native Linux kernel + native drivers) pros:
- True Linux kernel
- Long‑term maintainability
- No Android blobs in userspace
- Cleaner architecture
cons:
- Driver support is the biggest pain point
-
- Modems, cameras, GPUs, sensors often require reverse‑engineering
- Power management is worse
- Hardware acceleration may be incomplete
- Fewer devices are viable
You can put this on an old pine phone, or a pixel 3 or a fairephone 4/5 You can buy a preconfigured puresim librem 5 Battery life is pretty rough. You can find lots of youtubes recounting their attempts at daily driving both PostmarketOS, Puresim and UBPorts on bare metal
Halium‑based (Linux userspace on top of Android hardware abstraction)
pros:
- Excellent hardware support (camera, modem, GPU, sensors)
- Better battery life
- Runs on many more devices
- More stable than bare‑metal
cons:
- Controversial in the community
- Relies on Android blobs
- Not “pure Linux”
- Kernel is usually Android‑based, not mainline
- Long‑term maintainability depends on Android vendor support
You can buy preworking models from Volla or you can put it on a Fury Phone there are a number of options for used phones if you want to install it yousel.
IMO, If you want a daily driver with working cameras and good battery life, Halium is usually the practical choice.
You also have to beware of usage in some places, looks like most of the carriers in Australia will refsue to active VoiceOverLTE even though the phones support it.
My tears, maybe I can afford to eat today.
Graphene OS
As far as I know, it is still reliant on the whims of Google through shenanigans with AOSP, and of course having to use a Pixel.
Linux offers a more solid and independent foundation, and while it is less polished yet, to me it’s the only real way out in the long run.
Still, GrapheneOS is a big step in the right direction - hope it wouldn’t come across as me being against the project.
They’ve signed with an OEM (still secret atm, but the best guess seems to be Motorola?) who will produce the first flagship GrapheneOS device sometime this or next year iirc. Supposed to be revealing the manufacturer next month. That’ll at least take some of the Google dependency by having to use Pixels.
Motorola
Oh hello.
Yep, heard a bit about it. Didn’t include here because it’s still a big WIP.
Yup, if enough people switch to graphene big G will fuck them over. Exiting entirely is the only long term solution.
No, linux
TD;DR
(FOR EVERYONE)
Here is the petition that we all need to sign:
https://www.change.org/p/stop-google-from-limiting-apk-file-usage
(FOR DEVELOPERS or “DEVELOPERS” 😉 )
Here is the form that we need to fill:
(Please UPVOTE this so others can see!)
Call your representativesHire a lobbyist to donate millions of dollars to election campaigns for your representatives
What does this mean for GrapheneOS and similar degoogled android versions?
Nothing changes for now but other moves by Google clearly show they are trying to kill 3rd party ROMs by locking down Android’s code. In my opinion, unless EU steps in and mandates phone manufacturers and Google to support google free apps we’re fucked.
EU wants phones to be locked down so they can then make Google implement mass surveillance for “national security” reasons
What are you basing this on? If you say “Chat Control” I will just ignore you.
Chat control is an issue tbough why ignore it?
Chat Control is not implementing mass surveillance and has nothing to do with national security. I that’s their only argument they are confused and there’s nothing to talk about. If they have other arguments I would like to hear them.
It likely is not their only grievance as other things exist like porn blocking, ID implementations and VPN discussions.
Also chat control is reviewing private conversations. It is a provacy breach. There is no circumstance where this is not abusable. Here are some truths to how the law is presented:
1: nothing can be seen, only if certain pre registered files are recognised 2: politicians, military and associated personnel are exempted.
Meaning it can see more than nothing or else it is acceptable for these people to possess these materials.
It is also able to controlled a granular level person to person.
Porn blocking? In EU? I heard about it only in UK. Which EU countries block porn?
ID implementation… yes, all EU countries have ID. Many have digital IDs. What’s with it?
VPN discussion isn’t really proof of anything. Even Chat Control 2.0 isn’t approved yet, it’s just a project. VPN blocking is not even a proposal. It just someone mentioned in some report. Hardly a reason to claim that EU is becoming a surveillance state.
You live under a rock my friend.
Look at history. Look at the anology of how a frog will not jump out of boiling water if the temperature is slowly increased.
They are slowly increasing the temperature, and chat control is a big step for them. If you cannot see that then there is no hope for you
Repeating some scary conspiracy theories you read about online doesn’t make you informed. It makes you naive.
The EU has no interest in allowing privacy on devices, since it is increasingly attempting to control alternative narratives. We’re in touching distance of the Fourth Reich now.
Europe has explicitly no problem with this. They showed they have the power to censor Russian media but refuse to do this with European far-right, they just want the local fascists to win.
This describes the EU, in a nutshell https://theuaob.substack.com/p/the-comprador-calculus-why-europes The fascists have already won.
Even the premise is too generous:
Why would the leaders of the EU—a project ostensibly built on peace and sovereignty—
How on Earth is the literal cradle of Fascism and colonialism built on peace and sovereignty? The EU is built on neoliberalism and anticommunism, it cannot be built on peace or sovereignty.
Remember that the EU arose in part from the institutions set up to deter the same type of nationalist fascism rising again, such as the ECSC. Sadly, we may have encouraged Russian -funded American -spread international fascism in its place, although they don’t seem to control the EU yet.
Fascism is not even Russian funded or American spread, Europe is perfectly capable of growing its own fascism as we saw 100 years ago, sadly we’re going down the same road.
Removed by mod
Criticizing European colonialist roots makes me an asset? Welp, guess I should instead join the massive far-right crowds in Spain chanting that Muslims should be expelled and that Spain brought culture and technology to its colonies in America
Would not be sure about that. There has been steps in opposite directions in the past. Remember the regulation regarding 3. party app Stores on IOS, or even further back in the past the “Free Brwoser Choice” in MS-Windows.
It is surely called competition law?
I’m dumb But using grapheneos How would them locking down the code affect graphene?
Some apps require google play, like android auto and maps.
I’m using grapheneos with open street maps, so I don’t think there would be any problem with that. There is a work around to load some apps that require google play with out a google account. I’m guessing that is what would be affected.Graphen is based on AOSP - Android Open Source Project. As the name implies, that’s the part of Android that’s Open Source. Google publishes this code, Graphene OS people modify it and release. All bugfixes, security fixes and new features go there. Google first stopped accepting contributions from other devs and now they are limiting how often will they release AOSP and how often will they publish security fixes. This makes development of Graphene OS more difficult and it looks like Google’s ultimate goal is to make Android closed source. Graphene OS doesn’t have the resources to develop Android by themselves so this would probably kill the project.
While it does not affect them directly, it is unlikely most app developers will give significant effort to only support a small percentage of Android users running custom ROMs. So while GrapheneOS users will be able to install apps, there will likely not be that many apps to install.
Edit: What I mean is that most applications will have to choose to either agree to google terms and identify themselves, or develop only for custom ROMs, or stop developing altogether. And I don’t think many will choose the 2nd option. Also, 1st option may not be available if google does not like your app.
The european movement away from american stuff however is increasing, I’m hopeful that Jolla, Fairphone and the ROM world will actually increase in importance and numbers
It’s the other way around. GrapheneOS users will be able to install all the apps but stock Android users will not be able to install apps from F-Droid and other alternative sources*. F-Droid will lose access to about 99% of the market.
*Technically it will still be possible for open source devs to distribute apps to stock Android users but it will require handing Google your personal information and setting up way more complicated build configuration.
Yeah, uh, no alarm bells in the market watchdogs? None at all?
Please see the edit with clarification, since I guess I wrote it poorly and multiple commenters did not get my point.
I’m writing this on a GOS Pixel tablet with only free/libre installation sources. There are quite enough applications to install.
Please see edit of my comment. Since it seems my point did not get across, I elaborated. Of course there are plenty right now since there are no barriers yet.
GrapheneOS is not limited by Google, as long as the bootloader is unlockable and Google contnues releasing the sources. Longterm, the GOS project needs to support alternative hardware platforms.
There are Linux tablets, so if Android is dead open source developers will support these.
I think the problem is your second assumption of “will continue releasing sources” is the one to fail.
Hence, a new OEM.
The OEM makes the hardware tho. How does that help if Google stops releasing the Android source code?
It means they fork and they’re going to need funding to keep up with security work at least.
How do we defend our privacy on Android now?
Privacy isn’t really in their interest. They feed off our data.
That’s obvious, but before, we could use GrapheneOS and F-Droid etc to defend it ourselves. I’m not expecting Google to help, just hoping the resistance has something up its sleeve too.
I’m basically am doing exactly this. But I’m only on GrapheneOS as I had to compromise on some closed apps that refused to run on LineageOS. GrapheneOS means I can compromise on Google a bit without being completely compromised by Google. The market and geopolitical problem remains.
Never could. Power of thousands of paid developers against a few. That’s like finding all needles in a haystack, and power determines the size of that haystack and the amount of needles.
You can’t use something that cost that much to make and expect to divert from what the producers intended.
