I’ve been using my current phone for about 7 years now and it’s well behind on updates and starting to fail in minor but foreboding ways so I’m looking to get a new one and was hoping people here could help me with my indecisiveness.
My greatest requirement is long term support, which immediately puts Google and Samsung at the top of the pack (Fairphone, I see you but you just aren’t supported well in Canada as far as I can tell).
My other biggest interests are display quality, battery life, and customizability. I like the 6.2"-6.3" screen size that both the Pixel 10 and S25 fall in.
I don’t care overly much about the camera beyond quite casual use and I don’t care about gaming on it at all. I don’t plan to use Graphene OS.
Given these preferences do people think one phone comes out over the other? I keep waffling back and forth. I’m also happy to hear about other android models too if someone thinks one fits the bill better that I’m unaware of.
This used to be the case but Google is actively working to kill unlocking the bootloader on their devices (and all devices really) through their Play Integrity Validation. So while you may be able to install ROMs and add Gapps you’ll slowly find that less and less apps from the Play Store will work due to stricter integrity requirements from Google; even if you bought the app. The current hoops required to run a custom OS and not be detected by the new framework is daunting with many landmines like people installing software they don’t understand to get “Strong” integrity or paying for keyboxes that ultimately get banned.
Google is quickly becoming developer unfriendly and I would encourage people to look into the mess that is Play Integrity before suggesting Pixels, or any Android for that matter, in the context of custom ROMs.
Also, Google is no longer releasing the Pixel-specific source code, meaning you can no longer just build AOSP for new Pixels and have all the hardware just work - this makes it harder for custom ROM developers and might eventually lead to some hardware being simply unsupported unless you use the stock ROM.
Is it? Because it sounds like it is the same as what Samsung is doing with Knox. If you unlock your bootloader they have a way to track that now and it hurts the experience on the device. Want to sideload your apps in protest? You’ll only be allowed to sideload apps from developers Google screens and says are okay. Want to use custom firmware on your hardware? You can, but they won’t pass the integrity checks and even if you pay for the apps they can become incompatible with your device. And as someone else pointed out they stopped providing Pixel configs for AOSP so even getting people to try and make custom ROMs will be more difficult.
Samsung did it first, but Google just took it to the next level.
It’s so frustrating. I’m planning to keep my current phone working for a couple more years if possible, but after that I really have no idea what I’ll do. Kinda hoping one of the other Linux phone initiatives gets going more by then.
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This used to be the case but Google is actively working to kill unlocking the bootloader on their devices (and all devices really) through their Play Integrity Validation. So while you may be able to install ROMs and add Gapps you’ll slowly find that less and less apps from the Play Store will work due to stricter integrity requirements from Google; even if you bought the app. The current hoops required to run a custom OS and not be detected by the new framework is daunting with many landmines like people installing software they don’t understand to get “Strong” integrity or paying for keyboxes that ultimately get banned.
Google is quickly becoming developer unfriendly and I would encourage people to look into the mess that is Play Integrity before suggesting Pixels, or any Android for that matter, in the context of custom ROMs.
Also, Google is no longer releasing the Pixel-specific source code, meaning you can no longer just build AOSP for new Pixels and have all the hardware just work - this makes it harder for custom ROM developers and might eventually lead to some hardware being simply unsupported unless you use the stock ROM.
Yeah I know but I mean it’s still better than the what other OEMs like samsung is doing
Is it? Because it sounds like it is the same as what Samsung is doing with Knox. If you unlock your bootloader they have a way to track that now and it hurts the experience on the device. Want to sideload your apps in protest? You’ll only be allowed to sideload apps from developers Google screens and says are okay. Want to use custom firmware on your hardware? You can, but they won’t pass the integrity checks and even if you pay for the apps they can become incompatible with your device. And as someone else pointed out they stopped providing Pixel configs for AOSP so even getting people to try and make custom ROMs will be more difficult.
Samsung did it first, but Google just took it to the next level.
It’s so frustrating. I’m planning to keep my current phone working for a couple more years if possible, but after that I really have no idea what I’ll do. Kinda hoping one of the other Linux phone initiatives gets going more by then.