We recently published a blog post with our reaction to the new Google Developer Program and how it impacts your freedom to use the devices that you own in th...
If android blocks direct-installing “sideloading”, I will move to Apple and never look the fuck back. This is pure greed and hubris that Google thinks they have the market cornered. They all can go cuck themselves.
Its literally not possible to have a top tier phone unless the company can pre order like 10m chips directly from TSMC. No small company will ever be able to do this.
If you want a top tier phone from a non mega corp you will never get a phone. You have to chose some sacrifice for freedom or stick to the mega corps that will always seem to control you
I mean, obviously apple was like that since the first iphone, but if it’s all walled gardens, nothing matters anymore. Well, maybe I’d try a linux phone first.
The thing is that Apple is even worse when it comes to its walled garden practices and locked-in bundled software. For example, in Android you can at least choose amongst alternative apps for SMS, etc. And some are even open source, and available in the official store. But in Apple devices you can’t compete with iMessage, by policy. It’s simply not allowed. Even from a technical standpoint it’s not possible either, since they don’t even offer an API for a third party iOS app to handle SMS/MMS/RCS. And that’s just 1 example.
So you are jumping from the pan to the fire if you go from Android to iOS. Even if you are ok giving up the “sideloading” aspect, you are still worse off with Apple anyway.
If it has Google Play Services, it will be affected. Custom ROMs like Graphene OS and Lineage will keep working. The problem is if app developers and/or most of their users don’t use a custom ROM, it will likely push them out of Android app development. So while it is possible for some users to avoid direct impacts of this change, the overall fallout will be unavoidable.
Best thing to do is just stop buying new phones. Play Services and apps will still work and receive updates for years. Swap that old battery and keep chugging for a few years.
Starving all the tech brah corpos of money is the only message we plebs have the power to send. Bouncing to their competitor in a duopoly isn’t actually “showing them” anything.
Google could, and probably would become more malicious on deprecating and obsoleting old hardware, but that’d be a huge revenue loss for them. They tend to actively support the app layer on older Android OS versions (here’s an arbitrary breakdown from some web search: https://composables.com/android-distribution-chart ) for a very long time, as older Android is used in many embedded devices, inexpensive devices, purpose-built devices, and other places.
Keeping the Play Services and Play Store up to date on older phones means they can continue a metadata-gathering and app-sale revenue stream on older phones for many years after they “age out”.
Couple that with the fact that most “reasonable” vendors now try to support 3, 5, or more years on a piece of hardware, you should at least be able to get almost half a decade out of a phone before it no longer receives primary OS updates, and likely then another 5 or so years until they stop updating for that API level.
The ELI5-ish version of it is Android is composed of a few layers. The stuff that makes the hardware work, the stuff that makes the OS work (drawing on screen, install/remove programs, texting, calls), and the stuff that makes the software (apps, etc.) work. The part they stop updating is the stuff that makes the hardware work, and the stuff that makes the OS work. However, it’s already working, soo… Over the years, Google spent a lot of time migrating as much of Android as they could so that the apps, some bits of OS, and other things like app security could be updated even on very old versions of Android. You could turn on a phone from 2015 like the BlackBerry Priv right now, and install current apps and most things would run without issue.
Yes, there could be a slight risk that some malware comes out targeting older phones with older OSes and older hardware support, but that’s generally a smaller audience than targeting the latest and greatest phones that are way more “popular” - so not really worth it to malware peeps. The hack targets would most frequently be at the app layer to cast as wide a net as possible. Since Google continues updating Play Services and the Play Store software at the app layer, this would mostly keep people safe from the majority of attack vectors. The diversity of phone hardware really helps here.
Mostly though, mobile marketing just tries as hard as they can to create FOMO that you might be missing out on something by using an older phone.
My logic is that if no one allows direct install of apps, I might as well move to a more secure walled garden than the dogshit security posture Android has.
It’s interesting to me that there is no thought at all to move to “neither”. Of course, that is what they count on, people not willing to give something so perceived important up.
I recently lost my phone for a few days. Until I found it, it was annoying, but life still worked. Of course, it’s a major drop in convenience, no doubt, but I would’ve likely been fine without either Android or iPhone.
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If android blocks direct-installing “sideloading”, I will move to Apple and never look the fuck back. This is pure greed and hubris that Google thinks they have the market cornered. They all can go cuck themselves.
Nah, Linux phones for me, I specificly chose android cause CRapple was shit.
This one seems to be the most far along
https://furilabs.com/
Name one that is:
ready for prime-time use
is priced reasonably
has features commensurate to this year’s top-tier phone specs?
Its literally not possible to have a top tier phone unless the company can pre order like 10m chips directly from TSMC. No small company will ever be able to do this.
If you want a top tier phone from a non mega corp you will never get a phone. You have to chose some sacrifice for freedom or stick to the mega corps that will always seem to control you
I’ve got some bad news…
I mean, obviously apple was like that since the first iphone, but if it’s all walled gardens, nothing matters anymore. Well, maybe I’d try a linux phone first.
The thing is that Apple is even worse when it comes to its walled garden practices and locked-in bundled software. For example, in Android you can at least choose amongst alternative apps for SMS, etc. And some are even open source, and available in the official store. But in Apple devices you can’t compete with iMessage, by policy. It’s simply not allowed. Even from a technical standpoint it’s not possible either, since they don’t even offer an API for a third party iOS app to handle SMS/MMS/RCS. And that’s just 1 example.
So you are jumping from the pan to the fire if you go from Android to iOS. Even if you are ok giving up the “sideloading” aspect, you are still worse off with Apple anyway.
What about those Xiaomi and other “versions” of android?
If it has Google Play Services, it will be affected. Custom ROMs like Graphene OS and Lineage will keep working. The problem is if app developers and/or most of their users don’t use a custom ROM, it will likely push them out of Android app development. So while it is possible for some users to avoid direct impacts of this change, the overall fallout will be unavoidable.
Would you look at that… All of us struggling what to do, where to go, and replacing Google with Apple was the “solution” all along 🙄
Best thing to do is just stop buying new phones. Play Services and apps will still work and receive updates for years. Swap that old battery and keep chugging for a few years.
Starving all the tech brah corpos of money is the only message we plebs have the power to send. Bouncing to their competitor in a duopoly isn’t actually “showing them” anything.
I don’t know how any of this works. What’s stopping Google from doing the same thing to old phones?
Google could, and probably would become more malicious on deprecating and obsoleting old hardware, but that’d be a huge revenue loss for them. They tend to actively support the app layer on older Android OS versions (here’s an arbitrary breakdown from some web search: https://composables.com/android-distribution-chart ) for a very long time, as older Android is used in many embedded devices, inexpensive devices, purpose-built devices, and other places.
Keeping the Play Services and Play Store up to date on older phones means they can continue a metadata-gathering and app-sale revenue stream on older phones for many years after they “age out”.
Couple that with the fact that most “reasonable” vendors now try to support 3, 5, or more years on a piece of hardware, you should at least be able to get almost half a decade out of a phone before it no longer receives primary OS updates, and likely then another 5 or so years until they stop updating for that API level.
The ELI5-ish version of it is Android is composed of a few layers. The stuff that makes the hardware work, the stuff that makes the OS work (drawing on screen, install/remove programs, texting, calls), and the stuff that makes the software (apps, etc.) work. The part they stop updating is the stuff that makes the hardware work, and the stuff that makes the OS work. However, it’s already working, soo… Over the years, Google spent a lot of time migrating as much of Android as they could so that the apps, some bits of OS, and other things like app security could be updated even on very old versions of Android. You could turn on a phone from 2015 like the BlackBerry Priv right now, and install current apps and most things would run without issue.
Yes, there could be a slight risk that some malware comes out targeting older phones with older OSes and older hardware support, but that’s generally a smaller audience than targeting the latest and greatest phones that are way more “popular” - so not really worth it to malware peeps. The hack targets would most frequently be at the app layer to cast as wide a net as possible. Since Google continues updating Play Services and the Play Store software at the app layer, this would mostly keep people safe from the majority of attack vectors. The diversity of phone hardware really helps here.
Mostly though, mobile marketing just tries as hard as they can to create FOMO that you might be missing out on something by using an older phone.
If they start doing X I will go somewhere where they have been doing X for a long time! That’ll show them!
My logic is that if no one allows direct install of apps, I might as well move to a more secure walled garden than the dogshit security posture Android has.
It’s interesting to me that there is no thought at all to move to “neither”. Of course, that is what they count on, people not willing to give something so perceived important up.
I recently lost my phone for a few days. Until I found it, it was annoying, but life still worked. Of course, it’s a major drop in convenience, no doubt, but I would’ve likely been fine without either Android or iPhone.
You could also move to a degoogled android phone or a linux phone