Several phone brands rumored to be planning a major shift away from Android
Several phone brands rumored to be planning a major shift away from Android
I don't believe that they're likely to do GNU/Linux. I bet that they're going to do a fork of Android off AOSP or something like that.
Android's had a huge amount of work put into it to make it suitable to be a consumer mobile phone OS, and the companies here aren't doing this because they want stuff that GNU/Linux does, but rather because they're Chinese companies worried about a US-China industrial decoupling and its risks for them. Like, they were okay with the technical status; what changed was that they started to worry about having the rug pulled out from them.
That being said, I can at least imagine that helping GNU/Linux phone adoption. So, think about what happened with video games. There were some major platforms out there -- MacOS, iOS, Windows, various consoles, Android, GNU/Linux. That fragmented the market. Trying to port software to all platforms became a huge pain. What a lot of game developers did was to target a more-or-less platform-agnostic engine and let the engine handle the platform abstraction.
If the mobile OS space fragments further -- like, Android splits into "Google Android" and "China Android" --- my guess is that that'll help drive demand for platform-agnostic engines to help improve portability, and porting one engine to GNU/Linux is a lot easier than every individual program.
I would love to have a phone that I could just plug into a USB C dock and use as a normal computer. They've got plenty of processing power for that now. Every single program I use except for games could run on a phone if it used normal GNU/Linux.
We need phones with standard Linux.
Already exists. Several iterations are active and work as a daily driver: phone, sms and mobile networking works reliably, apps exist. Just not as many as on Android, and some features are not part of the OS. This is enough for many to declare them "a failure". That and limited hardware support.
Google has coddled us for way too long, and at what price.
postmarketOS?
Honestly, I think the old FirefoxOS could do well these days. Literally everything an app can do can be done by a browser with a decent caching/local storage scheme. Slap a decent camera on that and it would be amazing.
GNU/Linux is about 100x more painful than Android...
How so?
Yeah, Meego was really nice.
Let me know when there's a phone with Linux that has a security implementation that matches Apple's Secure Enclave.
Linux-mobileOS!
That sounds nice and all but linux still is subject to exploits and the open sourced nature of it makes it an enticing target for state actors to include extremely well made obfuscated exploits. I dont know how to win here, tbh.
"State actors" already have the ability to spy on anyone they want. It's a whole industry
Uhh maybe more likely 15 years ago and also goes for everyone else. Actually, what are you even saying?
We are going to move away from Google, by basing our new future on AOSP, which is also primary maintained by Google.......I smell another FireOS level product on the horizon. Still Android, but worse.
You probably should've led with the fact that this is Chinese phones, not like Samsung and shit.
There’s only Samsung, or shit.
It's pretty much all shit. It's just "what flavor of shit would you like today?"
I'm not all that keen on Samsung myself, but the 'and shit' here is a stand-in for the other makers of android phones for the US market. I'm sure google would be happy to supply a list, but I can't be fucked to go find it.
A rumor of plans??! Tell me everything!!!
Gurl let me spill the tea, there's word floating round in China that some bde powa playas be considering maybe kinda putting something together.
Please, do not post clickbait
If it's not proper linux I don't care
German brand Volla has phones with Ubuntu Touch. Even allows dual boot with their own degoogled Android OS. Might be worth checking out.
arent there mods on the sub to delete clickbait crap like this?
PostmarketOS for everyone!
I really want to get to a point I can transition to using this or another mobile Linux distro. My phone is fairly (hehe, it's a Fairphone) well supported, but my impression is that basic phone features are still not functioning properly making it more of a pocket computer and less of a phone. I still need phone features. As for mobile apps, I don't have many needs and I think Waydroid will get me far.
Google meet Zune!
How easy is it to degoogle Android? Don't currently use Android or iOS but dumb phone options are getting pretty limited these days.
If I got an Android phone I would probably be looking at something second hand because fuck paying 3 figures on a phone. I know I wouldn't use data at all, call/SMS SIM only. I guess another option is not needing to degoogle it as it will never talk to google once I have finished downloading maps of the country for OSMand and a few other apps. Then it can be on Wi-Fi to allow communication with my PC over LAN but don't allow it access to the internet.
If it never touches the internet after setup I guess outdated OS doesn't matter too much.
If you're looking at getting a new (used) phone, I would suggest GrapheneOS (the most secure/private de-googled rom afaik).
You need a Pixel phone, the newer you get the longer you will keep getting software updates for the future (if you keep the phone past these many years of support, then I believe switching to a other rom will be required for security patches etc. Each phone is supported until Google stops supporting them I believe). You said you don't care about updates because you can keep it from connecting to the internet, but it's a plus anyways.
If you plan on never touching a google service, GrapheneOS allows for that (nothing google by default), but on the other hand, if you need google play, etc for banking apps or whatnot, they have that covered with Sandboxed Google Services (which you can run solely in another user profile on your phone for added privacy).
Anyways, I think GrapheneOS in a great option & their website has much more info if you'd like to continue hearing about it:
p.s. you can check their website for how long different pixels will have continued support before (if) you get one (incase anyone else is reading this).
You have to be careful to get a phone and model supported by one of the projects. Check all compatibility and install instructions before buying a phone. And if you need a manufacturer supplied unlock code, make sure the manufacturer still gives them out . Some will discontinue that service after a few years.
For graphene os you need one of the gogle devices - i've never tried it but i think its the one most people like.
lineageos supports more devices usually older.
I recently got lineageos working on sony experia xa2 - very happy with it. But to get there i had to go try like 6 computers before one of them sucessfully sent the bootloader unlock code over the ADB. For some reason usb is temperamental when doing stuff like that
It is a lot easier on really old stuff like samsung galaxy s3 or s4 if you can tolerate something that old. Maybe you'll lso end upon an old version of lineage.
Once you get the bootloader unlocked it is generally straightforward. but modern phones make that fist part awkward.
The only issue with projects like LineageOS is that the camera usually sucks because the full fat camera driver isn't released to the public, it's only the basic driver. The camera can still take photos but all of the features you've become accustomed to are not there. This was my experience and what the LineageOS team said during the Samsung S5-S8 days.
Ironically, pixels are best for de-googling (stock android that can be easily un- and re-locked)
If you have a phone with custom ROM support, pretty easy. I've been running LineageOS without GAPPS for like 5 years now. Most stuff just works, but to be fair, I am not using any of the cool kids apps like google pay or android auto.
I just got my Pixel 9a and put GrapheneOS on it. The only thing that seems to not work right now is KDE Connect, but I'm unsure if it might be me doing something wrong rather than being impossible.
Yeah guess I don't really care for most of it. Can get anything I want as an apk or mostly just on fdroid. VLC and an SSH client would be nice.
It depends on your definition of 'deGoogle'. You can disable the Google apps on most Android phones. They'll take up storage space, but won't run.
If you're getting a second-hand phone and want to completely deGoogle it, you can check if (1) the bootloader is unlockable and (2) custom ROMs are available online (e.g. Lineage OS compatible devices). In general, Xiaomi, Motorola and Pixel devices have unlockable bootloaders, but not all their models have custom ROMs.
Anything closer to supporting regular Linux applications the better. Though I’d expect anything like this to just be Android with well funded alternatives to Google applications/services. Whatever happens will be good for non-Google/Apple/Microsoft directed platforms
What ever happened to that other OS that was named after a color
Fuschia? That was a Google alternative to Linux that never panned out. It was weird with streams instead of files.
Make it so
To what? Linux? I'll believe it when I see it.
To what?
Read the article and find out.
So they're switching from Android to Android.
You mean the brands that literally do this already? Pretty bad article
Google is kind of being invasive. Kind but kind of.
Harmony Os will probably end up taking over realistically just due to everything going on in the world.
Harmony Os will probably end up taking over realistically just due to everything going on in the world.
For Huawei but their competitors have no interest in that. Just look at the degoogled Android phones for the domestic Chinese market: Everyone ships their own app store and replacement APIs for PlayServices (not compatible to Google's). So app developers need to target each vendor's flavor of Android individually. It's insane.
The logical way would be to create a joint venture for a common app store and PlayStore replacements but they don't. Maybe this story is about exactly that but it should tell you that Xiaomi and the others have no interest in being controlled by a 3rd party.
One can only hope
Before anyone gets too excited, the headline is clickbait. The bigger Chinese phone brands are looking into de-googled Android. They are still going to use Android.
Chinese laptop makers are also in search of an OS that isn't Windows. Queue a race to prop Linux with Android support on that side of things.
de-Googled android sounds even better. The story is cooler than the title!
I like your spirit, but I don't think a Chinese equivalent to Google Play Services would be more desirable
I mean they just replace Google with their own Chinese data-mining services so, no, not cool.
They are already degoogled for the Chinese market. What the Chinese Android variants to not have is a shared replacement for Play Services and a shared app store because everyone is doing their own thing for maps API, payment, ...
I run that already with CalyxOS. I dig it.
a duopoly is better than a monopoly but 3 platforms would be better
It also says:
So, it's not clear yet.
de-googled Android you say?
ISeeThisAsAnAbsoluteWin.jpg
Too bad that what you want in a Google-free Android distro isn't what the manufacturers want.
I thought android in China was already de-googled
Some Chinese phone release outside China also began to de-googled as well. At least that's the case for Huawei in Indonesia.
Waydroid is pretty nice, integrating the Android apps as regular apps in the Linux UI.
Waydroid is very close to greatness. My major hope there is Valve contributions to Waydroid for probable Steam Deck integration will make it incredibly seamless. There’s also the Android Translation Layer being developed
https://gitlab.com/android_translation_layer/android_translation_layer
So like how Huawei was hyping up their new mobile OS which was really just skinned AOSP?
HarmonyOS is not AOSP anymore. It does not run Android apps anymore.