It used to be fun

This is cruel, now I feel like some kind of criminal. Who knew that the most dangerous criminal is an ordinary consumer who wants freedom...

so will linux foundation drop android using linux kernel?

off topic me using android 2015

I remember when I was younger is rooted phone and installed freedom apk. This app was awesome and allowed you to buy stuff from Google Play for free. Does anyone remember this app? I always thought that logo was really weird.

I never heard of freedom APK, but Lucky Patcher worked like a charm!

AOSP

Android Open Source Project

look inside

not open source

mfw

You can still use AOSP to make your own phone, but you'll just have to built your own apps too, since eventually, all of google play apps aren't gonna work on degoogled Android.
- you'll just have to built your own apps too
  We are well on our way.
  I was confused before I made the switch. So many of the most useful kinds of apps weren't maintained anymore by anyone on the Google Play store. I had this surreal feeling that the app ecosystem was getting worse every year.
  And then I installed F-Droid and figured out where all of my favorite app developers went. ¯(ツ)_/¯

Never forget the possibility of very powerful NFC tags which could automate your day!

As gross as Google's endless enshittification is, I blame the consumers for most of it. People vote with their wallets and they've been voting for the locked up walled garden crap option for the past two decades, especially in the US, where there is literally a culture of "ew, you have a green message bubble!" and chasing a status symbol is way more important than things like actual ownership over your devices, digital freedom and customization. And funnily enough, Google's hardware sales have started increasing steadily since they've started copying Apple's shitty model.

Ah yes, I too blame the overworked and underpaid population that were never given a real education besides a dysfunctional and authoritarian public school system which contains at least 50% pro-status-quo propaganda and omit real useful information, and teaches kids to obey teachers and the school admin, and subjugate their free will. /s
- "I get in line to buy shit phones because I'm oppressed, overworked and underpaid". Alright. Hopefully the corporate overlords will do something about it, then.
Ah yes, the consumers having no real practical alternative between apple and android means they support all the bullshit Google is forcing onto android ^/s
How do you propose I vote with my wallet when using something like grapheneOS requires buying a pixel?
- Even with Graphene, it's increasingly likely that it'll be dead to new Pixels in the coming years. And I say that as someone posting this from a Pixel 9 running Graphene.
- The time to support Android was 15 years ago when you could install any OS on any device, side load anything you wanted, root, mod, replace your battery, have full control over your file system, expand your storage, etc. Or 10 years ago, when Google was selling completely unlocked developer oriented phones, offering most of its services for free, opening sources, and actually innovating in fields like computational photography while also researching interesting concepts like modular phones.
  If you feel like you can't vote with your wallet today it's because the market as a whole has abundantly shown that it really doesn't give a fuck about any of those things, and it will always give the dominant position to whoever markets more aggressively or more effectively, even if the business models of those companies go against the consumers' interests.
  People in 2007 jumped at the chance to buy a ridiculously overpriced phone with no physical keyboard, a VGA camera without flash, no MMS or 3G support, no apps or customization whatsoever, no expandable storage, no battery replacement, terrible repairability, locked in to proprietary accessories and software, and so on. This, while the competition at the time was putting out cheaper phones with things like OLED screens, professional optics with xenon flashes, dual SIMs, microSD support, the latest connectivity standards, etc.
  And when Apple patent trolled, took away things like the headphone jack, or normalized imposing ridiculous costs and taking huge cuts from developers, did people stop buying their products? No, they bought more.
  I'm not defending Google at all. Their decline is abhorrent, but it's a corporation, and corporations will always choose profit over everything else. It's really naive to think they'll offer their customers the more ethical option just out of the goodness of their hearts, especially when the market has been taking for granted or even actively discouraging the things that positively differentiated them from the competition.
- GraphineOS is the epitome of paying against your values then using foss without giving back.
  Murena sells phones with e/os already installed, and there seems to be others too where you can buy a phone: iodé , jolla, pine64, pureos,
- By not using GrapheneOS obviously.
  Also GrapheneOS is about security not about privacy or freedom. So GrapheneOS is just not really part of the discussion here.

AOKP gang rise

they court the nerds with cool tech, then ditch them whenever their shit takes off and the nerds are an irrelevant minority.

Tale as old as time.
Pfft... We're the ones who are just going to find the exploit in the new walled garden anyway. #GreenJailbreak

Soo, anyone ELI5. If Android is basically Linux, how hard would it be - given drivers are not an issue - so just make a Linux phone and mass produce it? You probably don't have that many apps, but it will be possible to call and/or use messaging apps.

Linux is just the Kernel, Android is the OS. There's a ton of stuff on top of Linux that makes an Android device.
Making an Android device (or Android device hardware) run Linux isn't hard. In fact, you can just use Termux on pretty much any Android device to run a regular desktop Linux distro run in a container on Android. That way, the Linux distro uses the kernel from the host Android OS and just runs its own userspace parallel to Android's userspace.
But if you want to make a stand-alone Linux phone without Android, your biggest issue is that you won't have phone apps. There's close to no app support for phone-linux. So on your Linux phone you won't get any banking/authenticator/messaging/games/... apps. You can run desktop apps, but that sucks on a tiny touchscreen display. And many use cases (e.g. authenticator/two-factor/buying public transport tickets) are very cumbersome or sometimes even not possible on desktop OSes.
Now you an make your Linux phone run Android by emulating the Android userspace. That's possible, but then again you are basically running Android at that point anyway. But Android with one big caveat: It's not a Google Play Store Certified device, and it will never be if it's not running full Android.
And missing Google Play Store Certification means no google services and no apps that rely on Google Services or require Google Play Store Certification. That means e.g. no Banking/Authenticator apps and many games won't run.
Also, if you aren't actually running Android but some kind of Android emulator, you will always be outdated and buggy.
So essentially you made a phone that
Runs Linux apps a little better than an Android phone
Gives you more control
Allows you to do much, much less in regards to it being an Android phone
People have done it. There are a handful of Linux phones (e.g. Librem 5, Pinephone) that are barely usable as phones due to lack of app support.
They've done the opposite as well, so running Linux on a phone originally designed for Android (e.g. PostmarketOS), also barely usable as a phone.
There's also the middle-ground with custom ROMs, some of them degoogled (like LineageOS, GrapheneOS, /e/ and many others). They run full-fat Android, but without all the Google apps including Play Store, Google Services and of course also without Google Play Store Certification. That's more usable as a phone, but you will still be cut off from anything using Google Services. There are some hacks and workarounds that sometimes work and sometimes not. You might get stuff to work but it's a constant race.
The problem is that currently if you want to use a phone as a full phone that covers all phone usecases, it's got to be an iPhone or a Google certified Android phone.
given drivers are not an issue
All the Linux phones run on outdated hardware because that's the main problem.
Probably this hard: https://postmarketos.org/
You can, but no one will use it because you won't have Android apps on it. The lock in is real
- Well, time for zoomers to experience our childhood (with phones that could call, send SMS, and play Snake).
- I would
- So how come android is Linux but Linux don't run android apps? How hard it is to have a simulator like harmony os for unsupported apps?
https://puri.sm/products/librem-5-usa/
https://commerce.jolla.com/products/jolla-community-phone
- Jolla looks awesome, have to look into that.

Iam still sad not having titanium backup with root on my current phone :(

Try Neo Backup.
It's worked pretty well for me in the past.

I'm gonna carry around my steam deck and add a USB camera module, a GPS module, and add some meshtastic radios modules, and I'm gonna daily drive it as the ultimate all-in-one device, and Mr. Google Pichai can't stop me! xD

good idea however if you ever feel like needing a phone again.. i have one word for you:GrapheneOS
- Only for Google Pixels
- I mean, if google is on track to ban sideloading, there's not doubt they will also ban bootloader unlocking.
- Isn't GrapheneOS just another android os?

Reminds me of old cell-phone service options. Free hours, rollover and prepay/pay-as-you-go/contractless etc.

Not sure how pricing/value actually compares, but it does seem like if you want a phone now for emergencies you're going to get fleeced (also required data package). Unless maybe you buy a flip-phone or something. A fiber provider in my area even still charges $40 for a land-line (no idea if it's VoIP).

you don't have TrackPhone being sold at Walmart where you are?
In my country all you say is kinds the norm... wtf is up with telcos in wherever are you from?
- wtf is up with telcos in wherever are you from?
  Oh you know, they are given free reign because 🇺🇸
  Internet pricing/speed isn't great either.

It's happening, I'm finally getting nostalgic from tech memes. The days on xda forums and IRC. Thankfully IRC is still alive. Xda seems to be dying to telegram and Google's enshittification

Mmm yes incomplete ROMs with a ton of self-congratulatory posting
- ROMS have (almost) always been incomplete works. They have always been sideprojects, by tech enthusiasts that wanted to learn. They just happen to share those projects to any who would be interested, with no warranty.

Its all fun and games when your bork a custom rom, force flash a stock rom and delete your EFS directory (the one with the IMEI)

Ah good times, now that phone is just my OBS controller.

I had matching Nexus 5 and Nexus 7, I was in modding heaven. God I miss my Nexus 7...

I had a nexus 7. Great little device. Sad that Google is fucking shit up. It’s what they do best sadly

iOS jailbreaking used to be incredible too.

I guess it might still be for those who slipped into the “window” to do it, but I have no clue what Cydia looks like these days.

Cydia is practically dead, replaced by Sileo or Zebra, and most tweaks are paid now.
I miss when people did stuff for a hobby or for fun. Literally everything wants your money these days it seems.
- It's not like everything (or rather every dev) necessarily wants your money. We're forced to monetize even our hobbies in an attempt to live a worthwhile life. It's a cancerous system infecting everything and everyone.
  To develop great FOSS software without the need of monetization is an enormous privilege.
- I held onto jailbreaking till the end. I have a iPhone on iOS 17.0 and TrollStore for permanent sideloaded apps. It’s pretty awesome! There hasn’t been anything like a jailbreak or TrollStore since then. I wish I had bought an iPhone 15 on iOS 17.0 at launch so I could hold onto this as long as possible. Having a lower end iPhone I’ll probably need an upgrade in the next year or so.
  You can get a similar experience to TrollStore by paying for an Apple developer account or a third-party signing service that abuses Apple developer accounts. It seems android users may have to do a similar thing in a few years.
- everybody could use more money. gotta be turning more and more of your life into a hustle for capital's insatiable maw.
  so now we pay for mods.
- Oh that sucks. It’s par for iOS though.
  Yeah, me too. So what if apps were simpler than they are now… that would be nice.

I am in dire need of a true Linux Phone

the oligarchy is already set, we won't get a grassroots competitor to apple/google at this point without shenanigans. android is open but the entire ecosystem around it is closed.
all sorts of bureaucracy and interaction with corporations and governments are now requiring squeamish proprietary apps that will not work at the mere hint of something they arbitrarily (or maliciously?) dislike.
Bring back the Nokia N900!
- A nice sentiment but in reality the n900 and n9 were both too slow to use. That's the first thing that would have to be fixed.
The phone running FuriOS seems neat.
I would eat my foot for this
- I would eat their foot for this
Look at this: https://liberux.net/
- Dude holy shit, modular emmc AND RAM, AND modem??! This looks sick as hell!!
- That does sound fucking based, but probably can't run android apps as well right?
I was really rooting for Ubuntu Mobile and Firefox OS. Sadly barely any manufacturers offered it stock, so classic henn and egg problem.

CyanogenMod, how I loved thee

Is LineageOS not good? I thought that was forked from Cyanogen?
- They had to throw out lots of customization options, because Google made a ton of changes to Android/AOSP and it wasn't compatible anymore.
  Like, LineageOS is still a more feature-rich and cleaner OS than what comes preinstalled on most phones. But yeah, even relatively simple stuff like setting a system font never got a real replacement.
  No idea, if it is still easily possible to implement that. You can fake it by replacing the Roboto font file with a different font, but you get weird font issues in various apps then.
The golden age of custom ROMs was truly a technological Renaissance. Magical time.
- Damn such good days. My phone is a trash can these days.

i cant wait for mobile Linux to be ready, I will switch in a heartbeat.

Saw someone else mention sailfish! There is also PostmarketOS I've recently seen footage of it running on a OnePlus phone and it looks way more stable than I'd expected!!
Edit= apparently just 2 oneplus phones and sparse other phones are supported, and stability varies per device =/ you can check here to see if your phone's supported!
It won't happen due to voice over lte.
- Why is this a problem?
Sailfish exists: https://sailfishos.org/
Wasn't Ubuntu phone a thing?
- Ubuntu touch is a thing, But the only platform it's running properly on is halium, which is basically an Android core and bootloader that virtualizes the OS.
  It works, and it has pretty good battery life, but it's not really Linux on the phone, they're using Android drivers under the hood.
  The real Linux distributions that exist that are running on metal don't have all the drivers worked out yet for modem and VOLTE, But those are close, i'm not worried about that, But I am worried about is the average of 6 hours of battery life on a 3500 mah battery. Android has battery life down to a science. Those apps just become snapshots and disappear into the background and restore like nothing happened when you need them again.
  I started diving into this one Android started showing their ass a couple of months ago. If you want to use hallium, You might be able to daily drive it if you don't have high expectations, The guy I was following that tested it out so that helium / touch was so lockdown that he couldn't even install unsanctioned apps from the terminal because the VM would brick itself.
  I can deal with not running most phone apps, But I really don't feel like moving from one lockdown OS to another just for the hell of it. If Google pulls this s*** I will get out at the first available stop.
- I've been hearing about this for 10+ years now. I vaguely remember testing a prototype that could only load an os. That was it
Pinephone exists now, you can buy it today. It runs Linux.
Calls/SMS do work although are not 100% so if you absolutely need these to be reliable you could get a brick phone for like £15 to cover that and then use the Pinephone as a pocket computer. I used it as my only phone for a couple of years and it was mostly fine, now it doesn't have a SIM in it and its perfect as a pocket PC.
- If calls/SMS are not 100% then it’s not a phone
- Pinephone battery usage (with postmarketOS) is atrocious. I bought one and it's been collecting dust in a drawer ever since the first 3-4 times the battery drained from 100 to 0 within 24 hours on stand-by. :( My fastest wasted 700ish EUR ever.
- Follow pine64 news, they stopped producing new pinephones since they arent in demand enough

Don't forget rock solid app gets an unexpected update 3 years later and now is jammed with ads and offers an ad free subscription at $14/week

Yeah app purchases sure went to shit, didn't they? Sorry turns out buying an app one time for a small fee isn't good enough, we need you to buy it again every month.
- And the apps that do have lifetime licenses went from $5 to like $80
I'm glad I heard of Discord's plan to add ads to their Android app beforehand so I had the chance to disable updates. It's annoying that Android keeps reminding me there's an update available, but it's less annoying than ads.
- Blocking basically all ads on your phone is trivially easy.
  Find "Private DNS" (or something similar) in your settings
  Set it to dns.adguard-dns.com
  And that's really it. There are other ad-blocking dns providers out there, and they all use slightly different block lists. I like adguard because their blocklist is less aggressive than others I've tried, and I'd rather an ad or two get through than for something legitimate to stop working.
  You can also set it up as your dns provider in your router to block ads on your entire network. People tend to like to self-host adguard or pihole for that, but as long as you don't care about a dashboard or manual dns entries, using a free dns is as easy as it gets and is very effective. I self-host as a hobby and I still just use adguard's public dns.

I remember this "don't be evil" slogan. But what was it from?

It was Google's.
- wheeze

I just hate that so much. The openness was one of the two reasons why I got an android phone. The other one being the price.

I'm probably going to spam this around a bit, since most people don't seem to know about it, but a reminder that FuriLabs has a (GNU+)Linux phone with decent spec.s and the ability to run Android app.s (from what I've heard) pretty decently: https://furilabs.com/

Biggest drawback is it's based on Halium. Usual growing pains of a new product/company apply but apparently the company is pretty responsive and their dev.s have worked with customers to get things like calling working with the carrier and bands of their country where it hasn't worked before so improvements move pretty quickly.

Collection of different experiences I've variously seen online over the last year or so:

I don't own one, myself, so I can't give any personal experience but I've seen it around for a few years now but most people don't seem to even know about it. Maybe there's a reason for that? But none I've ever seen anyone say.

What is halium and why is it a drawback ?
- https://halium.org/ (not me insinuating you should've just searched for it; I just like to be thorough and give all possible information, even if unneeded)
  The very simplified explanation (as far as I understand things) is that it uses an Android kernel to run Linux on so that hardware issues are minimized (the biggest difficulty that Purism and the Pinephones have had and why they've been harangued in terms of what they can do is they're trying to provide open hardware that can work with the pure Linux kernel).
  So the plus side is that things work with Android hardware – because you're, ultimately, using the Android kernel – and you can (theoretically) open up the number of devices you can run on exceedingly.
  Downside is (I believe) you get Google/Android closed bits running and you're tied to the development of whomever made that modified kernel. All the complaints about not getting kernel upgrades after a while (because you're using a modified kernel, you can't just pull the latest and greatest from upstream and use it) that people have with Android will still apply.
  Given the moves Google's making, it's not a deal breaker, for me, but I know it can be for some people so just wanted to give people the heads up.
@unknown1234_5@kbin.earth, @Korhaka@sopuli.xyz, @Tyr_Raidho_Othala@reddthat.com, @nimble@lemmy.blahaj.zone
(only because you all expressed desire for a proper Linux phone and I've still, yet, to've seen anyone mention this in this thread; may not fit your needs but in case no one knew of it, yet)
- Thank you, i appreciate the information. I will keep my eye on its development.

Most relatable meme in a while, feels weird to feel so much nostalgia for an Operating system

I miss those days. Ive jumped to iOS for quite a few years since, but I do miss the community and tinkering. I don’t miss the shitty battery life and hoping my phone doesn’t brick when I flash a new ROM or kernel.

so apple fixed the battery life thing? i knew macbooks have insane battery life, but i thought iphones still couldn't do 2 days which i think is the line between shitty and ok. anyway samsungs could never and still can't do more than 2 days in my hands, but I've been amazed that my p8p with graphene can easily get 4 days (I'm a pretty light user).
- I’m comparing the galaxy s2 I believe and other older phones I would use to flash ROMs. Battery life was always an issue then. I’m sure it’s gotten better. I’m just speaking from 2011 time period.

This is why I moved to iPhone a few years ago. Every premium android was a legit knockoff of iPhone in every single way, down to the lack of a headphone jack and SD card slot. Why continue chasing these phones that aren’t even as good as the real thing?

Android USED TO be better than iPhone, but Google is just gung-ho on enshitification. Apple, for the walled garden that it is, at least works well with its eco system. Android is so fragmented and complicated that it’s collapsing under its own weight.

😢 AOKP was king. I miss all the extra silly features they packed in. You could make it look almost nothing like Android by the time you were done.

YES! I was talking with someone recently about this ROM. I couldn't remember what it was called, but I had decked out my phone on a fully wild unicorn theme based on it lmao.

Yes, Titanium Backup was great, but have you also tried Helium? Also where's Odin3?

I recognise almost all of picture one, but it's been a while since I used them, I should upgrade again. Is it really that much pain now?

real

Low key it was fun flashing roms back in Late 2023 on a Xiaomi Phone.
The only unfun part was unlocking the bootloader

What's the % of US users that use non-Apple non-Android smartphones, like <0.1% still right? I basically just use phone, SMS, browser and youtube on mine so possible I'll switch over when its tried and tested enough. Some tech experience but not enough with phones, specifically to be confident.

Not sure, but I'd bet it's less than flipphones / dumbphones. For the average person, smartphone and android/apple are probably synonymous.