Is anyone working on fixing this? We can do so much better.
The entire developer experience was fantastic and the thing that killed it was a lack of desire from the upper leadership when it felt like they couldn't compete with the duopoly.
If they start selling their own devices, I will buy one and (assuming it turns out how I hope it will) recommend it strongly.
Fairphone from the Netherlands is another https://www.fairphone.com/
[0] https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114665558894105287
[1] https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114359660453627718
Did you have a wince app? Too bad, throw away all that and rebuild for wp7.
Do you want do anything useful? Actually, you better wait for wp7.5.
Oh look, we have a totally new thing with WP8. Upgrade to the newest framework so you can use the WP8 features... Oh, but you still need to build for the old framework for WP7. Hey, how about WP8.1, kind of the same deal.
My personal favorite though was WM10; you now need to build a Universal app that only runs on the very small number of WM10 phones... If you want to run on WP7 and WP8 which still have more sales, a universal app doesn't run there. Also, even though we said WP8 phones would be able to upgrade, either we changed our mind, or the experience is so bad most people won't. And the cherry on top... Users who upgrade from 8 to 10 might need to delete and reinstall the app, otherwise it will just show the loading dots.
Did we mention, we decided we didn't need engineers in Test in the run up to WM10? Couldn't possibly be why the release was terrible.
I have a Fairphone and i get updates pretty frequently so not sure what you mean?
I'd also need an alternate, safe source for common apps like Uber, Lyft, Slack, Kindle, Doordash, my banking/credit card apps, and a host of others that I use regularly. (And, no, "just use their website" is not acceptable; their website experiences are mostly crap.)
Way long ago I used to run CyanogenMod on my Android phones, and it was trivially easy to get every single app I needed working. Now it's a huge slog to get everything working on a non-Google-blessed OS, and I expect some things I use regularly just won't work. I hate hate hate this state of affairs. It makes me feel like I don't actually own my phone. But I've gotten so used to using these apps and features that it would reduce my quality of life (I know that sounds dramatic, but I'm lacking a better way to put it) to do without.
Many many people have banking apps that will not work on non-Google-blessed devices, use banks that have mobile websites that are terrible, and need to do mobile check deposits (which is usually only available in the app, and not the mobile website, if the bank even has one). And no, we're not going to "change our bank".
The reality is that there are so many things that break, sometimes in subtle ways, when you try to use an alternative Android OS. Some people may not have any problems, and that's great! But many -- I would dare to say most -- will.
And there's also a ton of uncertainty: I don't really want to wipe my phone, install GrapheneOS, spend hours messing with it and setting it up, only to find that something critical doesn't work, and now I have to flash back to the stock OS, and hope I can restore everything the way it was.
I do see five banking apps I use listed there as working, which is great. But -- and maybe I'm being unnecessarily overly worried about this -- what about the future? What if I've been using Graphene for a year or two, and one of the ones that's critical for me changes how they operate, and Graphene no longer passes muster as a platform it will run on. I'm not afraid of this happening at all running Google's stock OS image, but once I do my own thing, I get to keep the pieces when it breaks.
GrapheneOS is the way that all phone operating systems SHOULD be made. Layers and segregation between your banking apps and all the privacy breaking trash and malware you can get off the app store.
It is the banks and google making weird rootkit shit to try and lock down things that is the problem here.
That Fairphone has 13 just tells me they don't waste employee time in their small business on useless upgrades just for the sake of it. Their point is fair wages and ethical mineral mining: better that they have a workable phone without even more fluff, it seems to be tricky enough already in this world :(
LineageOS without gapps is really usable if you set aside the "big" social media apps. WhatsApp can be sourced from their website as an APK. The social apps like facebook, instagram, snap, tiktok and others all require Google Play's tracking services (aka gapps).
For YouTube there's multiple better alternative open source apps available, and mastodon, amethyst and the fediverse apps on f-droid are far superior in terms of performance to the Google Store alternatives.
Of course, that's a software support issue and not a constraint imposed by the OS. Someone could make Stellarium desktop work with an orientation sensor. It's just that nobody has done that particular thing, as well as a million other things that work super well on mobile
So is it second-class, or is it just a way that is optimised for output rather than input? You get the turn instructions presented to you, you can watch videos and listen to music, note-taking is optimised to work with a few taps and is reduced to the essentials you need. You can work them out later on computer if you have time at home over of course, but at least you can contribute that way with ease
Path 1: a ZK-proof attestation certificate marketplace implemented by GrapheneOS (or similar) to prove safety in a privacy-securing way enough for 3rd party liability insurance markets to buy in. Banks etc can be indifferent, and wouldn't ignore the market if it got big enough. This would mean we could root any device with aggressive hacking and then apologize for it with ZK-proof certs that prove it's still in good hands - and banking apps don't need to care. No need for hard chains of custody like the Google security model.
Path 2: Don't even worry too hard about 3rd party devices or full OSes, we just need to make the option viable enough to shame Google into adopting the same ZK certificate schemes defensively. If they're reading all user data through ZK-proof certs instead of just downloading EVERYTHING then they're significantly neutered as a Big Brother force and for once we're able to actually trust them. They'd still have app marketplace centrality, but if and when phones are being subdivided with ZK-proof security it would make 3rd party monitoring of the dynamics of how those decisions get made very public (we'd see the same things google sees), so we could similarly shame them via alternatives into adopting reasonable default behaviors. Similar to Linux/Windows - Windows woulda been a lot more evil without the alternative next door.
Longer discussion (opinion not sourced from AI though): https://chatgpt.com/share/68ad1084-eb74-8003-8f10-ca324b5ea8...
There is also an alternative for now, but nothing as simple as SMS or authenticator app. They give you a special credit card shaped card with a card reader that you can use to authenticate with using your PIN, which is mostly considered legacy now with the bank app. It's also not realistic to be carrying this thing around everywhere either as it's bigger than my phone.
There is also a national ID app that is used everywhere that I'm worried will stop working on GrapheneOS... Because without it I won't even be able to access online government services like healthcare, taxes, etc.
I truly don't get it. Are these people from 2009? Have they seen the apps on the current app stores? If you're lucky your highest rated flashlight app will only have a few Fullscreen ads and a subscription less than $10/mo. The recipe sites from content farms are less bloated and way less scammy.
It's certainly not about preventing scams. It's about preventing competition in the scamming business.
I gather the introduction of the android:allowBackup="false" manifest flag complicated things somewhat... I thought I read since then that a Device-to-Device (D2D) impersonation mode was implemented, and would love to hear if that helped?
(I posted a couple years ago about this topic, admittedly it was a bit ranty: >>37774254 )
You can pretty much disable all google services. Just a fair warning though, the experience is quite degraded.
> According to its own survey, Google says that more than 50 times more malware came through internet-sideloaded sources compared with Google Play, where it has required developer verification since 2023.
50:1 is not preventing. It is just "well, we are better than nothing"
I'm pretty sure there can be other curated stores that can serve the customer¹
[1] customer: owner of phone, not advertisers, data merchants, etc
"Many other devices are supported by GrapheneOS at a source level, and it can be built for them without modifications to the existing GrapheneOS source tree."
There are millions of $ stolen via side-loaded malware.
It's good they decided to do something about it.
They have a nice web app, but you must use their mobile app to login on the web version. The app takes a video of a QR code on the web page during login. Web login completes as soon as the mobile app notifies the server. There's no 2FA code to enter, and no alternative.
I asked them about this, by phone call, when my phone screen broke and I urgently needed to make a transaction. Surely there as an alternative? Or could I do the transaction by phone call?
They told me that indeed there is no other option. Despite having phone customer support, they had no phone or web banking service at all which could be used without a registered mobile device. The only phone service they could perform was to register a new mobile device, which I didn't have. I had a tablet, but it was too old.
So I had no good choice. The Android phone I'm using right now was bought in a hurry just so I could be allowed to make a bank transaction.
It wasn't my first choice of phone. I didn't have time to investigate alternative devices, let alone weigh up open alternatives. I ended up buying a mid-range device under pressure that seemed ok and was available in a store without waiting. (It was a brand new Samsung, and despite the IP rating it got water damaged and stopped working entirely after a few splashes a year or so later, but I was able to get it repaired.)
That's not any OS' fault, that's banks fault. That's been my experience with every bank I've used so far and yes - they often break on certified OS' too! I've been on the phone with support!
Because they make bad software, period, and we're all just forced to use their bad software.
I don't need to sideload a fucking fake bank app to steal your money. Get real. This isn't how most fraud or scams are done. Grandma isn't gonna install a fucking unsigned binary on her android phone. But she IS going to give out her password.
The sole blocker preventing someone with a Fairphone 4, 5, or 6 from sending text messages via satellite is that they are not on Android 15.