Comment on Google will block sideloading of unverified Android apps starting next year

dual_pyramid_reality@lemmings.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

• sommerset@thelemmy.club ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Google slowly suffocated all the 3rd party rom vendors.

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• douglasg14b@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Essentially every browser that’s not Firefox or Safari is reskinned Google chrome for a reason. Because it’s insanely expensive to build and maintain browsers. Mobile operating systems aren’t much different in this regard.

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  • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    That’s not exactly true. There are several FOSS mobile OSes, such as PostmarketOS, Mobian, Ubuntu Touch, and the various Android ROMs. Once it’s compatible, keeping that OS updated is relatively simple.

    The issues with mobile OSes are:

    • many phones lock their bootloadersl, and every phone mfg seems to do things a little differently
    • so many different phone models with different hardware includes, none of which has manufacturer support in Linux
    • closed firmware for cell modems, which have their own little OS that needs to work with the main OS; trying to touch this runs into regulatory issues

    Basically, supporting a new phone has a lot of upfront work with very little ongoing work.

    Web browsers, on the other hand, need to stay updated with constantly shifting web standards, they’re a huge malware target so they need to keep up on CVEs, and pages are getting more complex causing performance and rendering issues, and everyone blames the browser. Supporting a new platform is generally trivial, but the ongoing work is immense.

    They’re very different beasts.

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    • Fiery@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Not to mention just about every “serious” app (gov’t, banking, etc) check safetynet before even turning on. (Hell I’ve had a gov’t app refuse to start because I had developer options enabled, on a completely ‘clean’ phone)

      So emulating them isn’t gonna work and websites do not always prioritize working on mobile anymore (“just install the app”)

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      • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        Yeah, YMMV certainly applies. But the good news is you can try it out on your current phone before committing.

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• veniasilente@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Where are all the open source phone OSes? Where are the OS agnostic capable hardware phones?

  In the “waiting for funding” room.

  If people don’t care enough to finance projects like Fairphone, etc… while they are still in the growing pains, then those projects will never be able to last during a digital consumer war, let alone provide a product that has enough mass appeal that it makes sense to build and commercialize on auto.

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  • dual_pyramid_reality@lemmings.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Modern tech markets are broken. We need a new type of economy.

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    • veniasilente@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨36⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

      Not a new one. The solution to capitalism was posted long ago. We just need to admit it.

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• cley_faye@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  They are in the same room with all the third-party support for them, ESPECIALLY from state-built applications that are increasingly being required to do administration stuff and mandatory banking apps that are required for online payment and even opening their websites these days.

  That room does not exist.

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