Comment

Would Androids be “useless” without google apps? I really don’t think so. Sure, less convenient, but GrapheneOS exists and is doing stellar. We have also known for a while this stuff is heavily subsidized by carriers. Thats why you have locked versions of phones and the like.

It is scummy. But this isn’t even close to the worst of what Google does. We can also take Android for ourselves and already have (GrapheneOS, as mentioned). I love Android, but I am unsure how beneficial these big tech giants are becoming.

source

Sort:hotnew top

lemmyvore@feddit.nl ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
There are a couple if services that would be complicated to replace. Notifications is one, the app store is the other. Is complicated because it’s not just about having a replacement, it’s about having a replacement with a very large capacity and secured, curated etc. None of the fully open projects has to deal with an audience of hundreds of millions.

source
- shortwavesurfer@monero.town ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  UnifiedPush allows you to choose the server to connect to (so you could run your own). The problem is that few apps support it. I only know of Element and tusky. The app store can be replaced by Aurora Store and F-droid
  
  source
Ottomateeverything@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

Would Androids be “useless” without google apps?

Fire tablets already proved this. They don’t use Google apps, they have their own app store and their own push. And they sold tons of them. All of this can be done and Android isn’t “useless” without it. It’s just harder.

I love Android, but I am unsure how beneficial these big tech giants are becoming.

The problem becomes that you kind of don’t have a choice. Sure someone else can stand up their own OS/push/store, but unfortunately their monopoly of sorts ends up useful in these cases because it means literally everyone develops against it. You can get your own store working, but it’s only as popular as the number of developers who choose to support it. If you fragment the stores, you make them less useful, so by nature they kinda need to be a monopoly.

I just wish it ended up differently such that the behemoth store was owned by someone different than the manufacturer themselves.

source
- maynarkh@feddit.nl ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  If you fragment the stores, you make them less useful, so by nature they kinda need to be a monopoly.
  
  They don’t. It’s platforms vs protocols again. Having an open protocol would fix this, think APT PPAs as a model. You could have a store frontend where you can control which sources you accept applications from.
  
  source
Crozekiel@kbin.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
My biggest hurdle is honestly that GrapheneOS only supports Pixel phones... I had one once and hated it and honestly don't know how much of that was because of google's android or the phone itself and am reluctant to buy a new pixel phone to try GrapheneOS and find out I still hate the hardware. I've had a much better "out of the box" experience with Samsung phones (and love that my current one has an sd card slot and headphone jack - but I know that's pretty much non-existent on new phones) but am finding they are so locked down and closed off by Samsung you can't really put anything else on it and have it work properly as far as I can tell.

It's time for a new phone, and I'm honestly not sure what to do... The easy route seems like getting a pixel and putting GrapheneOS on it before doing anything else, but I just don't super trust that the hardware isn't going to drive me nuts...

source