Submitted 1 day ago by commander@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
Before anyone gets too excited, it is just big Chinese brands looking for de-googled Android. They are still going to use Android.
several prominent Chinese smartphone manufacturers, including Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, and OnePlus, are exploring the possibility of developing versions of the Android operating system that do not rely on Google Mobile Services.
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.
de-Googled android sounds even better.
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, …
When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called “the People’s Stick.”
—Mikhail Bakunin
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:
It is currently unknown whether these companies would aim for compatibility with existing Android apps or follow the path of Huawei’s latest HarmonyOS NEXT, which removes Android app support entirely
So, it’s not clear yet.
The US/China decoupling is happening everywhere.
I live in Asia. I’m European and meet a lot of Chinese tourists. Trying to find a common ground with digital services we both use is impractical to the point where we often can’t connect online.
The front line is everywhere, there be no shelter here.
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.
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.
So like how Huawei was hyping up their new mobile OS which was really just AOSP?
HarmonyOS is not AOSP anymore. It does not run Android apps anymore.
This was a transitional stage, HarmonyOS Next is running a fully different kernel and runtime
So that title is just a straight up lie. They want to use a de-googled Android.
To be honest I was hoping for an alternative OS, competition is always good. But a de-googled Android could possibly be good, but being Chinese I assume instead of Google telemetry you’ll just be replacing it with CCP telemetry.
I mean judging by the current American government id much rather my data is going to the CCP then the American Government via Google as a proxy.
Indded but as an Australian, if I have to have an anal probe i’d rather it from the CCP as they wont share it with my Government.
Honestly, I think a person in either nation should consider using the opposing nation’s stuff. Harder for the US to backdoor Chinese encryption, or for Chinese to backdoor into an American phone. Play the bastards off each other.
Odds are, that the Trump Regime will use American apps and phones to identify and track targets for ICE traffickers. China probably does the same to Uighurs. The less attack surfaces they have, the better for their respective peoples.
Except that there are credible reports of the CCP running police operations on foreign soil.
That sounds funny, but In that reality, the government with all its power will find a way in (they probably already have programs (as in departments) for finding their way into other countries tech).
Better to just install a proper de-googled android build (grapheneos, etc) and only use wifi (if data/phone num not needed) for the best odds.
In a couple of years (with more r&d, development and investment) I bet this will change to being use a linux phone.
Apple building backdoors for CCP and sharing any and all data with them: am I a joke to you?
US telemetry == CCP telemetry, I can’t see how CCP will be more damaging to regular person.
I think it’s just that they were saying his won’t end up benefitting us. It’s just changing who is holding the binoculars.
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.
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.
We need phones with standard Linux. Without strange “Java only mediator” or something. Just a normal OS.
Android is a pain in the ass.
And please no bloatware!! Oh wait, before anything else : NO, and I really mean NO AI and/or VR shit. Just none. None A T A L L
So you exclusively want ai. Got it.
-Microsoft, probably
So AOSP
Dude, you get free third party bullshit with every update. What’s not to love?
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, 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.
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.
I was given an old Chromebook tablet by a friend that wanted to get rid of it, and it just happened to have mainline Linux support. I was able to get postmarketOS running on it, and got gnome shell mobile as the DE. It works, and works well. The apps that support the touch interface and are made to be responsive, etc work really well, and the waydroid integegration works fantastically well. I was able to get android version of jellyfin working, with vlc, and a few other apps I use daily. All this in 4GB of ram, I’m really impressed!
Its time for a Linux phone, I put in an order for the 2nd batch of this phone, hopefully they start shipping soon!
What’s that link got to do with PostmarketOS? It does not look like FuriOS is a version of it?
Furiphone flx1 looks promising
They have been promising a good Linux phone for forever. Is this one any good? Will support last?
GNU/Linux is about 100x more painful than Android…
How so?
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.
Samsung Dex already does this with Android.
Convergence! I think Ubuntu tried to go that way for a while.
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.
If you can implement an equivalent to Apple’s Secure Enclave on a device running that, I’ll be interested. I haven’t seen even a device running Android doing that yet though.
Yeah, Meego was really nice.
I worked with it. Just Linux. Rpm was at that moment.
Let me know when there’s a phone with Linux that has a security implementation that matches Apple’s Secure Enclave.
No idea what that is.
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
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.
If it’s not proper linux I don’t care
It makes sense for Chinese smartphone OEMs to move away from the Google version of Android. In the medium to long term you are setting up yourself for failure if you are reliant on an American company.
Unfortunately, the United States cannot be trusted.
It’s not like China can be trusted either. This is a matter of not relying on your adversary.
Please, do not post clickbait
You probably should’ve led with three fact that this is Chinese phones, not like Samsung and shit.
Samsung has it own OS on some phones.
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).
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:
Ironically, pixels are best for de-googling (stock android that can be easily un- and re-locked)
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.
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.
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.
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.
Google meet Zune!
Make it so
To what? Linux? I’ll believe it when I see it.
Yeah bullshit. What mobile is are they moving towards? Oh, Android OS? Yeah makes sense since there isn’t any competition
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
You mean the brands that literally do this already? Pretty bad article
One can only hope
Harmony Os will probably end up taking over realistically just due to everything going on in the world.
als@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 hours ago
PostmarketOS for everyone!