Custom ROMs have had just about enough of being Android's second-class citizens

Hell yes.

It's fucking open source, this is no different from games with intrusive anti-cheat refusing to run on Linux, except in this case it's not even a different OS.

It's monopolistic and anti-user.

yeah. like my manufacturers' 3-year-old, full-o-spyware ROM is more secure than latest clean installed lineage.

they just want control, not security. and with banking apps becoming a necessity, i'm starting to be forced to return to stock.

The world of mobile phones is a real world example of what we avoided on the PC back in the day when the IBM BIOS got reverse engineered, allowing for someone to put out an IBM compatible PC without having to pay the tithe to big blue first. Not that IBM didn't do their level best to put those efforts in the ground with their lawyers and the courts as soon as they found out about it. Thankfully the legal system of the time didn't allow that to happen.

It has been pretty depressing to me that the tech literate have been so easily lulled into accepting such things in the name of "cool toys" and "security" virtually everywhere in modern life besides the PC/laptop/server spaces.

Phones, TV set top boxes, smart TVs, IoT gear. They are all a cesspit of locked down propitiatory and gate kept gardens where nothing happens without the gardens keeper getting a cut and having final say over everything.

This sort of control and gatekeeping from the likes of Google, Apple, and Qualcomm was not something that was hard to see coming a mile away, yet we all collectively let it happen anyway.

Considering the lawsuits, now seems like a good time.

I really hope the GrapheneOS team succeed. Custom ROMs are reason I'm really into tech today. Coding, FOSS, Linux, etc. all that came from rooting my dad's HTC phone back in the day. Google shouldn't cannibalize its children.

Here's a harsh truth and a reality some tech users need to wake up to.

Google has never cared about open-source. They have never cared about user-choice/user freedom. They could easily tomorrow make Android closed-source and that would be the end of Android. It has always been about control. Apple got that authoritarian idea correct long ago by locking down the entire OS.

Google is allowing open-source modding only because there's a large community out there that cares and wants it to thrive. And since it runs on Linux, it would make Google look VERY bad if they removed bootloader unlocking, open source, removed features that causes issues for custom roms.

Google doesn't care you YOU. If they really cared, they wouldn't be slowly removing features or adding anti-user features that in the long run, don't benefit anyone but them.

I'm glad the government declared them a convicted monopoly. I'm still ashamed it took them this long to finally go through with it.

What an insane world we live in.

Here's my take which i have not seen in this thread. When you buy your hardware it is yours you should be allowed to do with it as you please. If you want to wipe the device and install another ROM or os you should be able to. Much like the recent fight for "right to repair" not allowing you to do what you want with your property should not be allowed. As long as the manufacturer blocks your ability to do what you want with your hardware it isn't really your hardware.

Wow, I legit just ordered a used pixel yesterday to give graphene a try lol. Uncanny timing!

Anyhow, that's great news! I can really see the EU sinking its teeth into this if nothing else.

I wish you could slap a custom rom on whatever phone you want and it Just Works™ like you can slap linux on any PC, but instead we get apps that potentially don't work, locked bootloaders, push notifications tied to Google Play Services, and whatever else. You can put Lineage on the EU version of my phone but not the US version because fuck you. I hate how corpo centric phones have become. Like Google shouldn't be allowed to hijack my entire screen for an ad or an app update. The entire modern definition of "sideloading" is BS, apps have access by default to things that they really don't need, and why do I need to use ADB to purge your pre-installed bloatware ffs

Not cool.

I've been tired of "modern" security doing nothing but annoy people. Recently, a Portuguese bank "innovated" by exclusively allowing login only on a mobile device. Yes, a clean web browser with 3FA is not "secure" enough, has to be done on a mobile device. Clearly, desktop PCs are too insecure to conduct transactions.

Therefore, because one does not trust their mobile device. One simply spun up a clean Pixel VM, shared my data with Google and just did their work there. Peak security.

Even without the custom ROMs, the whole Android ecosystem is a colossal fucking mess.

I've got old apps that won't work any more. It's not even compatible with itself.

People give Windows a load of shit, and deservedly so for some of it, but it's a million times more usable than Android when you want shit to "just work".

I hope some OEM (especially those opposed to google) picks up and develops mainline linux like Pine Phone. There are already several mobile UXs and distros with prebuilt images available as well, and it has been shown multiple times that Android apps can run fairly easily on linux. It would be a big risk, but I think it'd at least find a market success like the Steam Deck.

Android in its current state is the same as Chromebooks. A glorified walled garden of google's crappy choices & DRM which just so happens to run on the Linux kernel because it's free. People downvote me for this, but I maintain that even Dalvik and the android runtime itself is an inefficient relic of 10+ years ago when mobile devices had at most 2gb of ram and a tiny low power ARM processor.

It runs like complete crap sometimes on modern devices despite huge advancements in the underlying tech. It feels like a knockoff JVM which is already a known memory hog.

On top of that, it sticks with single kernel releases with proprietary OEM binaries so you have devices out here running on kernels as old as 3.x because no custom ROM will be able to recompile the device modules for a newer kernel.

It is almost hilarious to me that Moonshell, a multimedia homebrew software for the Nintendo DS (4mb of RAM), has more complete features, file compatibility, and better UI design than at least 95% of the music apps on Google Play. And it was written by literally one guy. I was honestly surprised at just how many music players lacked functionality as basic as supporting m3u playlists.

Recently moved to graphene couldn't be happier

I don't care about these apps but it will only get worse over time if not addressed. I could see things as simple as Spotify, Netflix, etc. Refusing to run

I don't use those services either but that's not a future I want

The only reason I stopped using grapheneOS was because Google contactless payment didn't work.
Loved everything else about graphene tho

I just want to buy a Linux laptop with VoLTE and be done with the product line "smart phone". Unfortunately there is no such device (to my knowledge) and the only device that comes close is PinePhone Pro with docking station.

More power to them

Why does this call the problem by it's name, monopoly.

Android is another area Google are abusing their monopoly. Sure the phone market is a duopoly, but that doesn't help. Apple is even more locked down and user abusing.

Lots of app companies, like bank apps, think locking their apps to only work on official Android is best for security, but that compounds the monopoly. It's also arguably less secure!

I'm running Graphene OS and its been solid. A few issues here and there with app compatibility but it is fantastic.

We’ve started the process of talking to regulators and they’re interested.

Oh that's great, they aren't actually suing since that would be a pretty big money pit, they are going straight to regulators, something can happen.

It's high time we break apart all those large tech companies!

Really the only thing holding me back from switching to GrapheneOS is that some of my apps fail CTS.

If a proper pathway is defined for custom ROMs I'd switch in a heartbeat.

Hoping this initiative leads to a reasonable outcome.

What gets me is the "this phone cant be trusted" message on boot. Implying OEM roms are trustworthy, but nothing i choose or create could possibly be.

Even just being rooted on the stock Pixel rom is a fight. It's a constant cat and mouse game to pass basic and device integrity, but as of recently a lot of us have been able to pass strong integrity as well which has been nice.

I have a still very capable for my needs "once flagship" stock Samsung phone that is now about 7 years old. I still have a good 2-5 years use with this thing based on hardware performance alone. Google and others have started to conspire to make "1000 cuts" with artificial app compatibility "issues" and the like that try to force my hand to upgrade HW. Most would buy a new phone, but this will inspire me to dig back into the custom Rom flashing of my youth, to get the next 2-5 years I'm deserved from this hardware.

Thank you to all the hardworking people that drive the ROM community to this day.

I really hope they fix this. When support for my old OnePlus 6 stopped, I was going to install a custom ROM until I realized bank apps, and most security-centered apps, wouldn't work. So I ran with an out-if-date, possibly vulnerable OS for a year until (probably) corrosion from liquid exposure finally did the phone in.

Really bad thing to incentivize.

the only reason I've wanted to be rooted in recent years is when I didn't have hotspot on my plan and the most complete way around that was with root.

I think I would like a degoogled Lineage/Graphene OS though

wonder what calyxos is doing.

I love running a custom ROM, but I'm concerned RCS is going to become a deal break for me :(

I love that text messaging will finally not be complete shit between iOS and Android, but RCS is such a shitty locked down protocol.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4To-F6W1NT0

Efforts like Graphene OS face increasing pressure from apps that refuse to run on non-standard Android.

I call those "apps not worth using"

Motorola ROM is fine