• apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Before anyone gets too excited, the headline is clickbait. The bigger Chinese phone brands are looking into 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.

    Chinese laptop makers are also in search of an OS that isn’t Windows. Queue a race to prop Linux with Android support on that side of things.

    • agitated_judge@sh.itjust.works
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      7 months ago

      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.

    • troed@fedia.io
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      7 months ago

      Waydroid is pretty nice, integrating the Android apps as regular apps in the Linux UI.

    • pycorax@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      So like how Huawei was hyping up their new mobile OS which was really just skinned AOSP?

      • atthecoast@feddit.nl
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        7 months ago

        This was a transitional stage, HarmonyOS Next is running a fully different kernel and runtime

        • pycorax@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          Well there’s that, but I was talking more about how they were selling it when hey first announced it. My point is that with stuff like this, the companies have lied before. I’ll believe it when I see it.

  • haych@feddit.uk
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    7 months ago

    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.

    • SabinStargem@lemmy.today
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      7 months ago

      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.

      • dogs0n@sh.itjust.works
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        7 months ago

        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.

      • piyuv@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        Apple building backdoors for CCP and sharing any and all data with them: am I a joke to you?

    • Hanrahan@slrpnk.net
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      7 months ago

      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.

    • itisileclerk@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      US telemetry == CCP telemetry, I can’t see how CCP will be more damaging to regular person.

      • TheFriar@lemm.ee
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        7 months ago

        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.

        • taladar@sh.itjust.works
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          7 months ago

          Because, at least for now, the US has the greater power to fuck up our lives with the information gathered.

    • WarlordSdocy@lemm.ee
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      7 months ago

      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.

          • vga@sopuli.xyz
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            7 months ago

            I don’t know to what extent they smuggle data out of the devices, but afaik a de-googlified phone such as Pixel + GrapheneOS gets you close.

    • redlemace@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Exact! 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

    • tal@lemmy.today
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      7 months ago

      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, GNU/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.

    • cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de
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      7 months ago

      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.

        • philpo@feddit.org
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          7 months ago

          Was about to say that - while it’s sadly proprietary and most FOSS Apps are not well supported, it is a nice showcase. But I don’t think it’s actually used much by people.

          Which is kind of sad.

    • A_norny_mousse@feddit.org
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      7 months ago

      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.

    • ilinamorato@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      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.

      • hazypenguin@feddit.nl
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        7 months ago

        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.

        • ilinamorato@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          Samsung actually added Knox to their Android implementation a few months before iOS added Secure Enclave. I think Qualcomm had some sort of trusted execution environment around that time, too, if I recall correctly. And Google added Trusty to the AOSP two years ago. So it’s already running on Android, and has been for ages.

          But I’m not convinced a TEE would be necessary for a device that doesn’t run any third-party native code. Browser tab sandboxing is already pretty robust; I haven’t heard of an escalation exploit being found in ages on any major JavaScript engine, meaning that the risk of data exfiltration or bootloader compromise are extremely remote, and would be much quicker (and less risky!) to patch via browser updates than firmware/OS updates.

          The only other reason I know of that you’d need a TEE is for DRM, and I’d be willing to wager most people who would want a FirefoxOS phone would actively prefer not to have that on their device.

    • jonne
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      7 months ago

      Yeah, Meego was really nice.

    • hazypenguin@feddit.nl
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      7 months ago

      Let me know when there’s a phone with Linux that has a security implementation that matches Apple’s Secure Enclave.

    • wetbeardhairs@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      7 months ago

      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.

      • TheDarksteel94@sopuli.xyz
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        7 months ago

        “State actors” already have the ability to spy on anyone they want. It’s a whole industry

      • ABetterTomorrow@lemm.ee
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        7 months ago

        Uhh maybe more likely 15 years ago and also goes for everyone else. Actually, what are you even saying?

  • flop_leash_973@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    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.

  • Libra00@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    You probably should’ve led with the fact that this is Chinese phones, not like Samsung and shit.

  • vga@sopuli.xyz
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    7 months ago

    USA is being horrible at the moment, but China has a LOT of convincing to do before I’ll let them deliberately have my data.

    Best way remains to raise as high a digital moat against everyone. If you need a smartphone, get a Pixel, install Graphene on it and as few apps as possible.

    • YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today
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      7 months ago

      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.

      • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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        7 months ago

        Pretty soon they’re going to pencil in a meeting about possibly arranging a committee to discuss preliminary plans to do a feasibility study.

  • Alphane Moon@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    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.

    • cauthon117@lemmy.zip
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      7 months ago

      German brand Volla has phones with Ubuntu Touch. Even allows dual boot with their own degoogled Android OS. Might be worth checking out.

  • kepix@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    arent there mods on the sub to delete clickbait crap like this?

  • Korhaka@sopuli.xyz
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    7 months ago

    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.

    • dogs0n@sh.itjust.works
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      7 months ago

      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). You said you don’t care about updates because you can keep it from connecting to the internet, but it’s a plus anyways.

      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:

      https://grapheneos.org/

      p.s. you can check their website for how long different pixels will have continued support before (if) you get one (incase anyone else is reading this).

    • oo1@lemmings.world
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      7 months ago

      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 service after a few years.

      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.

      • lemmyingly@lemm.ee
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        7 months ago

        The only issue with projects like LineageOS is that the camera usually sucks because the full fat camera driver isn’t released to the public, it’s only the basic driver. The camera can still take photos but all of the features you’ve become accustomed to are not there. This was my experience and what the LineageOS team said during the Samsung S5-S8 days.

        • Tehdastehdas@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          I have /e/OS 2.9 (based on LineageOS) on a Sony 1 V. The default camera app was crap so I installed Sony Photography Pro (the one that came with the original Android) and it works just fine.

    • LH0ezVT@sh.itjust.works
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      7 months ago

      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.

      • xeekei@lemm.ee
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        7 months ago

        I just got my Pixel 9a and put GrapheneOS on it. The only thing that seems to not work right now is KDE Connect, but I’m unsure if it might be me doing something wrong rather than being impossible.

      • Korhaka@sopuli.xyz
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        7 months ago

        Yeah guess I don’t really care for most of it. Can get anything I want as an apk or mostly just on fdroid. VLC and an SSH client would be nice.

    • emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works
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      7 months ago

      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.

      • Korhaka@sopuli.xyz
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        7 months ago

        What do you mean, like a humans name? Pretty sure it doesn’t. I can get one with cash and top it up with cash. Until pretty recently this is what I did. Pricing changes mean I now pay £4/month instead which would be tied to my card.