- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
Google’s Gemini team is apparently sending out emails about an upcoming change to how Gemini interacts with apps on Android devices. The email informs users that, come July 7, 2025, Gemini will be able to “help you use Phone, Messages, WhatsApp, and Utilities on your phone, whether your Gemini Apps Activity is on or off.” Naturally, this has raised some privacy concerns among those who’ve received the email and those using the AI assistant on their Android devices.
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Laughs in eu
Laughs in degoogled android
Well I guess I’m glad I moved over to apple. But I guess the enshitification of all our phones is coming soon.
Yeah only reason Apple hasn’t done it is because they haven’t figured out a way to connect it all to its ecosystem.
Like they say, the Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
At least so far Samsung is letting me disable Gemini, as I try to do to any bloatware I don’t want running in the background.
I have a Pixel phone im bout to throw in the river
I can’t bring myself to use a Pixel because I don’t trust Google-everything. I have so much to say, and yet I’ve said it a thousand times already. So I’m just gonna sigh.
And yes, I know I’m on Android either way.
Second that, graphene os is really nice. I have all my intrusive work apps like team, google play stuff on a separate profile and my maim profile has all the private data and contacts. Just watch a yt for setup and follow website instructions, take maybe a few hours to set up.
Why not throw graphene or another alternative on it (if supported) instead of turning it into e-waste?
Isn’t graphene left for dead because of Google being a bunch of dildos?
There are ways they can work around it, but their lead developer was drafted into their country’s military. Ultimately, they’re going to have to make their own phone, and it looks like they’re making plans to do that.
For now, it’s fine.
IMO, when Google lost most public support, it really started going downhill because the people who wanted to profit the business as much as possible became more determinant than those that were still trying to throttle the company due to ethical considerations. When a company gets criticized for everything it does, its decline increases significantly. Add to that it exists under the US government and how that has completely fallen to corruption.
When a company gets criticized for everything it does, its decline increases significantly.
Gives me hope for the future of MS then! Maybe they will decline themselves out of dominance.
Maybe this gives me a false sense of security but I bought the adguard pro on social stack (I think…). I just turn all of the connections off on gemini, meta and Bixby. Like this
Why do you keep Gemini installed? Does it even work offline?
Android users won’t have a choice after a while.
I didn’t want Google Now. Uninstalled it, and it’s back and updated. Been fighting for years.
I assume it’s better to leave it and have it not work, then them sneak it on without me knowing or baking it into something else
If this happens, can we please all make a protest or petition with the FCC?
I swear all of this was predicted to happen by open source advocates of the 80s and they’d be called alarmists/whatever and then 30 years later you had Snowden leaks and all the surveillance bills and now Microsoft, Google, and Apple are all advertisement companies mining data through the software and devices they sell
The best people can do is just keep using and advocating for Linux adoption. Try out degoogled Android or a more traditional Linux phone device. Need more users and funding to get the software kinks worked out. They’re not as good as the high end Android and Apple stuff, but it’s a process
I’ve been struggling with figuring out how to get google off my phone. I don’t know if I’m doing a bad job of searching or if I’m just dumb, but are there any good communities in Lemmy you can recommend on the topic?
Just searched degoogle in Lemmy
https://lemmy.world/c/[email protected]
There are levels to it. The advanced level is using a custom Android ROM for your phone that has no Google play services/apps on it and that’ll depend on what’s available for your phone from community ROM makers. You can see if any of these support your phone or plan any future phone of yours around these
https://itsfoss.com/android-distributions-roms/
An easier first step is just starting with non-Google apps. You can start with replacing Google apps like replace Maps with Organic Maps or something similar. Replace Gmail with something like Proton Mail. Same with calendar and cloud storage. Proton has alternatives. They even have an okay Google docs feature. Use a different search engine like duckduckgo rather than Google.
F-droid as an app store. Instead of Google authenticator use Aegis. Instead of Chrome use Firefox or a fork of it.
It’s difficult so a process over time of lessening dependency on Google applications
But what about banking apps and surch?
I’d imagine you can do everything on the website, which can likely be made into an ‘app’ on Firefox via the “Add to Home screen” option.
That is an issue that I imagine only being solved with a larger user base that banks don’t feel like they can ignore anymore
As the other guy mentioned, the website. All these apps are usually web wrappers anyways or some sort of cross platform software dev framework that does web/mobile so the website is usually pretty much the same as the apps
Do you have any good material to degoogle Android??
Just saw there’s a sort of large Lemmy degoogle community
https://lemmy.world/c/[email protected]
Personally I think it’s a good start to just replace Google applications. Organic Maps over Google Maps. Proton Mail/Drive/VPN/Calendar over Google stuff. Firefox and forks over Chrome. Duckduckgo over Google search. After that you can maybe find an old old Google Pixel phone and then start flashing ROMs off XDA forums as practice before you try a newer more expensive phone
Ok!!! Thanks. I’ve done all that, so I Think I’m degoogling. It’s Hard to avoid Android in my country, you risk to be out of communication Networks
I don’t have Gemini loaded to my phone and I have Google assistant voice command disabled
But a few days ago I was having a conversation with my son next to me on the couch with my phone sitting on the arm of the couch.
When I asked him a question, gemini answered with a prompt on the screen I have never seen before and haven’t since.
It still creeps me out
I looked up what the prompt for gemini is supposed to lol like and this looked nothing like that. It looked more like a popup dialogue box from a browser but the only browser I use is opera and it is set as default
Yeah a couple of weeks ago Google secretly activated Gemini on every Pixel user’s phone. I ran into the same problem, my phone suddenly activated and Gemini popped up interrupting a song that I was playing while I was away from my phone. Ended up screwing up the song and having it repeat over and over and over.
Iirc internal browsers for apps default to a system browser not to your chosen one
I’ve been Android and Windows user for pretty much all of my life. Vehemently anti Apple because of the company and I’ve thought the products are trash. I’ve been 100% Linux for over a year and a half, and if this Gemini stuff comes through, I will not have an android phone either. I have a Pixel and my old still functional Pixel. I need to try installing grapheneOS or something else and trial it to see if it will work for me.
If Linux isn’t an option for me in the future for whatever reason, I will be purchasing a Mac. I will never have a Windows machine for the rest of my life if I have any say in the matter, work being the obvious and uncontrollable exception. The fact that I’m even entertaining the idea of owning an iPhone or a Mac is really telling about how far Android and Windows and enshitified.
I’ve been using GrapheneOS for a couple months after having tested it on an older phone for a while. I’m really loving the level of control I have over what I give apps access to. If you have a spare Pixel to test on I definitely recommend it! I’ve been getting away from all Google stuff and finding free open source and self-hosted alternatives. I’m running in the opposite direction of all the AI and data-farming.
Same, I’ve always been android and windows and heavily anti-apple
It’s like people have completely forgotten what Apple was like before the iPhone
I don’t know if I’ve ever really been pro-Microsoft, they had just been what gave me the freedom to get the job done. I even had a Windows CE phone back in the day, because it worked.
When Microsoft started monetizing every little thing and became outright hostile with its users is when I made the switch to Linux, the learning curve was steep but it didn’t take very long to get a handle on it
Early on I think I made the mistake of trying to hurry to get a windows experience out of Linux when I should have started where I started with Microsoft, at the command prompt
I used DOS for a long time before Windows 3.1 was even on the scene. Thinking back, even when I was using Windows at first, I was always finding myself bringing up a command prompt to do things.
Linux brings back some of that nostalgia, but it is so incredibly more capable and customizable than windows
The user experience of GrapheneOS is basically the same as vanilla Android, except that you have more control (you can uninstall google apps, for example), but at the cost of a small minority of apps (banking ones, for example) not working (out of the box, sometimes at all). My banking app works, and a quick google search will tell you if yours does too. If your old pixel is not too old (4 is no longer supported, 8 definitely is, not sure abt in between), you should give it a go. I think you’ll see it’s not as big of a step as you maybe currently imagine.
Web search would be a better term since a lot of people use other search engines than Google.
My old one is a 6, so I think it should be supported. I really just need to bite the bullet and do it.
I’ve been GrapheneOS on my pixel7pro since march and I have no complaints. Everything works, and I have control over what apps have access too. The only thing I will say is that if you need the camera to take gr3at photos, its not nearly so good with grapheneOS. I pretty much always have a mirroless camera with me anyway so it dosent bother me. I just use the phone camera for quick snap shots
If you want you can install Pixel Camera (official Google camera) from Aurora Store, and deny it Network permissions and any other permissions you want. It still works pretty well for point and shoot but I can’t speak for every single feature. Also you can install simulated services that the Gcam requires to function, without having to run Play Services.
Good to know! Thanks!
Hey, what camera do you use? My phone is showing its age and I was thinking of getting a secondhand pixel, but I’ve also been looking at cameras to stand in for the phone camera.
I was thinking I should go for beginner friendly and small.
I use a Sony A6400. Its pretty nice, fairly small. Pick up a used body off eBay, and a Sigma 18-55mm lens and you are pretty set. Oh and get photo processing softwear for your computer. I use Darktable on Linux.
If you want to know anything about photography feel free to hit me up. I’m a huge photography nerd lol
Gemini can be disabled. Uninstall/disable the Gemini app if your phone has it then go to Settings > Apps > Default apps > digital assistant > Google > none.
I do have it disabled, but this article suggests that it will ignore that and it will be integrated in apps that I really really don’t want it in. I could stomach it if it was search and other functionality like that only, or even if it 100% ran local with no ability to phone home and train on my data, but it doesn’t. Not that it can be listening to calls, reading messages, etc, I’m definitely hard out.
Re-read the article. All this feature does is give you the ability to say ‘set a timer for 10 minutes’ or ‘start a phone call to John’.
If you have ‘Gemini apps activity’ off then they won’t use anything you say to train their models.
There is a clarification from Google in he article that I don’t believe was there when I first posted. It still by default allows Gemini to have access to things I don’t want it to access, which is anything. It can be blocked through the Gemini apps activity, but I don’t think that was clear in the OG text.
None the less, they claim that it will be completely offline and that no information will be used to train their models. I believe that’s probably true in the short term, but I don’t trust them as far as I can throw them, and I’ve got fucked up shoulders. I’ve little doubt that they will change policy in 6 months to a year so that some data is sent anonymously.
I just want it so if I say don’t allow this thing at all, ever, that stays true and they don’t make me later opt out of that thing.
I think the article is misunderstanding what is happening (though to be clear I think the email is at fault for that). Google is making it so that app developers can integrate Gemini better by allowing Gemini to interact with those apps. There is a menu inside Gemini where you can switch these interactions on and off (Inside Gemini, click your profile in the upper right corner and press apps in the menu).
I’m assuming from the email that this will be enabled by default which is a choice they’ve made and which absolutely could be argued as invasive. That being said you’d actively have to use Gemini and have it be active on your phone in order for it to interact with those apps.
Assuming Google records whatever you do on your phone whenever you do those things, which many privacy minded people of course legitimately worry about and feel uncomfortable with to various degrees, this is not really anything but another way for your assistant to do more things. If they want to read your stuff that’s not really dependent on a switch in the Gemini app.
So if you have Gemini entirely disabled I don’t think this is relevant. Only if you actively seek to use it and do not want it to be able to integrate with external applications will these settings be relevant to you.
I’ve seen an article that describes opting out of the app integration as well (even though that by default it’ll be on. There should be a class action against Google doing that! That said, I can’t see Europe taking this as it is.)
…for now
Apple isn’t gonna have your back on this either you minds well run to foss forever if this is gonna be your Hill to die on
minds well
/c/boneappletea
People say this so commonly where I’m from. I was never aware that this is not the correct way to say it.
People say it everywhere, but it’s “might as well”.
For sure, as long as that’s a viable option for me, I’ll do it, but if I don’t have that option…
If you don’t then I’d probably still rock android just for the increase in options it gives me
Not liking Apple for ethical reasons is one thing, but thinking they don’t make good products surprises me. I think the current generation of MacBooks are some of the best computers ever sold.
MacBooks are some of the best computers ever sold.
Yeah, but that’s just one generation out of many. For me MacBooks have terrible keyboards (personal preference, I know, but I hate them), had very common issues with battery, terrible reparability and stupid features like the Touch Bar (which they finally removed proving right everyone who said it’s dumb). So yeah, new MacBooks have great performance but overall the line was not that great IMHO. Very nice design, good quality, not great usability.
I should rephrase. They don’t make cheap bad products. I think iOS, Mac OS, and their walled garden approach makes their hardware a bad product. Compound that with being exorbitantly expensive for what you get, and that’s always been too much to overcome for me to support. Now they are/have becoming the less bad option.
Yeah for sure. Every Apple device I’ve had has been well built. Every interaction I’ve had with Apple Incorporated as a company has been a dystopian nightmare, and with the walled garden it’s not possible to separate the product from the company. Therefore, it’s a bad product.
I was never a “Mac” person. But I took the leap to escape windows with the Mac studio ultra. I use video and photo edit tools a lot. Used my existing peripheral devices. Expensive but the most silent and powerful machine I’ve ever owned. Software is my only complaint at times but I’ll live with it. I’ll definitely continue down M series for my main device.
In context of the larger thread, I need to figure out how to get graphene on my current phone. I nerfed the AI crap Samsung was forcing on me. But who knows if I got everything. I’ll assume I didn’t. Fdroid or graphene… That’s my summer project.
deleted by creator
Last year’s tech for next year’s prices.
That used to be true but no longer. For anything but gaming Apple’s M series chips are amazing.
I’m a 30+ year Windows and Linux user and developer that preferred machines I could build myself. A few years ago switched jobs and was given an M1 Pro for work… it’s incredible how good, fast and low power the M series are. I’ve used my laptop 8 hours straight without plugging it in. That’s simply not doable with any other machine.
I still dislike their walled garden, and for high end gaming Apple’s a no-go, but for most things it’s hard to argue with how good they are. The machines may come at a premium, but they are high quality, work great and for battery use they don’t have a rival.
For anything but high end gaming, my kids 8 year old Chromebook is awesome and can still run for hours without a battery charge. And it cost $250 new 8 years ago.
Tbf, I’m not in the market for a new device though. I’m happy you enjoy yours.
?! Have you seen a M4 chip in action? Low energy, high performance. Silent computers, long battery life. Good value on a simple benchmark basis. Not credibly last year tech.
Pre-ARM Macs, sure, but that was five years ago.
Lots of other hardware issues to complain about, however.
Graphene OS is very nice and switching was really easy. Their instrucrions are great. Furthermore, I had a tablet I had an old device I switched to test before I did anything to my phone. I recently needed to switch it back, and the process was similarly just as easy.
It’s good to know that it’s easily reversible of necessary
Saying “You’re not alone” is supposed to be a wholesome thing to show someone that you care. Instead, it’s AI companies squeezing as much data out of customers and injecting as much AI into everything they can.
Society really took a wrong turn didn’t it?
No, Google is using their influence and our reliance to steer society. Please don’t forget how passive language enables the worst abusers.
You’re right, I’m an abuse enabler because I made an observation about companies being shitty. Very well said.
They didn’t say you were an enabler. They said that those words are enabling. Just think about the way you phrase things so as to not hide (intentionally or otherwise) guilt.
Surely overreacting to my correct observation that did not reflect on you directly will make you seem more reasonable.
Society really took a wrong turn didn’t it?
Society has been circling the drain since the invention of agriculture…
In the absence of being able to switch to Graphene (Don’t own a pixel), I’ve done everything I can to replace Google Apps with FOSS alternatives, and disabled Google Assistant on my device entirely.
I know none of that will stop a determined Google eventually fucking with me, but at least I’m trying.
I’m so damned tired of the modern corporate world.
I know that they might not be as secure as GrapheneOS, but you should totally give LineageOS or /e/OS a try, as they’re both not limited to Pixels. I haven’t tested them myself however, since I am a Graphene user. The most I ever tried with one of them was testing ROMs by installing LineageOS on my old Moto G7 play.
I usually move to Lineage once my two year warranty is up, just in case.
I know that by law hardware manufacturers can’t deny hardware warranty based on your software (at least where I’m from…I worked in for one of the big three telco’s up here in Canada)
But I’d rather not have that argument with the manufacturer, so I wait for it to run out. If my phone has a rom available I run that until the hardware dies and then I upgrade.
Yet we keep empowering them with every purchase we make and half of the consumer base will never see an issue doing so. Some purchases we have no choice but to make, and that’s where they really have control of our lives. They seized the means of production, distribution and access of things necessary for life and leverage access to those necessities for access to more parts of our private lives. The majority appear to be naive morons who will happily sell all of us down the river for more camera filters and some pretty shoes. Basically, toys. We are losing our rights, our privacy, and control of our lives in exchange for toys…
Consumer activism, by itself, has rarely, if ever, accomplished anything.
The best recent examble was Tesla, but that wasn’t a mere non-buying action. Tesla action involved vandalism and a massive word of mouth campaign.
Basically if we want to fight for a future we believe in, we must stop playing patty cakes and fight like it’s a life and death struggle.
Symbolic resistance is not enough.
Don’t get me wrong, I still avoid buying Nestle products, and have for years, but I know this is not the way to real change.
I want us to stop suggesting consumer activism as a valid pathway to change.
Consumer activism kills businesses and products regularly. We call it ‘trends’.
But manufacturing a boycott for long enough to work is almost certainly going to fail. But like you say, it has a role to play, just not by itself. It must be an action used with precision as part of a larger strategy. We have plenty of tools, but nobody puts them together. It’s always an isolated boycott that flairs up and inevitably fades away. The company just waits it out. We also can’t boycott necessities, and that’s where they really get us. Consumer activism doesn’t work all in those cases.
Did you find a Google Drive alternative? I’m strongly considering Peergos, but still kinda shopping around.
Nextcloud sucks in many ways, but it is functional and works for me.
I use it, too. Never had any problems with it.
It has always worked fine for me. The occasional upgrade process is manual but literally just a command.
I just use Syncthing. No cloud, just keeps any folders I choose on any devices synced with one another. Never had a problem, and while the files yes accessible on the internet technically, they’re not stored anywhere except the devices that have access to them. Works like a charm.
Dear tech bros,
We, the people, don’t want to use your AI shit. Please stop shoving it down our throats. Thank you.
Sincerely,
-The people
Hahahahhshahahahhahahahhahahahahahahahaha.
Sincerely,
Tech bros.
The problem is there’s a fair amount of tech CEOs that insist this is the future and everyone needs to hop on which between the hype train, the amount of software peeps out of a job because of layoffs and the amount of snake oils salesmen out of a job because this eats google’s lunch this bubble is just ballooning. You have a lot of people hitching on this bandwagon hoping to sell shovels to the next gold rush.
And for awhile everything is just gonna get shittier.
Is it really the people or just a subset of people that use Lemmy, the vast majority of people seemingly don’t care as is evidenced by the sheer number of people using things like social media.
What might be important to use in this echo chamber isn’t reflective of society on the whole.
It’s mainly tech savy people who don’t use it. Tons of people in companies use this shit. The number of people who use “ai” to take auto notes in meetings is insane. It’s a massive security risk but they do it anyways thinking it won’t be stored.
I’ve been trying to tell people for 15 years. It hasn’t worked a single bit. It’s frustrating that people think they have nothing to hide when their carelessness and lack of tech knowledge is ruining the future of the next generations. I just can’t try to explain it to everyone. They don’t link the relation at all. I thought maybe eventually, they would just get it, but here we still are…
It’s mostly lemmy. In real life people go from amused to indifferent. I have never met anyone as hostile as the lemmy consensus seems to be. If a feature is useful people will use it, be it AI or not AI. Some AI features are gimmicks and they largely get ignored, unless very intrusive (in which case the intrusivity, not the AI, is the problem).
If a feature is useful people will use it, be it AI or not AI.
People will also use it if it’s not useful, if it’s the default.
A friend of mine did a search the other day to find the hour of something, and google’s AI lied to her. Top of the page, just completely wrong.
Luckily I said, “That doesn’t sound right” and checked the official site, where we found the truth.
Google is definitely forcing this out, even when it’s inferior to other products. Hell, it’s inferior to their own, existing product.
But people will keep using AI, because it’s there, and it’s right most of the time.
Google sucks. They should be broken up, and their leadership barred from working in tech. We could have had a better future. Instead we have this hallucinatory hellhole.
They need a tech ethics board, and people need a license to operate or work in decision-making capacities. Also, anyone above the person’s head making an unethical decision loses their license, too. License should be cheap to prevent monopoly, but you have to have one to handle data. Don’t have a license. Don’t have a company. Plant shitty surveillance without separate, noticeable, succinctly presented agreements that are clear and understandable, with warnings about currently misunderstood uses, then you lose license. First offense.
Edit: Also mandatory audits with preformulated and separate, and succint notifications are applied. “This company sells your info to the government and police forces. Any private information, even sexual in nature, can be used against you. Your information will be used by several companies to build your complete psychological profile to sell you things you wouldn’t normally purchase and predict crimes you might commit.”
How are you evaluating inferior? I like the AI search. It’s my opinion. You have yours.
Well, in this example, the information provided by the AI was simply wrong. If it had done the traditional search method of pointing to the organization’s website where they had the hours listed, it would have worked fine.
This idea that “we’re all entitled to our opinion” is nonsense. That’s for when you’re a child and the topic is what flavor Jelly Bean you like. It’s not for like policy or things that matter. You can’t just “it’s my opinion” your way through “this algorithm is O(n^2) but I like it better than O(n) so I’m going to use it for my big website”. Or more on topic, you can’t use it for “these results are wrong but I like them better”
Traditional search often is also wrong, showing some 3rd party website or a link farm.
With AI search I get a summary AND the result list, so I have more info to make a decision.
Well, yes, Google has been becoming shittier for years as they prioritize ads and fail to deal with SEO slop. You have to know what’s a good source, but that was true even when we were doing research in libraries.
The AI summary is making the problem worse. The information it provides is not trustworthy. It also deprives site owners from traffic. It’s really bad on like every metric.
I imagine even the fk_ai crowd appreciate the non-gimmick stuff as long as it is nothing like a chatbot
Tiny example from Gmail:
This is all over, and it can be super useful from time to time.
They say “f AI!” but I mean sure they don’t want better searches than were possible five years ago? If it’s not sycophantic and confabulatory etc. etc.
Good point on intrusivity
PS
PS: I translated news from Iran this week using AI tools and using traditional translators. Who would advocate for the garbage traditional translation—soon as I went the “AI” route, it was suddenly possible to understand what the journalists were trying to say. That doesn’t mean I want translators to lose their jobs, it just means I know what the best available technology is and how to use it to get a job done. (And does not mean just because it translates well that I will also trust it to summarize the article for me.)
It’s one of the reasons I use Lemmy a little less these days as it’s evident to me that it’s an echo chamber for a tiny subset of humanity and at times it just feels like a circle jerk where real change isn’t an option.
The majority of people eat at McDonalds. It doesn’t make it a good idea on your finances or health. Sheep gonna baa.
If you for some reason think that megacorporations and big tech aren’t monetizing the literal majority to the fullest extent of every single law they can break while getting away with it, you need to wake the fuck up. Big time. I don’t know if this is some psyop from leddit or what but my doors stay closed, my android plays tablet mode with no sim. Thanks tho.
Nauseating.
Very. I get sick just smelling it.
Obligatory Lemmy is social media response
Yes, with the key difference being that it’s anonymous. Publicly viewable but the users can be as anonymous as they like.
it’s mostly just talk. people will hate it and use it at the same time
yes but what if a company has the ability to create billions of close friends who can recommend sponsored products to you? why would it care about whether you want that or not?
also bard was a way better name for google’s LLM. it has its origins in an isaac asimov story about a robot who is programmed to tell random stories.
But the AI people that the tech bros can now create outnumber real people by ♾️:1. The opinions of real people have ceased to matter even the tiny amount that they once did. So open wide and try not to gag.
You don’t want to use it.
The companies keep preloading it on new tech, updating old tech so its there, preventing the option from disabling it from even being there, and disabling tech that can’t use it.
This. Shit. Can. Fuck. All. The. Way. Off!
“oh didn we make it not just an automatic update, but you can’t even opt out? Oops! Hee hee don’t worry, you’ll love it in no time. Which is why we’re forcing it on you. You’re welcome.”
Gemini depends on the Google app, disable it, and it dies.
Have you noticed how the Google app, the one that supposedly just does search and list news articles, has like 400 MB? Over time it accumulated 2GB cache… how?
I recently tried using the Google Translate image translator. Totally locked up now, requiring Play Store and Google App. Still didn’t work, but is was seriously just “if you don’t give us everything now, we won’t do basic shit for you.”
Use Yandex or in use google images in the browser.
Linux has become good enough to replace desktop operating systems.
Now, we are back at square one. I’ll be the first to inaccurately declare, “This will be the year of the Linux phone.”
All I need is a good enough emulation of android apps to fool them (eg for banking).
Sailfish OS has it.
Unfortunately the project has some closed source bits which, imho, aren’t an issue when you look closer (some parts of the UI). Maybe I’m naive but I trust this EU company.
I use it as my daily driver. It certainly is frugal compared to recent Android versions, but fully functional.
It’s an actual Linux OS (as opposed to any Android version). Things work the same way they do on my laptop & server.
I used Maemo on my N900 <3.
I don’t wanna use Sailfish bcs of the phone support tho, I’m shallow af & I need my hardware :(.
(I also have a few other Sailfish issues, the source code/availability/package, the licencing - but I feel like all of those could/would change with some growth.)I understand. But I think it’s right that they concentrate on a few devices. There’s also something about SONY openly providing firmware and encouraging unlocking, something “Open Devices” iirc.
Ah, the N900…
Yes, I agree.
But Sony has drivers out there for a few more devices.
Sadly, SailfishOS is region locked. Being from North America, I can’t purchase their phones, or use the trial/emulation option, which really sucks because I like a lot of what I’m seeing there.
There are a few happy US users on the forums. Maybe check out what they have to say.
I’m sure the company is perfectly happy with having these users. AFAIR the reason they don’t sell licenses outside EU is that it would add hassle, mostly sales legalities.
I didn’t know you cannot buy the C2 in the USA, but I would recommend an Xperia X10 II or X10 III anyhow.
Us here in NA finally get to see what its like on the other side of the region locking coin haha.
Yeah, I’d be happy if they had an unsupported version, but I get that could cause negative publicity for those who couldn’t accept that unsupported means exactly that.
Fwiw I use a phone imported from the UK (Nothing Phone 1) in NA without problems so who knows why they won’t do this.
Do you by chance know if WeChat and Facebook messenger work on it?
Those apps are critical for my work.
Check the forums.
FWIW, Signal works perfectly, WA too.
Unfortunately banking apps are only going to get harder to run on software uncertified by Google.
Just monopoly things.
Can you get by with web access? That’s what I do and it’s fine.
Depends who you bank with. Some desktop websites suck on mobile and some don’t even allow certain actions on desktop. For some ungodly reason Wealthsimple requires me to do almost everything via app. It’s one of the reasons I barely utilise their services.
Not for depositing checks
Yup. I use my bank’s website on my phone. Works plenty fine for me.
“Hello there.” - Play Integrity API
android is linux and its great. the problem is the google crud on top of it, and their iron fist ruling it. windows is similar tbh.
we have to fight google not compete with android. the problem is not technology itself, its the oligarchs controlling it.
Android is Linux… sure.
But it’s not what anyone means when they say they want a Linux phone.
i know that.
my point is that it doesnt really matter while the oligarchs control the mainstream OS.
Its a vexingly pedantic point.
Android… is a Linux phone…?
Not really.
Looking at postmarketOS for my phone too, so sick of this shit
PostmarketOS is cool, but as an actual phone replacement it is tough, at least last time I tried.
I haven’t tried, but I took a closer look at their wiki yesterday:
- the Main (official) devices are QEMU, i.e. virtual
- the list of Community devices is long, but whenever I clicked on something there were significant caveats
IMHO they should focus their efforts on getting at least one actual phone working fully.
I want this project to succeed, but until then I use Sailfish OS, btw.
I’m looking at a Volla phone https://volla.online/en/
But I also have no experience of Linux in general yet so I have no idea if this is a good move.
I just really want to get away from android/apple/windows on all of my devices.
I want SteamOS for desktop, because quite frankly gaming is all I really use a desktop for anymore.
Didn’t know volla. Looks cool but expensive.
I don’t think steamos on desktop is a good idea, IIRC it targets specific hardware.
Maybe look into Bazzite if you get impatient waiting for SteamOS to become more widely available.
I’m going to second a recommendation for Bazzite. If you’ve used normal Linux before, it takes some getting used to the quirks of an atomic distro, but I’ve been using it for a month or two and love it!
Volla also has a (reliable, judging from reports) community version of SFOS
Behold, the Linux phone:
That looks far too polished with locked in specs for them to not have any prototype. I’d trust companies that have actually made a product that has a janky Linux implementation that’s improving, than one that doesn’t exist yet relying on crowdfunding.
This is my fourth comment shilling SFOS here, but it just might be what you’re looking for. It is my daily driver.
Wish it was supported in more countries.
That’s pretty cool, I’m working now, but I’m checking out its Android app compatibility.
If it can run my work stuff, I’ll be so happy.
The forum has a thread specifically about banking apps.
Isn’t Android using a Linux kernel already?
Yes, but everything above it (including drivers) is custom-made and tightly controlled by Google.
Yeah, but the kernel is a low-level module that handles hardware, memory, and processes—it’s not what users interact with directly, so sharing the same kernel doesn’t make it all that similar as you’d think.
What makes Linux feel like ‘Linux’ to users is the stuff on top: the userland—bash, coreutils, package managers, X11/Wayland, etc. Android replaces almost all of that, so even though it uses the Linux kernel, it doesn’t feel like Linux.
Yes. IIRC it’s based on latest LTS kernel with Google patches. So it’s been “year of the Linux phone” for a while now.
It’s unfortunate that the slop they put on top of it is such a privacy nightmare. PostmarketOS is trying to change that and supports Plasma, Gnome, etc. But it’s early days yet and still rough around the edges from what I’ve been reading.
I use Linux since debian 3.0 and I don’t think Linux is ready to replace desktop os yet. The universe has come up with bigger and more powerful idiots.
Linux had reached idiot parity with windows at least. Idiot proof OS is a fable that cannot be reached.
Maybe in “appliances” like the steam deck. There are still driver and software support issues. There’s a big “familiarity” gap. There’s a lack of pre-installed systems. We are not at parity yet.
You think there aren’t driver and software support issues in windows 11?
Not what I said.
What you said only makes sense if you believe that to be true.
Nope.
Dammit don’t make me switch to apple phones, I hate apple. I hate Google too but FFS all you need to do is stay out of my way and the one thing you continuously do is stand in my way…
GTFO of my way! Piss off with that AI crap that nobody asked for
Apple is pushing AI even for their Mac lineup. Apple is a US company and had to be forced to allow Sideloading in select regions. Jumping to another US company seems like a lateral move.
Moving to dumb phones or custom ROMs is the best alternative available.
An ungoogled android variant has to be a lot lesser of an evil, no?
Problem is that if you have a critical application (like banking) that relies on Google services you’re SOL.
It’s Apple or Google at that point.
Just use the websites instead of the apps.
But then you can’t tap to pay with your phone.
Well then I guess you will have to sell your soul to the devil for those extra seconds of convenience
“Do you guys not have laptops?”
GrapheneOS can sandbox apps to use the Google services only with permitted apps.
Note I don’t actually have a GrapheneOS capable phone at the moment, but I’ve been getting familiar with it in hopes of switching soon, so I’m just relaying what I’ve read.
You guys are really making me consider GrapheneOS.
Its what made me buy a pixel phone.
The apple who recently put AI as the core element of their os?
You dont have to switch phones entirely, and you’re better off if you dont. iCrap is still far worse than anything Google is coming out with.
Just switch to a different dialer/phone app to replace “Phone” and a different SMS/MMS app to replace 'Messages". I’ve used “Should I Answer” in the past for my default phone app, and I currently use QKSMS for texting.
