This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Right now the only decently speced phone with mainline Linux support is the Oneplus 6, and the only one I can find is being sold for $2000
There's the FairPhone 6, running e/OS, Which is a deGoogled port of android, running microG
https://murena.com/america/shop/smartphones/brand-new/murena-fairphone-6/
If f-droid doesn't expect to survive I think the whole stack /e/OS relies on might eventually collapse (microg, lineage, ...).
I dunno how viable it is, but linux phones with waydroid is a thing
Also, I'd imagine that a small pocket of custom ROM amd root folks will still exist
Come hell or high water, i will retain control of my phone
Damn, I was hoping my Oneplus 6T was worth a couple grand. Nope. Someone has one on Swappa unlocked and in mint condition for $180. A Oneplus 6 is listed on Ebay for $130.
This is why I didn't bother switching to GOS, Lineage, Calyx etc despite being sick of Apple's anti-foss monopoly — marketed as Privacy™️ and Security™️ — for years.
The late stage capitalism of western oligarchies indicated that Google's rug pull of AOSP was an imminent inevitability. After already having to change my services and workflows multiple times over the last 2 decades — despite careful analysis and forethought — due to services ever changing value propositions, acquisitions, and all other forms of enshittification, I'm at the point where I won't bother wasting energy on 99% of digital products unless they're open source and I can run them indefinitely on my own Linux server.
The more dependent you grow on digital products, the more interdependent they become, and the more time and effort is required to replace or substitute them.
Contact your representative. And here's F-droid's article about it (including how to find your representative at the end of the article): https://f-droid.org/en/2025/09/29/google-developer-registration-decree.html
My job doesn't allow me to use a jailbroken/rooted device
So if/when this goes through I'll be switching to iOS.
Given the choice between two closed platforms, I'll pick the one that ostensibly says they're privacy focused instead of the one actively enshittifying their product.
You should just get a cheap phone to use for work. No reason to have their software on your own device. That will undoubtedly be used for creepy purposes.
How does google plan to enforce this? Will they disable side-loading for any app that isn't registered with google?
