Technology

Yeah, I'm not buying any more Pixels. I got the Fairphone 6! It's good! I'm in the US, so I got it from Clove. Works fine on T-Mobile.

Although, I'm currently running Android... Probably have to install e/OS or something.

I hope Fairphone can continue to grow to eventually meet Graphene's hardware requirements.

10 does not have a sim card tray, the 9's do. First post with grapheneos on a new to me 9 I was able to get!

I think it’s hilarious that the site recommends filing antitrust actions with the US Dept of Justice.

That office is currently amongst the most corrupt, compromised and against doing anything good in the US Govt.

I have found it good

Yes.

They're kind of already is. It's the free and open source community.

The problem is phones are actually incredibly impressive pieces of hardware and the fact that we can Mass produce them has diluted that opinion. I'm actually to look into building my own phone and I wanted to have at least some near-flagship specs. I know how to design my own circuit boards and get someone to print them. But acquiring CPUs that perform at least 1/4 as well as Pixels or iPhones is objectively not possible, these companies have deals with manufacturers for exclusive products. And even if you could these chips are so precise you will never be able to figure out the signaling yourself.

Maybe things have gotten better now that we have ai and you don't need to be any sort of expert in anything you just need to be good enough at decision making problem solving and communicating to acquire the skills and knowledge to work on these chips. And by the time you've done all the work and acquired all the hardware you might have spent close to 3 to 5K on a device you could have just bought for $800. All for what, to circumvent privacy breaches that should be illegal in the first place?

And that's the root problem we're trying to solve. Another symptom of these companies being able to engage in the bad behavior that they do is that they gain the ability to overvalue themselves. There should be no safety or privacy concern when engaging in the purchase of any device for the same reason that people should not fear food poisoning every time they go to the grocery store.

That's what the regulators are for. This is a legal issue not a technical one.

But the only underlying cause for why we're not regulating tech companies is because fear of privacy violations is not reducing market activity. Apparently people are still going to use their phones even if their phones are listening to them having private conversations. Apparently people will still buy shit off of their phones even if their phones are going to use that data to show them ads.

Apparently the harm of your privacy being breached does not hurt enough to prevent you from doing good things.

Now if Android takes away my F-Droid, Tasker and Termux I'm gonna throw a fit. That's not privacy that's self-determination, I bought an Android because I can customize it to be as low friction for me as I need, if my phone starts giving me friction then we're going to have problems.

What we need is a good linux phone that is affordable, has hardware that isn't slow, and isn't over sold to an annual pre-order.

Sadly, if the first two are true, the third one becomes an issue.

What we need is a large company to see that is a sign of huge pent-up demand. Apparently, HP and Dell are both talking about switching to Linux as their default OS for desktops. Once all the desktop manufacturers find themselves in the business of selling hardware with Linux on it, either mobile manufacturers will copy, like Samsung, or the desktop folks decide to make their product smaller.

What everyone has wanted from the beginning was a desktop in their pocket. The amount of time that no one has produced that despite major demand, and the amount of development that has gone into building any other stack, just feels like willful suppression at this point.

Is there some government somewhere telling large-scale manufacturers that they can't build something as free and open as a desktop that isn't at least the size of a laptop? Because it actually takes less technology to make something that's open than something that is closed. And there is just as much appeal for the consumer to not restrict them.

Those who have the expertise should start contributing and working more on Linux for mobile. Postmarket has made great progress it just needs more manpower

Palm pixi was my favorite phone ever and I used it up until like 2019.

I hardly think an OEM would do this, no incentives. It needs to be crowdfunded by us. It's just China is the only manufacturing hub, and we all know, china is not too keen on freedom, and letting go of control. One can hope.

is there a way to ACTUALLY disable them? I've attempted to change every option I can find (pixel 7 pro) and it just downloads them anyway. I'd love to try graphene but I am a fucking moron and I will 100% end up bricking my phone if I attempt to install it.

The new Jolla phone can't come soon enough. I truly believe the future of tech independence lies with linux, for us, europeans. Anyone welcome ofc.

I do hope it'll be a good enough device, even if there will be no NFC phone payments possible.

Hoping that phones running e/OS wouldn't count as certified android devices anymore. Especially if they don't have Google Play Services on them.

"Starting in September 2026, Android will require all apps to be registered by verified developers in order to be installed on certified Android devices"

EDIT: Found this from last August:

https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/26/android_developer_verification_sideloading/

The restrictions will apply to certified Android devices, meaning Google-approved and including the core Google apps and services. Most Android devices fall into this category, though niche options exist, such as mobiles running /e/OS, a de-Googled version of Android, or the open source LineageOS. The downside of using non-Google Android from a consumer perspective is that some apps might not install, such as those that use the Play Integrity API to verify that the app is "installed by Google Play, running on a genuine Android device."

Google has their own store, that's how they verify.