Both of those are soft forks of Android, meaning they still exist at the whim of Google.
The only real alternatives are Sailfish (proprietary userland, relies on Halium for its devices to run, which means the devices have a limited lifespan as they rely on a specific version of the Linux kernel that will eventually stop being supported), UBPorts, Droidian, etc. (also relies on Halium, but the userland is open sourcs), and mainline Linux distros like PostmarketOS (has one device that is fully functional, but is extremely slow, but device support is slowly improving over time).
All of those alternatives also support an Android compatibility layer, presuming you don’t rely on device attestation DRM like Play Integrity.
If I can’t have hardware that supports open source Android forks, then it means that I won’t buy it. I can work around with dumbphones, MiFi routers with tethered Linux or BSD portables. I will not use a proprietary system outside of work, full stop.
Sure, but I’m not interested in that ecosystem at all. My desktop and my tablet don’t run proprietary software. My phone runs a few apps which rely on sandboxed Play, but honestly, I don’t need them badly so I could stop tomorrow.
Use whatever nonproprietary open/libre systems that are out there. Right now, for mobile smartdevices that’s Lineage OS and Graphene OS.
If you want GOS, that’s currently limited to Pixels. I’m not giving a shit about proprietary vendors, it’s a freedom thing.
If I can buy open hardware, I will.
What issues does iOS give you? I was a first-gen Android adopter and loved it, had the Dream (first Android phone that came out) right away, then had another Android phone after.
When phones went away from physical keyboards, I tried my partner’s iPhone and typing on a screen was much better then on Android phones at the time, so I picked one up. Lasted five years, and during that time, I dropped all Google products and services.
I haven’t run into any issues myself, and I find I can keep them for a long time without having to upgrade. I don’t tinker on my phone, though—I work on my full computers and other stuff, but I just want my phone to do internet things quickly, take sick pictures of cats, play music, and shitpost.
It’s hard to explain, it’s more an emotional thing than a logical thing. Death by a thousand cuts kind of thing.
I don’t like Apple choking out in-app purchases like they tried to make it even on Safari if you use Amazon website they wanted 30% cut…
I don’t barely use any of the lock-in ecosystem like iCloud, I don’t trust “automatic backups”, I don’t understand or see the mechanism of.
I wish I could actually access the file system when plugging into my PC.
It doesn’t support Linux at all.
I can’t download my movies I purchased onto my devices for backup.
As an intermediate photographer, the camera really pisses me off.
They updated the default keyboard years ago so swipe to type is awful now and I had to install GBoard.
I don’t really trust Google either.
I wish I could install Firefox and add-ons but Firefox is just Safari with a trenchcoat.
I can’t sync things to my iPhone properly.
Apps don’t really work properly in the background, they keep going to sleep. Even just switching between 2 apps to copy paste by the time I come back it’s killed the first app to save memory or something. I have plenty of memory.
Web apps suuuuuck and keep logging me out and losing state.
I hate notifications and being “always online” and social media. It makes my head hurt and it’s so hard to curate your notifications. Like I want discord to tell me about messages but not about Nitro promotions at 9pm.
I’m probably forgetting things too, but really it’s just a combination of factors. I feel like I’m paying a lot for things I don’t want or use. Honestly give me a phone with no apps apart from phone and messages, and just great Firefox web app support, and I’d probably be happy. My phone is an iPhone 13 so it’s getting a bit old, but I’m not sure yet what I actually want… Just thinking about it for now. Thinking about maybe something wildly different.
A lot of those are extremely understandable. A lot of them are ubiquitous to all phones, however. Many of them are unique to you, which is precisely what I was curious about—thank you for taking the time to share! I don’t run into many of the same issues, but I’ll try to give my insight on them, whether you care or not ehehehe
That’s totally way fair, but no cut is taken if you buy stuff through a browser. It’s ridiculous that if you support someone through the Patreon app, they take a cut. I don’t like that. But there is no cut through web browser, and better fuckin not ever be.
I’ve been using iPhones since the… 5? And I have NEVER used iCloud for anything. I wouldn’t use Google’s online backup either, though. I don’t trust any of them, but I’d trust Apple more. Yet… still hell no. I use iTunes on my computer to make incremental encrypted backups, which it does very well. But I don’t want any of my sensitive stuff online anywhere. It stays on my own hard drives and servers.
I also wish we could do that. I really would like to be able to use it as a standard device by plugging it into any of my computers.
Fair, but I don’t want Linux on my iPhone personally. I want Linux on my Linux machines. Linux on any phone sucks ass right now. I’m psyched for it to be better, but for the stuff I personally want a phone to do, it would be a nightmare.
I don’t know how to answer that one other than we have a separate set of morales, I haven’t purchased a movie since I got my first DVD player. Burners came out shortly after that and all of my movies and shows have been DRM free since.
The camera takes some getting used to, but I’ve found it superior to any other phone camera. For photos, it’s kind of a wash between end Android and iPhones. For video, iPhones are leagues better. I don’t do video much, so that doesn’t super matter to me tho.
i love the keyboard, but I haven’t used a google touchscreen keyboard since like 2009 or so. I’m sure they’ve improved since then hahaha. If I turn on Apple’s AI bullshit the keyboard and autocorrect become garbage, but with it disabled, it feels the same as it did to me when I used my first iPhone and I really like it. I do have to set all of the shortcuts to add special words I use to its dictionary every time I get a new phone. Maybe that changed? I’m not sure, but that’s a bit annoying… but only because I use words dumbly.
I quit all google and Facebook products and services a decade ago so I gotta agree. Never used a Twitter or a TikTok.
everything WebKit under the hood, I’m against. I’d love actual Firefox or forks. I am happy that there are now extensions like ublock origin, but full ass support for Firefox would be excellent.
I’m not sure what kinds of things you sync, but I’ve had issues with this as well, with music. I have my music tagged very specifically because I’m various types of neuroatypical it’s good to have them like that and feels right. Songs are sorted fucking WACK if I don’t sync them a certain way, and that changed with one specific update—they used to work properly without me having to sync them a weird certain way. Nonmusic files work fine for me, though.
That’s my one gripe with my last phone. I had an XS MAXXX and it started closing like everything in the background. To be fair, I had the phone for five years. That’s pretty insane for a phone that overall works great without modifications; I had to CFW my HTC Dream after like a year.
I’ve only used a Lemmy web app and it never did that, but once Voyager was released, I stopped using any web apps so I can’t give any opinion on that—it would be very annoying to be logged out often!
This is the only one I’m gonna hard refute—that’s not an apple thing. That’s every phone. I get zero notifications unless it’s important. Everything allows you to set it as you want. Google is way worse for this. The only notifications I get are E-mails (with many folders set not to notify), all texts, all calls, and very specific apps.
It kinda sounds like you just hate smartphones which is TOTALLY fair—my good friend is looking to get a flip phone right now lawl. I can understand for a lot of fools including that friend, as they got caught up in the whole “dopamine app” shit like TikTok and Twitter and insta and whatever shit wants all of your time and attention and eww. I never touched that stuff; my phone has always been a little computer I use away from my big computer, and I only use it for texting, chatrooms, E-mail, media playing when needed, and taking photographs and videos.
For tinkering and playing around and doing deep stuff, I go to my heaps of computers hahaha. Not saying this is anyone else’s experience, but it is why I dig iOS. Well, that and it’s my only choice for a high end phone as I haven’t touched Google for a decade or more and never will.
Appreciate you taking the time to voice your feelings about this tho, lotta valid points.
Thanks for the detailed reply :). Yeah I agree with you on most of it. A dumb phone actually sounds kind of appealing… Especially since it doubles as a fidget toy. Opening and closing it used to be like my favourite stim. I’ll seriously consider that.
On the Linux thing, I meant more that ITunes doesn’t work on my Linux PC, so it’s extremely hard to do anything between my phone and PC since I don’t use Windows at all anymore. And I really don’t want to dual boot it just for that and have it fuck up my grub file and ext4 drives. I tried having multiple file types on one drive once… Never again…
The camera is really high quality but really annoying. Like I can’t edit exposure or focus or anything properly. Either it takes a great photo, or it takes a garbage photo, and I kind of just have to accept whatever the phone app decides lol. There’s alternative apps but they work really weirdly due to API restrictions.
I’m starting to think my ideal setup is multiple separate devices that does one thing well. Like: dumb phone, dslr camera, kindle (for reading books), desktop for games, laptop for life admin, etc. Decentralise my digital life lol
Oh god also I know upvotes don’t mean anything here but did you post your comment and un-upvote yourself? If I un-upvote you, you go to +0 which is not usual? Idk what even is the world anymore
Yeah, I like things starting at 0 so I remove my own up-vote. I used to do it on Reddit too until they removed the ability to do that, which unironically was one of the straws on the camel’s back for leaving there 😂
Dude the Linux iTunes incompatibility is INSANE. I still have windows as a dual boot on most of my machines (AND HAVE HAD THE SAME LOVELY EXPERIENCE OF WINDOWS FUCKING UP EVERYTHING AFTER ONE BAD BOOT, THANK YOU WINDOWS (extra thank you to my genius Linux friend who fixed my issue by having me boot from my ventoy live partition and type like three lines into terminal, I would have taken DAYS if not for them I love them)
ANYWAY, insane that we can’t plug an iPhone into Linux and back up just as easily as on windows or mac. There’s absolutely no excuse for that anymore.
I’m also VERY with you on fidget toy—got a flip phone after my first brick, then Densha Otoko convinced me to get a slider phone… spinning it hard enough would cause it to expand or contact, and the slide motion was SO satisfying. Then I got a Dream when they were released and that crazy semi-circle slide motion was delicious. I had a couple other phones before I switched over to an iPhone, all having slide mechanisms. I’m… really into slide mechanisms. If I gotta get a brick style phone again that’s all screen, I just want it to be stupid easy for basic stuff, which is why I’m on the iPhone’s dick unnecessarily much for whatever reason. My dream is a Linux phone with a slide out keyboard that can do all the things I use my phone for, including payment at local stores. I know that’s completely impossible right now, but a bish can hope I guess
But I gotta give it to ifone for just feelin right to me. It is would that you still can’t plug it into an ix-based system and explore files like…. A regular device? Like it’s supposed to? That’s kinda the most egregious to me. I think I said before that I didn’t have any issues, and that’s wrong. But I kinda minimize them cuz it doesn’t really come up much for me—I keep my phone as little computer of its own, and ship shit to Big Computer when it’s important or whatever.
Why am I writing this much? Am I defending faceless corporation? Or am I just writing stream-of-conscousness shit because I’m no longer sober? Probably the latter, ‘cuz I switched to a keyboard halfway through this shitpost comment and now spellcheck both works and doesn’t work. Anyway, I’mana go lay down. You’ve got some excellent points, I still love this fone, and there are big improvements that feel way simpler to implement than it’s taken what, a decade and a half to implement?
bottom text (I had to delete the capital b in the word “bottom” like eight times before I figured out I had to type multiple “b”s and delete the capital (capitol? No, that’s not right) letter B and keep the small one or it wouldn’t let me type fully-lower-case-stylized-“bottom text” without capitalizing the “B”)
Yeah no worries for the stream of consciousness, I do the same thing lol. I’m probably on the other extreme and complaining too much about things that don’t really matter. I tend to be a very yin / negative person though lol
Such as iOS?
Lineage OS and Graphene OS.
Both of those are soft forks of Android, meaning they still exist at the whim of Google.
The only real alternatives are Sailfish (proprietary userland, relies on Halium for its devices to run, which means the devices have a limited lifespan as they rely on a specific version of the Linux kernel that will eventually stop being supported), UBPorts, Droidian, etc. (also relies on Halium, but the userland is open sourcs), and mainline Linux distros like PostmarketOS (has one device that is fully functional, but is extremely slow, but device support is slowly improving over time).
All of those alternatives also support an Android compatibility layer, presuming you don’t rely on device attestation DRM like Play Integrity.
If I can’t have hardware that supports open source Android forks, then it means that I won’t buy it. I can work around with dumbphones, MiFi routers with tethered Linux or BSD portables. I will not use a proprietary system outside of work, full stop.
If i remember correctly, GNU is working on a Librephone, the progress is slow tho
If you can. The problem there is Play Integrity API, which is used as an anti-competition measure.
Revolut was the only app I had issues with on Graphene OS. I obviously closed Revolut account and continue using Graphene.
I use Revolut with no issue on GrapheneOS. Maybe things changed.
Interesting, looks like they fixed it last year: https://github.com/PrivSec-dev/banking-apps-compat-report/issues/90
For sure thanks to people like me who complained and closed their account :)
Sure, but I’m not interested in that ecosystem at all. My desktop and my tablet don’t run proprietary software. My phone runs a few apps which rely on sandboxed Play, but honestly, I don’t need them badly so I could stop tomorrow.
Yeah don’t use android. Use android. And android but only for google’s phones. That’ll learn 'em.
Google makes a good, open, affordable phone with 7 years of support. They suck but their phone is not the problem here.
Use whatever nonproprietary open/libre systems that are out there. Right now, for mobile smartdevices that’s Lineage OS and Graphene OS. If you want GOS, that’s currently limited to Pixels. I’m not giving a shit about proprietary vendors, it’s a freedom thing. If I can buy open hardware, I will.
I think my next phone will be Graphene. I’m sick of iOS bullshit
What issues does iOS give you? I was a first-gen Android adopter and loved it, had the Dream (first Android phone that came out) right away, then had another Android phone after.
When phones went away from physical keyboards, I tried my partner’s iPhone and typing on a screen was much better then on Android phones at the time, so I picked one up. Lasted five years, and during that time, I dropped all Google products and services.
I haven’t run into any issues myself, and I find I can keep them for a long time without having to upgrade. I don’t tinker on my phone, though—I work on my full computers and other stuff, but I just want my phone to do internet things quickly, take sick pictures of cats, play music, and shitpost.
It’s hard to explain, it’s more an emotional thing than a logical thing. Death by a thousand cuts kind of thing.
I’m probably forgetting things too, but really it’s just a combination of factors. I feel like I’m paying a lot for things I don’t want or use. Honestly give me a phone with no apps apart from phone and messages, and just great Firefox web app support, and I’d probably be happy. My phone is an iPhone 13 so it’s getting a bit old, but I’m not sure yet what I actually want… Just thinking about it for now. Thinking about maybe something wildly different.
A lot of those are extremely understandable. A lot of them are ubiquitous to all phones, however. Many of them are unique to you, which is precisely what I was curious about—thank you for taking the time to share! I don’t run into many of the same issues, but I’ll try to give my insight on them, whether you care or not ehehehe
I’m various types of neuroatypicalit’s good to have them like that and feels right. Songs are sorted fucking WACK if I don’t sync them a certain way, and that changed with one specific update—they used to work properly without me having to sync them a weird certain way. Nonmusic files work fine for me, though.It kinda sounds like you just hate smartphones which is TOTALLY fair—my good friend is looking to get a flip phone right now lawl. I can understand for a lot of fools including that friend, as they got caught up in the whole “dopamine app” shit like TikTok and Twitter and insta and whatever shit wants all of your time and attention and eww. I never touched that stuff; my phone has always been a little computer I use away from my big computer, and I only use it for texting, chatrooms, E-mail, media playing when needed, and taking photographs and videos.
For tinkering and playing around and doing deep stuff, I go to my heaps of computers hahaha. Not saying this is anyone else’s experience, but it is why I dig iOS. Well, that and it’s my only choice for a high end phone as I haven’t touched Google for a decade or more and never will.
Appreciate you taking the time to voice your feelings about this tho, lotta valid points.
Thanks for the detailed reply
:). Yeah I agree with you on most of it. A dumb phone actually sounds kind of appealing… Especially since it doubles as a fidget toy. Opening and closing it used to be like my favourite stim. I’ll seriously consider that.On the Linux thing, I meant more that ITunes doesn’t work on my Linux PC, so it’s extremely hard to do anything between my phone and PC since I don’t use Windows at all anymore. And I really don’t want to dual boot it just for that and have it fuck up my grub file and ext4 drives. I tried having multiple file types on one drive once… Never again…
The camera is really high quality but really annoying. Like I can’t edit exposure or focus or anything properly. Either it takes a great photo, or it takes a garbage photo, and I kind of just have to accept whatever the phone app decides lol. There’s alternative apps but they work really weirdly due to API restrictions.
I’m starting to think my ideal setup is multiple separate devices that does one thing well. Like: dumb phone, dslr camera, kindle (for reading books), desktop for games, laptop for life admin, etc. Decentralise my digital life lol
Oh god also I know upvotes don’t mean anything here but did you post your comment and un-upvote yourself? If I un-upvote you, you go to +0 which is not usual? Idk what even is the world anymore
Yeah, I like things starting at 0 so I remove my own up-vote. I used to do it on Reddit too until they removed the ability to do that, which unironically was one of the straws on the camel’s back for leaving there 😂
Dude the Linux iTunes incompatibility is INSANE. I still have windows as a dual boot on most of my machines (AND HAVE HAD THE SAME LOVELY EXPERIENCE OF WINDOWS FUCKING UP EVERYTHING AFTER ONE BAD BOOT, THANK YOU WINDOWS (extra thank you to my genius Linux friend who fixed my issue by having me boot from my ventoy live partition and type like three lines into terminal, I would have taken DAYS if not for them I love them)
ANYWAY, insane that we can’t plug an iPhone into Linux and back up just as easily as on windows or mac. There’s absolutely no excuse for that anymore.
I’m also VERY with you on fidget toy—got a flip phone after my first brick, then Densha Otoko convinced me to get a slider phone… spinning it hard enough would cause it to expand or contact, and the slide motion was SO satisfying. Then I got a Dream when they were released and that crazy semi-circle slide motion was delicious. I had a couple other phones before I switched over to an iPhone, all having slide mechanisms. I’m… really into slide mechanisms. If I gotta get a brick style phone again that’s all screen, I just want it to be stupid easy for basic stuff, which is why I’m on the iPhone’s dick unnecessarily much for whatever reason. My dream is a Linux phone with a slide out keyboard that can do all the things I use my phone for, including payment at local stores. I know that’s completely impossible right now, but a bish can hope I guess
But I gotta give it to ifone for just feelin right to me. It is would that you still can’t plug it into an ix-based system and explore files like…. A regular device? Like it’s supposed to? That’s kinda the most egregious to me. I think I said before that I didn’t have any issues, and that’s wrong. But I kinda minimize them cuz it doesn’t really come up much for me—I keep my phone as little computer of its own, and ship shit to Big Computer when it’s important or whatever.
Why am I writing this much? Am I defending faceless corporation? Or am I just writing stream-of-conscousness shit because I’m no longer sober? Probably the latter, ‘cuz I switched to a keyboard halfway through this shitpost comment and now spellcheck both works and doesn’t work. Anyway, I’mana go lay down. You’ve got some excellent points, I still love this fone, and there are big improvements that feel way simpler to implement than it’s taken what, a decade and a half to implement?
bottom text (I had to delete the capital b in the word “bottom” like eight times before I figured out I had to type multiple “b”s and delete the capital (capitol? No, that’s not right) letter B and keep the small one or it wouldn’t let me type fully-lower-case-stylized-“bottom text” without capitalizing the “B”)
Yeah no worries for the stream of consciousness, I do the same thing lol. I’m probably on the other extreme and complaining too much about things that don’t really matter. I tend to be a very yin / negative person though lol