The pen is the only reason I have stuck with Samsung. If they made a Pixel with a smart pen that I could put GrapheneOS on I'd buy it in a second.

Maybe you should curb your enthusiasm a bit. have you seen what it take to unlock the bootloader from most manufacturers? you might even need your grandma's birth certificate before you're allowed to do so in the future

I am aware, but what choices do we have? I for one stopped using banking apps in my Android phone, not a big deal, we didn't have banking apps there pre 2007 right?

I know not everyone can do it, but we can fight back in our own ways.

And voting with your wallet should be an obvious statement at this point.

The problem comes when it's not an app you're using for the app's sake, but because it's the app of some company you have a real-world relationship with. Your bank's app being the most important one that comes to my mind, considering I've already heard about some banks trying to restrict users to only Google's flavour of Android before this.

This is an ad

Aaaaand now I'm carrying around a laptop again, at least mini pcs are tiny now, maybe a small handheld would do...

if any of this shit hinders me, I'll get a dumb phone and the cheapest iphone available for manditory work-based things and say so-long to being a mobile OS user.

That doesnt appear to be true, the restriction seems to be on apps being installed from file managers, web browsers, messaging, etc.

F-droid and the like are not part of that list.

This still isn't good, but it doesnt stop you from having F-droid manage your messaging apps it would seem.

Edit: If you're down voting because you think its using the same method as a file manager as the user that replied to me, this is incorrect. This is also an issue going back several versions.

F-Droid uses a session installer method for 3rd party app stores, it does not use the same method as a file manager.

For an article about a similar issue brought up by similar restrictions in previous updates, you can refer to this article:

Android 15 cracks down on sideloaded apps even harder to protect users

Android 15 places new restrictions on what permissions sideloaded apps can be easily granted. Here's what you need to know.

Android Authority (www.androidauthority.com)

You can also refer to this thread in the F-Droid forums which covers this as well, from 2 1/2 years ago:

Sideloading restrictions or removal in future, how it effects fdroid?

recently there is rumour or fact about sideloading apps in android 14. google is making mandatory of minimum api or os version for all apps on google play store [ gps ] and perhaps it will give toast message [ warnin…

F-Droid Forum (forum.f-droid.org)

Which also includes a merged discussion from the last time this came up 9 months ago.

F-Droid has been using the session installer method for quite some time.

That doesnt appear to be true, the restriction seems to be on apps being installed from file managers, web browsers, messaging, etc.

F-droid and the like are not part of that list.

This still isn't good, but it doesnt stop you from having F-droid manage your messaging apps it would seem.

Edit: If you're down voting because you think its using the same method as a file manager as the user that replied to me, this is incorrect. This is also an issue going back several versions.

F-Droid uses a session installer method for 3rd party app stores, it does not use the same method as a file manager.

For an article about a similar issue brought up by similar restrictions in previous updates, you can refer to this article:

Android 15 cracks down on sideloaded apps even harder to protect users

Android 15 places new restrictions on what permissions sideloaded apps can be easily granted. Here's what you need to know.

Android Authority (www.androidauthority.com)

You can also refer to this thread in the F-Droid forums which covers this as well, from 2 1/2 years ago:

Sideloading restrictions or removal in future, how it effects fdroid?

recently there is rumour or fact about sideloading apps in android 14. google is making mandatory of minimum api or os version for all apps on google play store [ gps ] and perhaps it will give toast message [ warnin…

F-Droid Forum (forum.f-droid.org)

Which also includes a merged discussion from the last time this came up 9 months ago.

F-Droid has been using the session installer method for quite some time.

How did you install aurora store?

I'm curious because ive seen no issues with F-Droid (just had a few updates actually), and the F-Droid team have commented on this sort of approach before, including the method being used for installation.

I don't use aurora, so I'm not overly familiar.

But how do you install F-Droid after, say, a factory reset because you had to troubleshoot something?

Apk from their gitlab page

Maybe you should curb your enthusiasm a bit. have you seen what it take to unlock the bootloader from most manufacturers? you might even need your grandma's birth certificate before you're allowed to do so in the future

agree completely. But I recently broke my phone screen, the usual Samsung green screen of death, and I wish I had that turned on to copy the data over lol.

I wonder if it is because you added that way, rather than from f-Droid or something.

No idea. If I had a spare still running android (trying out postmarketos on a few devices) I'd like to give it a try. Maybe I'll spin up a VM.

What apps?

This sucks, I don't want a world where o have to carry around 2 devices (a private one and a standard spyware one)