Soon aurora store may stop working.
They could add some crap to the apks in the play store that checks whether the phone has google services. So either the devs put their apks somewhere available (like on fdroid, which most wont do), or theyll just put their binaries on the play store, which will just be a useless blob for those that dont have play services. Then we get another shitty cat an mouse game about spoofing play services, them catching up, on repeat.

Lol. Which do I use in Vietnam? Serbia? If I'm in Canada and Trump threatens to invade, should I switch to the pixel for a week?

Im sure the us uses its tech dominance to sway political opinions one way or another in my country (brazil). And spying on people is a requirement for that. It seems like an attitude in line with the history of the relations between the us and brazil (and countless other countries). China probably tries that too, although i dont have a strong historical evidence for that disposition from china.

Unfortunately a Fairphone is not a secure device.

Yea but Apple got sued into allowing that

Yeah, but that doesn't help if you can't make apps that support the hosted services. Google is trying to have complete ownership of what runs on your phone.

The point is so that most people can't or won't figure it out or get discouraged.
So that in time, google's "unwanted" software will be starved of attention and funds to continue being developped and these "weeds" in their garden slowly wither and die

The upgrade cycle on iphones is longer than that on android. $1200 flagship samsung phone turns to shit after 2 years. $1100 iphone keeps chugging for 4-5. The android rot is real. Apple is far from perfect but the phones last way longer on average and end up having a lower cost overtime. That is if youre not buying bottom of the barrel budget phones to compare against.

This is the risk of "trusted computing" architectures. Who is governing the "trusted" part of that.

These cryptographic signatures are not as much of a death knell for Android as some would have you believe. The trick is to get a common code signing cert into your device, that is then used to sign any third party APK you want to run. You can avoid the Google tax this way. I assume that's how most sideloading sites and apps are going to handle this.

The question is, how do you add that certificate? Is it easy and straight forward (with plenty of scary warnings), as a user? Or is it going to be a developer options deal? Or will I need root to add the cert?

I'm not sure what that answer is right now.

I just want to finish this post with a few words about trusted computing models. Plainly: Apple has been doing this for years ... That's why you download basically everything from an app store with Apple. Whether on your Mac OS device, your iPhone, iPad or whatever iDevice.... Whether the devs need to sign it, or the app gets signed when it lands on the store, there's a signature to ensure that the app hasn't been tampered with and that Apple has given the app it's security blessings, that it is safe to run. Microsoft and Google have both been climbing towards the same forever. Apple embedded their root of trust in their own proprietary TPM which has been included with every Mac, and iDevice for a long ass time. Google also has a TPM, the Titan security module, I believe that was introduced around pixel 3? Or 4?... Microsoft made huge waves requiring it for Windows 11, and we all know what that discussion looks like. Apple requires a TPM (which they supply, so nobody noticed), Google has been adding a TPM and TPM functionality to their phones for years, and now Windows is the same. None of this is a bad thing. Trusted computing can eliminate much of the need for antivirus software, among other things. I digress. We've been going this way for a long time. Google is just more or less, doing what Apple has already done, and what Microsoft will very likely do very soon, making it a requirement. Battlefield 6 I think, was one of the first to require trusted computing on Windows and it will, for damned sure, not be the last that does. The only real hurdle here is managing what is trusted. So far, each vendor has kept the keys to their own kingdoms, but this is contrary to computing concepts. Like the Internet, it should be able to be done without needing trust from a specific provider. That's how SSL works, that's how the Internet works, that's how trusted computing should work. The only thing that should be secret is the private signing keys. What Google, Apple, and Microsoft should be doing, is issuing intermediary keys that can sign code signing certs. So trusted institutions that create apps, like... Idk, valve as an example, can create a signature key for steam and sign Steam with it, so the trust goes from MS root to intermediary key for valve, to steam code signing key, and suddenly you have an app that's trusted. Valve can then use their key to sign software on their store that may not have a coffee signing key of it's own. This is just one example based on Windows. And above all of this, the user should be able to import a trusted code signing cert, or an intermediary cert signing cert, to their service as trusted.

Anyways, thanks for coming to my Ted talk.

Who is we? what group of people has the dev funding and time to produce FOSS hardware and software to compete with the average android phone?

I think you're on point with the malicious compliance. Google doesn't want to give up power and control. Requiring all installations to run through them seems to be their workaround.

This was the main reason I have a spare android phone to install whatever I want on it and just factory reset if there’s an issue. Android / Google is really shooting itself in the foot cause there isn’t a point in owning an android after this imo

All of my old phones work fine as the last time they were updated. My 10 year old Sony xperia z3c would be fine except for security updates and it's only 3g, and the storage on it is quite measly. I still use it everyday for playing music, though.

Most of the speed issues are google bloat. Play services are absolute hogs, and anything that needs them will not work on this phone, but everything that doesn't is perfectly fine. So I'm basically stuck with f-droid apps. Which is fine, because it's a glorified iPod at this point

I'm looking at Fairphone 6. EU based, has an option called /e/os which is basically degoogled Android, and it also has full support for Ubuntu Touch (Linux phone).

Isn't Waydroid shady?

That't the neat part, they don't. They're still very niche

There are some alternatives to the default apk installers

did... did you just call sennheiser a chinese knockoff? dude, know when to bow out

The regular iPhone and S25 are exactly the same price.

The S25 ultra is $100 MORE expensive than the iPhone 16 pro max.

Buy Galaxy S25 Ultra 256GB | Titanium Black Smartphone | Price & Deals | Samsung US

Buy the Galaxy S25 Ultra. Save on trade-ins and shop the latest S Series smartphone at Samsung.

Samsung US (www.samsung.com)

Buy iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max

Get $45 - $600 off iPhone 16 Pro or iPhone 16 Pro Max when you trade in an iPhone 8 or newer. 0% financing available. Buy now with free shipping.

Apple (www.apple.com)

not disagreeing in any way, but just sharing reputable sources on that statement before anyone says it is a "conspiracy":

Wikileaks: US 'routinely spied' on Brazil

Wikileaks says it has evidence that the United States has routinely spied on senior Brazilian government officials since 2011 or earlier.

BBC News (www.bbc.com)

US ‘spied on Brazilian president and top officials’

Whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks publishes NSA list of 29 phone numbers of top officials that were bugged.

Al Jazeera (www.aljazeera.com)

Also, given that we are almost 10 years afte this article, I'm pretty sure any sane person (by that I mean someone who is not bolsonarist) can see where the (predictive) article agrees or disagrees with reality (past brazilian news and even memory of events):

Brazil On The Brink Of A U.S-Coordinated Coup d’état – The Millennium Report

(themillenniumreport.com)