It's almost like the organization itself is designed to make things worse if it means short term profits, useful and appreciated apps sacrificed at the altar of line must go up

My pixel 5 recently broke and the only reason I went with a pixel 9a was to install grapheneOS on it as soon as I got it. The process has become way easier than it used to be. After setting up/skipping all the first run screens I plugged it into another Android device and used the grapheneOS site to run the install, took like 15 min.

I think it varies from person to person. My gf can't tell the difference at all, even when she really tries, neither can a friend of mine (who also use the most insane jerky screen settings on his TV). For me, I can't imagine going back to 60hz ever again. It feels like something is physically wrong with my phone if I turn 120hz off.

The reason is that PC is made out of standardized plug&play components that you can make generic OS image for.

Yep, given the history of consumer technology as a whole it is really more amazing that the standard PC became a thing more than it is that people put up with what phones are today.

We all really owe a lot of gratitude to Phoenix for reverse engineering the IBM BIOS back in the day, and going to court to fight the IBM copyright lawsuit that resulted, as well as Compaq and all of the other IBM compatible clones.

You can, but it is a pita. Having to buy dev certs and sign the .ipa file, etc. But technically, if you really want to, you can.

I do the same thing. Keep multiple profiles and just run sandboxed play services. It works fairly well. The only exception to not having play services is if you allow the app to run unrestricted in the background to always stay connected and fetch notifs. But it does drain battery 10 to 15 percent for just signal throughout the day depending so I can imagine it grows as you were to do that with more and more apps.

I can offer an answer as a former lover of android (12 years)…

I used to do all of the phone modding/flashing roms etc. it was like I could never be just satisfied with my phone. After years of this, I got tired of the nagging in my head to improve it. So, I switched to Apple, and it just works and I don’t feel as though I’m missing out on anything.

So, yes I don’t have to be on my phone all of them time other than when I actually need it.

They've been busy reading the history books to find out what Android did 4 years ago so that they can start developing those same features today. Any remaining time and effort went into creating vacuous marketing hype.

Would be really curious to find out how that works. Got any good sources?

Irony is Android felt way more intuitive, including to my non techy family, even in the worst case (EG Samsung devices with their spammy UI).

Basically a lot like what my work phone is for now. It's just phone calls (yes, those still exist in the B2B world), SMS, Teams, and Outlook. Literally everything else happens on my work laptop. Most of the time, my work phone just pretends to be a wifi router + 4G modem. On remote days, the battery drains super fast, but when I'm at the office, the phone battery lasts way longer than you could reasonably expect. Then again, I don't really use that phone for anything, so I guess that's why.

I think I could do that with my personal stuff too. Get a nice laptop and prioritize using that for everything. Maybe I would end up using the phone like once a day at most.

Maybe we should start resurrecting symbian

hows your experience with graphene? Better than stock? I heard they have a sandboxed Google Play store now, so getting apps is even easier.

I'm thinking about getting the new FairPhone 6 when it comes out and running /e/ OS, but I'm so reliant on Google Maps and Gmail (my email account, not necessarily the app ... but I do rely on the app).

I'm afraid that I'll either install Google apps and end up with a phone just as compromised as a stock Android install, or if I don't it will be too much of a pain in the ass to use.

So far it's been good for about a week. Highlights have been the easy install, secure by default but lets me override when I want (block app network access on install is awesome), and getting access to the other app repos than Google's I haven't seen since I installed dirty unicorns years ago. I setup multiple users so I can keep my primary like a root which was also simple to do.

Only complaints I have are when I get messages on another user than primary I can see the messages in the app but not the message content in the notification, its just a generic alert message like new messages received. Nice to have but not going to make me switch back. And the keyboard doesn't have swipe typing so I use gboard with network access turned off.

Also I did install the Google app store to get a couple paid apps and calendar/contacts I need to move out of Google. It does sandbox by default which is really cool and i think should be required for phone manufacturers. I just disabled services/store/calendar access to the network after I let it download everything.

Edit: also not a OS thing but I tried switching VPN to orbot/tor at the same time and it is still really unreliable for that use with the way so many sites try to sniff out your location

Please do stay on GOS. I already suffered for 2 days for the whole community.

May I suggest you give RethinkDNS a shot? At first it's kind of convoluted to configure, but once you have it set up the way you want, it's smooth sailing from there.

GitHub - celzero/rethink-app: DNS over HTTPS / DNS over Tor / DNSCrypt client, WireGuard proxifier, firewall, and connection tracker for Android.

DNS over HTTPS / DNS over Tor / DNSCrypt client, WireGuard proxifier, firewall, and connection tracker for Android. - celzero/rethink-app

GitHub (github.com)

Hell yeah, now I can waste my time on DuoLingo outside of the toilet!!

I've been considering moving to GOS because of all the Google shenanigans, but I need to make sure everything works since my job means I have dozens of MS authenticator entries for various admin tasks. I really want to try it out, but can't afford to have to rebuild all those entries on a new system (and the notifications not work)

Tried to restart my fairly new Pixel phone a couple days ago by holding down the power button, but instead of showing the Power menu it prompted me to ask the Digital Assistant something. Excuse me? I don't remember enabling that. Every other phone I've ever had, holding down the power button has always been the way to power down or restart. I had to search Settings to find how to configure the power button to control the power. Or course maybe I could have asked the Digital Assistant - but fuck that.

So, how do you power it down?