Google’s Android, the world’s most widely used mobile operating system, started life as open-source software. In its quest for ever-greater profits, the tech giant has been gradually eroding Android’s open-source capacity over the last decade.

Google’s Android, the world’s most widely used mobile operating system, started life as open-source software. In its quest for ever-greater profits, the tech giant has been gradually eroding Android’s open-source nature over the last decade.

Originally published on The Lever, but that one asks you to sign up.

  • youmaynotknow@lemmy.mlEnglish
    43·
    3 days ago

    2 days ago I moved from GrapheneOS back to Stock Pixel in my 8 Pro, just to see what all the hype about the new android 16 in Pixel is about. Jesus, this is way worse than I remember. i tried it for 2 whole days, and that shit just won’t allow me to have ANY control over my phone. It’s fucking ridiculous. On Android 15 I was able to uninstall Google Drive, Meet, Youtube, and many other Google apps, this time around all it would allow was “disable”. What’s next, removing the ability to disable (which I don’t trust anyway)?

    Fast forward to today, I’m back on GOS, and my anxiety levels are down again. This shit is insane, and I honestly can’t understand why anyone would put up with this crap.

    • brucethemoose@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      2 days ago

      this time around all it would allow was “disable”.

      This has been par for other OEM-flavored Android phones for years, unfortunately.

      Disable is alright, not that the phone itself isn’t a privacy nightmare in other ways.

    • Passerby6497@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      2 days ago

      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)

      • youmaynotknow@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        1 day ago

        I had to use MS Authenticator for work and it worked in GOS, notifications and all. Now, that was about a year ago, and I haven’t tried it since. At the speed GAFAM are enshitifying everything, there’s a chance it doesn’t work anymore. I keep a Pixel 8a stock for banking and some other apps that I need (such as EV charging networks) and won’t work or are unsustainably wonky on GOS. As I mentioned in another post, RethinkDNS is worth it, but it does take some trial and error to get it to work without breaking stuff I need, but once I got there, it was all good (that’s how I keep the 8a less intrusive).

      • Jarix@lemmy.worldEnglish
        61·
        2 days ago

        That’s a really lousy excuse in support of enshittification.

        How do you know most of users want that?

        Even if most of them do, that still negatively impacts literally millions of users who don’t want that.

        Most is anywhere from 50.1% to 99.9%

        So what are you actually saying? Because you aren’t being very precise.

        Most people want to engage in hetero sexuality, so everyone who didn’t shouldn’t get to?

        That’s the same logic you are using, I highly doubt you would agree that all non hetero relations should be discarded and given a giant middle finger. If you do feel that way JFC go touch grass or whatever

    • redhat421@lemmy.worldEnglish
      31·
      2 days ago

      Those apps are installed in the squashfs image. Such images are write once, read many and thus they can’t be mutated at runtime.

      • youmaynotknow@lemmy.mlEnglish
        11·
        2 days ago

        I know, and that’s exactly my point. They used to be in the user space, now they are in the system partition. They CHOSE to do this.

        • redhat421@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          14 hours ago

          Yeah. That’s a good point. I don’t know why anyone would put any frequently updated app in squashfs.

          I guess you can use the app right after you factory reset even if you don’t have much data which might be something? Are updates smaller since they’re just deltas?

          • youmaynotknow@lemmy.mlEnglish
            1·
            10 hours ago

            In all honesty, I have no idea. I didn’t give the stock firmware enough time on my phone to check on anything other than the amount of tracking and the move to the system partition.

            As for the reason for putting them in this partition, I’m sold on the idea that it’s to keep the levels of invasion as high as possible while removing the user’s options to get rid of them.