- cross-posted to:
- android@lemdro.id
- cross-posted to:
- android@lemdro.id
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Literally TODAY someone I know installed an application called “PDF viewer for android” that had a green adobe icon and it started wrecking absolute havoc on their phone with pop ads and redirects to scam support sites.
The AppStore is full of this shit.
I use LineageOS. Will this affect me? I’m getting unclear answers. Someone told me that the apps will be forced to verify the OS.
Again not on custom ROMs.
(And could help the push of new alternatives os)
If it’s easy to patch this out, I wonder if there will be manufacturers that will choose to do so for their official ROMs. It would be extra value for the brand, imho. A reason to choose, say, Samsung, over a Pixel phone, if Samsung were to patch this restriction out, for example. After all, they also have the Galaxy Store which is also offering apps that I doubt they’ll want Google to regulate.
I didn’t read the terms but I think this is against Google terms of services, so sure you can patch this out but as a company you would suffer legal actions or would be forced to remove Google services from your devices.
Samsung will just ask Samsung Store devs to be registered
How long until they patch out getting developer mode working on you phone without a registration, requiring you to pay for it and also take a “short” AI generated crash course in app development and monetization?
So, will an app like this
https://codeberg.org/muntashir/AppManager
which uses (w)adb, be able to install apk as I currently do?
Or will they also fuck this up ?
They won’t fuck this up YET. If AppManager doesn’t currently use ADB to install APKs, it van be made to. So can any F-Droid or Aurora Store client.
However, I’d say that the odds that Google will stop at this certificate demand and will not eventually try to paywall ADB somehow are currently 0% in my estimation.
It’s high time someone created an independent fork of Android. Very soon, custom ROMs won’t be enough.
Hold up, why all this crap… when most of the malware/infostealers is on Google Playstore… and googe itself is doing it.
It’s called “eliminating competition”.
We really need some money poured into the Linux mobile space because this is a terrible direction to go.
Plain AOSP is already pretty brutal. An alternate OS is practically a non-starter. Phones aren’t just web browsers and SMS.
- Tap-to-pay
- Including transit fares
- Bank apps
- RCS messaging
- MFA and security apps
- Work profiles
- Streaming media that’s not 480p
Not to mention that the camera is going to suuuuuuuuck.
Forking or improving AOSP is more viable but none of the more mainstream ROMs want to piss off Google. That’s why most LineageOS forums forbid talking about defeating Play Integrity.
Also no GPU driver, because even if the manufacturer does actually provide it, some nerd within the community will block it for not being “free software” enough and that “for light 2D applications, CPU blitter is more than enough”.
On a mobile device? It’s more likely that only OSS drivers work and the binary blob driver only worked with a pre-Pandemic aged kernel. Or it needed a very specific userspace library that doesn’t work with a minimal libc.
“Free software enough” usually means “has a snowball’s chance of actually working”.
- Tap-to-pay
dug my pinephone out of a drawer yesterday and gave it a whirl. still pretty rough unfortunately even after updating postmarket os.
Cool being able to SSH into my phone though
I’m still hoping they can get to a state for more general users. I really want one still. I need a Linux phone doing the old sidekick designs.
The main issue will be application support.
Linux running on the desktop in 2025 is helped immensely by everything being web based. So long as you have a browser you are fine for a lot of general computing.
The phone space is ruled by apps. The phone makers and the companies developing apps prefer it this way.
Getting a banking app, or Uber or Facebook Messenger to work on a Linux phone is going to be a massive pain in the ass (ignoring the rest of the OS which is definitely not even close to useable for the general public).
I would love a Linux phone but we are so far away.
i’m just gonna switch to steam deck + gsm router
The phone space is ruled by apps. The phone makers and the companies developing apps prefer it this way.
That’s true, but for everything non-free, they always end up having a perfectly working web app that will accept my money.
I’m sure there will be some sort of compatibility layer available. Android Linux based after all.
There already is! I had a Furi Labs FLX1 for a while and it was able to run Android apps surprisingly via Andromeda (their fork of Waydroid).
tbh part of the rough experience for me may be down to the hardware. the ubports version of the pinephone i have is quite low power. 2GB memory and a little ARM Cortex-A53
tis sluggish
Ok, fuck this crap. This was the main reason to prefer Android over iOS. Going to start trying out some of the FOSS Android forks
Another example of Embrace, extend, and extinguish
Google has stopped releasing parts of android as open source and it releases some as a code dump without the modification history to make harder to use. Android forks are going to struggle to keep up.
I wonder if any and everyone who has ever contributed code under whichever open license was used could sue the tits off google, not as a class, but thousands upon thousands of individual lawsuits, for breach of terms of said licence/contract.
So now 3rd party app stores need an ADB loopback to work around that.
Not hard to do, but uselessly annoying.
Installing the third party stores would be way harder than it is right now if they do that though. No way the devs of e.g. f-droid are getting a verification on an app that bypasses Google’s new ‘safety measures’
I could imagine something like Sidequest happening on Android.
That’s only if the apps distributed are unverified. Mind, the EU already requires app stores to document the identities of devs, but there are loopholes for Small enterprises. In 2027, manufacturers need to document the identities of their suppliers. There are still exceptions for non-profit open source projects, but that’s not what Google is. Surely, no one here wants Google to avoid regulations by investing in open source.
I believe F-Droid signs the packages it distributes so that creates a painful choke point. Revoke F-Droid’s key and it will break all of F-Droid instantaneously. The only exception for F-Droid’s signing is if the build is reproducible, which is a high bar for a lot of projects, and then F-Droid will use the upstream signature.
Also, they’re trying to close the ADB loophole.
I expect phones in the EU are going to become a lot more locked down in the next 14 months, like Samsung is already showing. But also think that Google will try its best to make developing for Android easy to get into.
I think you can already do that with shizuku and dome fdroid clients. It also makes using 3rd party appstores more convenient just in general.
Get fucked
What did you expect? Did you think we were living in a fairy tale and could build a better world?
Is this even legal in the EU? The majority of phones in the EU are Android phones so this effectively gives Google control over what apps can be installed to the majority of phones. I thought the Digital Markets Act was designed to prevent exactly this.
Google will become the exact same as apple, third party stores are technically “allowed”, but requires Google’s official stamp (digital signature), it’s same with Apple. Its probably legal since Apple is already like this.
A corporation like Epic Games will be left alone since they can afford lawyers. An open source volunteer dev making a Youtube alternative client will get their certificates revoked under dubious “ToS Violation” claims and they won’t have money to sue.
It’ll be a battle and then they’ll get knocked and so on and so forth until we get these lazy cunts out of politics and break up the fuckin tech companies.
I think some recent EU proposals that make Google responsible for ensuring users can’t install malicious apps is what have caused this to happen though. I could be wrong but I think I remember hearing about that.
Free market and openness my ass.
Google can go fuck itself.
Hopefully this will put some jet fuel into the Linux phone development.
Google can go fuck itself.
Google would much rather go fuck you.
they need thier AI to profit somehow, mining all your data to offeset the cost of those data centers.
Yeah, I’ll switch to absolutely anything that allows open installation of third party apps.
But for such major FOSS development, we usually have to throw money at them in advance, which is the problem.
ThIs ApPLicAtIoN iS DaNgErOuS
