Is this still going to happen? What can we do?
Edit: Complain to your competent authorities here: https://keepandroidopen.org/cta/#consumers
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Follow that link and scroll down for what to do.
Thanks for clarifying that this only affects Google Androids.
Androids without Google are unaffected
Thanks! 🙂 I’ll go through them. So, it’s really happening?
That doesn’t really help. I need to know how to completely disable updates on my phone.
Never was. Best option is to buy a phone that’s open from the start. Sadly not that many choices
I mean there’s like a hundred Google-free android OSes you can use, but sadly it depends on the device.
Ironically, the Google Pixels have the most options for installing a Google-free OS
That’s not the only problem. Open source apps will just die because 99% of people won’t download them. So they won’t bother writing them unless then can be listed on the Google Play store.
Yeah, I was thinking might be better to get a phone developed in the EU. I’m considering Jolla phone (Finnish) and FairPhone (Dutch). Or else a Pixel with GrapheneOS (but then it’s Google again :/).
Are those sufficiently “open”?
I have a FairPhone and the hardware is fine and very repairable (being able to replace the usb socket has saved me from buying a new phone). The android alternative e/os has a lot of criticism the launcher is awful, feels like a cheap Chinese knock off of iPhone-like interface but you can at least swap it out and it’s not as secure as something like graphene os. You’re making a tradeoff whatever choice you make.
So, what would you recommend, FairPhone but a different OS? Or Pixel/Motorola with GrapheneOS? I’ll check out some videos about it in the mean while.
I’d probably recommend something with GrapheneOS as it’s pretty easy to install and use. I personally use it as well and never had any issues with it. You might want to look if your Banking apps work, but other than that, you can pretty much install most major apps through Aurora (like WhatsApp, Signal etc.)
If you want to go fully open, you could also try buying a Fairphone 4 and installing PostmarketOS on it, as I see PostmarketOS as the long-term ideal future OS for phones, because it frees us from the shackles of phone update cycles and gives the user full control over their OS (including changing the desktop environment).
But if you want to use PostmarketOS you have to be willing to tinker and not everything will work perfectly. Especially the camera will not be perfectly supported, even on the well supported Fairphone 4, your pictures will look worse than the ones you could take on Android, because there aren’t good drivers and post processing yet. But it can be really cool if you are an enthusiast.
