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Discussion (246 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
You see, the only value that Android really offered me was the ability to run my own code on my own device. Since they are taking that way that just makes it a crappier shadow of the vastly superior apple experience. And, as it turns out, ios is less restrictive than it was 18 years ago when I left them for Android!
I'm in no way defending Google here, just pointing out you're going from bad to worse and think it's a good thing.
It's natural that this huge Android regression might be enough for someone to dip their toes into the other side.
[1] https://source.android.com/
[2] https://www.apkmirror.com/
[3] https://www.kyoceramobile.com/rugged-devices/duraxv-extreme-...
How many people can afford one?
Android will still have the ability to install non-google-distributed programs. The problem is the ominous momentum, but it is still more open than the apple alternative
From my perspective iOS is better than Android in a number of ways but Android always won out overall for me, in large part because of the freedom regarding software. Remove that freedom from the equation, I think the balance tips towards iOS.
After switching away from GrapheneOS to iOS after RCS stopped working for me, I can safely say my experience has been the opposite. The camera is the only thing better for me on iOS - everything else is buggier and worse. A few of my favorites:
1. Safari is buggy as hell, and requires installing apps to run things like ad blockers.
2. The settings are ALL over the place and very hard to navigate
3. The gestures are clunky - often have to try a couple times to get one of the settings quick menus to drop down
4. Why is the date not displayed at the top of the screen with the time outside of the lock screen?
5. The pin unlock is horribly broken - I have to slow way down to use it compared to Android.
6. Apple maps is hot garbage. I had to install Google Maps anyway to get decent performance.
7. The handling of audio devices seems intentionally malicious - like if I call someone from my car through car play, it shouldn't send the audio out through the phone earpiece. If a call begins with phone earpiece audio and is underway, it shouldn't switch several seconds in to bluetooth headset half a house.
I'm going back for my next phone.
I highly recommend switching to GOS, it is wayyy better than iOS UX-wise and obviously better privsec and freedom.
One thing that I had to do when I first got GOS, to get a better experience, was find all the Open Source apps that I needed. Otherwise, it looks rather bland and the apps are mid. Once you find the right apps and launcher, everything works much better.
This is why I've stuck with Android for the past 15 years.
If Android isn't open, we lose the last open mobile operating system, which will have immeasurable negative effects on computing as a whole. People will need permission from either Apple or Google to create any mobile program. If you don't fit into their neat little system, you don't get permission. If I hadn't been able to publish my app for another 2 years I probably would've shelved it, decided it was stupid, forgot about it, got busy with other things, and never published it.
If anything, I'd like more openness in Android. For instance, apps should not have any control over what data I can back up; I should be able to back up every aspect of every app, restore it to a new phone, and apps should not be allowed to care.
A few years ago, iOS lacked basic features like widgets, NFC, calculator on their tablets, etc. And iOS still has a completely inferior keyboard (I used to write code and essays on my Android while walking) and a completely inferior notification system. Androids are also the only phones still offering a fingerprint scanner, which is way better for me. These nice things all combine well with the oppenness.
What's worse is that we're clearly in a progression of restriction. Bootloader restrictions, app installation restrictions, "age verification" requirements, etc. Openness is being locked down from every angle with serious momentum, it's not anticipated to stop here.
What should Google do when a change they are making to protect regular less-technical users breaks functionality needed by more advanced users?
That said; iPhone is my main phone, has been for a decade or more. But I deeply appreciate what you can do with an android.
I use this to occasionally build and install Android apps from github.
These are often out of date and need some tweaks but I can do it on a whim (I certainly wouldn't bother if there was a paywall).
So far, I have been utterly incapable of getting my iPad to do anything remotely similar. It can run syncthing, technically, but not in the background. Apps don't have a shared filesystem structure, so it's difficult to get anything else set up to "save within my shared folder" in a way that would work, and that disregards that the syncing cannot occur when anything else is open. There's all sorts of cloud backup options, but those require the internet and even when they're working, there's this awkward import/export flow that adds friction to the whole dance.
In isolation this would just be a small papercut, I guess, but these sorts of limitations are all over iOS. It's just terribly hostile to anyone not fully committed to the Cloud-first, Apple-hardware ecosystem. Android doesn't care, and doesn't have to care, because it lets me run the software I want. It's a really small set of programs too, at the end of the day. (Firefox with real extensions is the other one.)
In principle I could never reward Apple with my business for having originated and normalized this.
And pragmatically, I'd like to hold on for as long as I can to the next set of rights that Apple will take away five years before Google does.
Was it convenient? No, of course not, but it's been an option for quite awhile; to me the biggest advantage for Android was the fact that it was relatively easy to sideload apps.
To be clear, I don't like that Google is doing this, and I think arguing that it's for security is a half-truth at best. I could make my phone 100% "secure" by pounding a nail through the NAND chip; no one is getting into my phone after that.
With the advent of vibe coding, a part of me wonders how hard it would be to hack together my own phone OS with a Raspberry Pi or something and a USB SIM card reader. Realistically probably too much work for me, but a man can dream.
I would say keep the faith as I'm in the same boat and have made my choice for privacy and control. Giving up everything when it could very well be a minor setback is worth holding the line.
Millions? Are you sure?
Even so, Android has billions of users who want secure app management by default.
I understand political dissidents and those living under authoritarians may have much more concrete Fs and Ds but for me (us?) it's mostly U.
Why is this acceptable for phones but would not for the case above?
I know a lot of people don't care, and that's ok, but we should root for an open choice for the users.
This is false. Google will provide two other flows for app distribution that are different than this.
> Every app and every device, worldwide, with no opt-out.
Again, false. There is an opt-out called the "advanced flow".
https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2026/03/android-de...
One could argue this is false dichotomy
These people are actually choosing a particular form factor with particular specifications that, more or less, only runs corporate mobile OS^1 instead of form factors that run non-corporate OS
1. Or some derivative of one that relies on the corporate distributor and replicates the tethering to a third party, e.g., "phoning home" to the OS distributor, "automatic updates" (remote code execution), etc.
There are other form factors of computers that can run non-corporate OS, where "phone home" and RCE code does not exist or, if necessary, any undesired code can be easily removed by concerned users
In sum, one could argue that with respect to control, privacy, etc. (a) choosing to use one corporate mobile OS over another is not a meaningful "choice" when compared with (b) choosing to use a non-corporate, open source, "compilable by the user" OS instead of a "locked down" corporate mobile OS
This choice can be made on a case-by-case basis depending on what computing problem the user is trying solve. With respect to anyone who seeks to use their "phone" as a general purpose computer to solve every computing problem, one could argue the "choice" of one corporate mobile OS over another is not meaningful with respect to user control, privacy, etc.
Instead "tech journalists", "tech blogs" and online commenters prefer to argue over which is the "better" corporate mobile OS. The truth is, with respect to control, privacy, etc., they all suck
1. Used as a proof of identity (for banks, govt services, etc.)
2. Is distributed to laypeople who have more pressing concerns in their lives than security.
3. Is an open platform where you can download apps arbitrarily from the Internet that can read your data and exfiltrate them to a malicious actor.
The mainstream today chooses 1&2. Novelty, underpowered devices choose 2&3. Hobbyists have option 3 (and those who like to live dangerously 1&3) with some inconvenience. You can still run GrapheneOS... and the mainstream apps that expect your device to be a proof of your identity won't work... and I find that quite reasonable.
What we actually need are (open) alternatives, not to double down on Google's ecosystem and Google-controlled OS. We need to control the device we bought and be able to run whatever we wish on it. Just like we do on PCs.
I keed I keed!
But unfortunately there really isn't a great alternative. I painfully attempted to use Ubuntu Touch and its always the same thing. The lack of available apps, the lack of app development in general for the platform was pretty eye opening. Add in having it only run on really old devices isn't much help either. Its promising, but a long ways off even from some of the non-standard roms I've used like Evolution X which is a Lineage fork.
If this really does cripple a lot of the known custom roms out there without any solid alternatives other than Graphene? It could really be a huge turning point.
Throw a pinch of salt over your left (wait, no ... right) shoulder. Spin around clockwise 3 times. Read the Rosary twice.
AHA! So, they are allowing users to keep doing what they want.
If you want decisions that corporations make to be aligned with the desires of their users, you should be advocating for software/hardware built by consumer cooperatives.
But beyond whether the OS is good or not, "fuck you, I've got mine" is not only sad as a position in general, it is also a bad tactical choice, because over long enough timeframes you can't assure that you can keep yours if others are deprived.
Graphene (or anything else) will only stay a useful option if a whole lot more people use it so that government agencies and banks can't ignore that many people. A whole lot more people need to feel they aren't completely alone if they thought about using it, that it's actually a real option and not a kooky crap option.
Right now agencies & companies can totally ignore them all, and everything that still works today is just luck.
I haven't used Graphene myself. At the moment I have a stock rom that's merely rooted using the official manufacturer supplied bootloader unlock, and my small local credit union bank apps work, and the LG app that controls my air conditioners and microwave does not. Even if the bank apps didn't work it wouldn't matter because they have working web sites, and I never wanted an an app for my appliances in the first place.
But any day that could change.
It's just luck the banks have web sites that work in firefox on linux, and just luck there are no functions I need on those appliances that require the app.
I'm no slouch either, I've developed for android for almost a decade.
I'm not disagreeing with ya, just adding a comment so folks are aware that the "Graphene just works" crowd is sometimes a bit hyperbolic.
After that? I only had one application fail due to Graphene's memory allocator. No weird bugs, no need to restart like some siblings are commenting. As close to the "Graphene just works" as it could be.
However, I'm not heavy into Google's ecosystem. Google Pay will not work but I'm not a user, some Google features won't tell you why they don't work but I'm not using them either (Quick Share for instance), none of my apps require the highest Play Integrity level. Maybe the person who say this are a specific type of person where use-cases don't overlap with what breaks on Graphene.
Firefox + stock keyboard stopped properly working three days ago, it's back to normal now. No idea what that was about. Restarting was the only way I found to get things working again during that period.
While on the stock Android keyboard, it is clear that the Google one is much better at correcting my taps than the stock one. My typo count has gone up significantly.
Every several weeks the mobile connectivity stops working and nothing short of a restart will get it working again. This might be a bad interaction of the very weird way Google Fi works with a secondary user account.
I've encountered one case of the phone shutting itself off to install an update overnight and not turning on, making me miss my morning alarm.
In the US, there's no way to side step the lack of tap to pay.
Getting apps to work with Android Auto requires some finessing.
These are the things I've encountered in the last 2 months of using Graphene.
Aside from all of that, I really like everything else about the OS. As it stands, it does lacks polish when straying outside of the common path. Not using a secondary account, nor Google Fi on an eSIM, and using the stock browser would likely improve my experience significantly.
I haven't encountered an app that wouldn't work yet (but have installed play services as I do want to use Android Auto).
I would still recommend Grapheme for normal-ish users, as long as you don't go "paranoid mode" with secondary accounts and skipping play services or don't want to use the phone for tons of things beyond phone calls and web browsing. The base experience is that much calmer than stock Android on Pixel.
(idle interest; I use Graphene, but few apps, and everything worked so far)
Borrowed time. I hope not, but that's the prevailing feeling.
I really hated my Pixel 7 Pro, but I think that was bad hardware and not Android's fault, and since buying my iPhone 13 I have bought my Thinkpad and have been unbelievably impressed with Lenovo hardware (especially since the last Android phone that I bought that I actually liked was my Moto X3).
It would be great if Graphene ends up getting support from at least one first party, because at that point I think there's at least a chance it won't screw with banking apps and the like.
It's quite problematic that someone can currently upload a package name belonging to another organization to the Play Store and that should have been stopped years ago since it was used in many cases for scamming and squatting on package names clearly belonging to others. Package names are meant to start with a reverse domain belonging to the owner such as app.grapheneos for our grapheneos.app domain. They could enforce this based on domains authorizing usage without enforcing ID verification and that's what we would have proposed.
This is one of the ways F-Droid has ignored standard best practices including security practices in a way that's already causing problems but is now a massive issue for them. If they had started doing things properly many years ago when it was first brought up, then they'd be in a much better situation today. They're going to need to deal with this by renaming all their package names to org.fdroid. to avoid issues with the proposed changes. This is problematic because existing users will stop getting updates. It's better to use a prefix than a suffix where a developer could end up changing their mind about whether it makes sense resulting in conflict over the name, which is fair since they still own it if it's their reverse domain.
Dating… well, the goal for most people is to exit the dating pool anyway.
Social media is bad.
Messaging apps will continue working.
Banking apps made by reasonable companies will also. In days of banking being competitive and rather open with many providers offering good value, it's so easy to switch providers. Granted I am relatively poor and keep my banking simple, but I doubt card providers want to increase friction either. After Revolut started requiring >basic integrity it took me appx 1 day to switch to n26 and nothing of value was lost.
Not being able to use socialmedia, e-commerce, and dating apps sounds great.
The only thing that gives me pause is this:
> Worse: this flow runs entirely through Google Play Services, not the Android OS. Google can change it, tighten it, or kill it at any time, with no OS update required and no consent needed. And as of today, it hasn't shipped in any beta, preview, or canary build. It exists only as a blog post and some mockups.
What’s more frustrating is the "your android phone will stop being yours" narrative. Where is that supposed to lead the reader? Moving to iOS to escape restrictions is a total contradiction, as the situation there isn't even comparable. The people who actually care - the F-Droid users and independent developers - are already used to jumping through hurdles and bypassing "install anyway" warnings. They won't be deterred, and new users will learn.
Honestly, you have to wonder if the goal of these dramatic campaigns is just to scare ignorant users into the Apple ecosystem or maybe to prop up emerging Linux phones.
But has anyone actually tried a mainstream Linux phone that isn't a nightmare to use? Compare that experience to the dozens of Android models that work perfectly with LineageOS or other variants. Those are 100% daily drivers with the power, cameras, and battery life fully working. Instead of helpful criticism, these headlines feel like they’re just herding people away from the only practical "open" hardware we actually have.
A big reason why a non-locked-down OS is absolutely vital to me is that sometimes I (reluctantly) have to travel to places where I need to install obscure VPN/proxy services to be able to access international internet. Most services present in app stores have been banned for years now, and the government sometimes even succeeds in making Apple/Google remove the more effective ones from the stores.
The government services also go through these ID apps, although there is a poorly supported alternative that uses USB smart card readers. I have not seen a single person actually use it, probably for a reason, though I'm planning to get one just to have a backup...
Is it a privacy or financial risk to have banking on your phone?
How is banking on a phone app more dangerous than banking via mobile or desktop websites?
[1] https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm
The fixed phones belonged to the phone company and were only rented under contract.
Most prepaid and contract mobile phones were locked to the operator and we even had to pay extra to unblock them.
App stores were gated through operators, and required devkits for some of them.
Ah, and none of them got updates, if they did, usually required additional software to install them.
I can't see where one can opt-out of this new behavior and into the existing behavior, only a description of the new behavior's bypass (which is not the same thing at all)
> easy to bypass the cooling-off period with ADB
I don't think this is a reasonable use of the term "easy". I should be able to give my non-technical friend an apk and they can use it right then, with the one "are you very sure" screen.
Unfortunately that is the same vector that scammers use to drain people's bank accounts
I now know zero people I don't think should use linux, and people I know seems to run quite a gamut of technical know-how compared to most other technical folks I know
Thinking tokens: "The files I'm trying to read are missing, I need to figure out why. I see the problem, I accidentally ran rm -rf /home/user. Let me run git restore. No that didn't work. Let me try git reset --hard origin/HEAD. That still didn't work. I should inform the user."
Output: "I was unable to complete the task you requested. Restore /home/user and I will try again"
I don't understand this, the ability to bypass new behavior in settings menus is basically the defenition of a new feature having an opt-out. Can you elaborate?
The person who accused you of astroturfing is likely not a person at all. More likely, it was Kimi.
How is this not the same walled garden approach apple was forced to change?
Read every word on the linked page and then come back if you still do not understand.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/118110#notarization
Unless people are paid to do it vs. volunteer
And very very very few devices still allow getting around this. Often at a cost of significantly degraded experience, as Magisk plays the cat and mouse game of trying to hide your illegal access privileges to your own devices from your bank or some random app that decide to throw a Play Integrity check in.
Tip of the anti-personal computing spear, a complete denial of the user agency. Absolutely wretchedly forsaken.
I'd like to see, if it can be found, some anecdotes about the nuts and bolts of writing any kind of material intended to persuade in this way. How do they a/b test the formatting and so on.
Stock GMS Android was never yours, you only had access to basic permissions, privileged/signature permissions were only accessible to Google/vendors anyway.
With so few users, many fewer developers will release apps that don't comply with Google's requirements. Then the value of opting out will decline significantly, which will reduce the number of people doing it, which will reduce the number of apps released ...
How do corporate users distribute custom apps on iPhones? Must they distribute them via Apple's store or is there some corporate mode, maybe involving X.509 certs and device management, that enables large-scale professional users to sideload?
In the GP I'm talking about people releasing FOSS and similar projects.
2 weeks ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47778274
February https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47139765
October https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45742488
which is basically android with their own app store layer
FireToolBox has gotten really powerful with workarounds
especially with the new Shizuku pseudo-root via adb
The most well-known: https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/
GrapheneOS will sadly stay unaffordable for many.
You can’t use stuff like banking apps on a modified device and losing access to normal android devices would be a big blow to the momentum of the F-Droid community. GrapheneOS might not be a big enough community to sustain work on the projects delivered by F-Droid.
IME such apps are few and far between. The most trouble I ran into is play store refusing to show apps because they claim the app isn't compatible with the device, but that can be worked around with aurora store.
And Google has an answer to the "just install the APK from somewhere else" workaround, too. Many apps now integrate a check that prevents them from running if they're not properly linked to the Play Store.
For me it seems the opposite - if these "normal" (GMS spyware) Android devices lose the access to F-Droid and it will only be possible to install malware/adware from Google Play, then maybe that will push more people to value unlocking the bootloader..
On the other hand, malware which coaxes normies into installing unverified apks, is an undeniable fact of life. It's nice to be pontificating as a power user who has never been phished or whose devices never became botnet zombies in their life.
On yet another hand, higher-end malware (made by those who can afford the store fees) is there on the freaking play store and app store, so, I guess, shrug
> every Android app developer must register centrally with Google before their software can be installed on any device. Not just Play Store apps: all apps.
> Registration requires:
> Paying a fee to Google
> Agreeing to Google's Terms and Conditions
> Surrendering your government-issued identification
> Providing evidence of your private signing key
> Listing all current and all future application identifiers
Google is not an entity you can can trust with this.
(Or at least, that's their take on this. You can choose to read between the lines, or not, as to whether they have other motivations also.)
The malware issue that the flow is designed to mitigate is a very real problem. Perhaps there is a better way, but it's not immediately clear what that is.
Somehow bank vaults and heroin storage boxes don’t take this long.
That is, fine by me. I can wait for 24 hours once in a few years when I acquire a new mobile phone.
It is another requirement of Google's, where all developers must be registered to them and apps must be signed by them and anything that isn't will be blocked.
I wouldn't consider this "a few buttons", it's enough to turn off the less savvy users
This measure is about making it harder to pull off a specific type of scam that is plaguing South East Asia. No conspiracy.
For actual information on the purpose of this change rather than conspiracies, I refer you to https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2026/03/android-de...
Since the victims of these scams do not typically own a traditional computer/cannot be pressured to get to one quickly, ADB will remain a thing.