Stop using all Google products. That’s your petition.
You play in Google’s ecosystem, you get your control taken away; just like with any other big tech ecosystem. Don’t want to play that game? Then don’t use any products made by them. It’s that simple.
I’ll just vote with my feet
Like Carl?
„Sideloading“? By using this word, you already letting google know, that they have won. Since when installing an app is called like that?
I see my next phone being a flipphone. I don’t like how locked down mobile platforms are already, and smartphones are so big now.
Netbook 2-in-1’s look promising, picked one up off eBay to update my mobile rollout when all this started. ~550ish USD for a better CPU, more RAM, easily replaceable storage and battery, and actually compatible with Linux, all for the price of Google’s 9a at launch. It will be slightly more inconvenient to travel with, but I’ll try to fully replace the smartphone with a flip when that’s ready for an update.
Google seems to be gambling that their monopoly is big enough to start strongarming everyone, but with a slight reimagining, their mobile division can be completely cut out of my life, and the replacement devices are cheaper per specs and more open to modification, so really I should’ve done this long ago.
Things are changing, but the people who care enough about this will change too. Still sad about it, was hoping the smartphone platform would go the other way and become more open. Mobile processors have more throughput and better energy efficiency now than briefcase laptops from the 2005 - 2010 era. Always dreamed of everything evolving into a single device where my phone could plug into a docker and replace my office desktop for web browsing, but I just don’t see it happening in a closed environment like this.
The petition us useless. Way too many people just don’t care or even understand what it’s really about. To me, personally, this is the final nail in the coffin that is android. Welcome Linux phone, and if I can’t find any, fuck the phone altogether. I don’t need another crapple.
Do it anyways
Why? Just to fight the next war that is unwinnable? It’s like 5000 ants against one Bagger 293. Could also be one million ants.
And even IF, which chance is already infinitesimal, they’d just start another slightly different war succedingly, which, by then, already faces lesser resistance.
I did fight since they ditched their “don’t be evil”-slogan. and here we are. I’m tired boss.
Do it for posterity. We need to corner them as much as possible. Use it as motivation & justification
I don’t care for posteriority.
“Corner them”…that was funny 😊
So you’re a defeatist
So, you’re a dreamer? I was that too, once. One should know what battles are worth fighting for. I would never go bare-handed and blindfolded into cqc with a grizzly. Not saying you shouldn’t. Great for you if you can uphold that fire.
Ants killed my parents.
You’ll need something at least a couple generations old with an unlockable bootloader. You can run Halium and UB Touch.
It’s an Android kernel with a linux VM, but most things work, and it is absolutely private.
Daily Driver real Linux is a couple of years off, probably. They’re just getting drivers starting to work now and battery life is a long long way off.
I’m currently trying to figure out some kind of handheld Linux that operates reasonably well and carry a stand alone hotspot. I’ve even been pondering, throwing a Raspberry Pi compute module onto a 7in screen, but perf is still kinda dicey and power is still a serious issue.
Why the hassles? There are some Linux phones available.
https://linuxstans.com/linux-phone/
Didn’t test them so far, but the moment my pixel dies I’ll try them all. And I hope at least one has a decent camera.
Give me battery life on any of those.
Tell me which one of those can run signal.
Tell me which one of those run a processor that’s from the last five years.
Tell me which one of those are still going to be available in a few years?
Tell me which one of those aren’t running an Android kernel with the Linux VM inside?
The list starts looking pretty bleak after a few questions. We’re not in good shape.
I actually don’t know. And besides all your worries, mine would be the camera. It most likely will suck, even for the >2000 moneyz one. But i will try them, what else could I do? I wouldn’t touch crapple with a 20m-pole and android goes down the same drain.
The Halium ones are okayish on camera because the divers are Android. They’ll perform at least as well as android 5 or so but with a high rez output. They also have decent-ish battery.
The ones with straight Linux kernels have various problems. You can go and look up a given operating system and its support level and they’ll generally enumerate what the problems are. Even the ones with bigger batteries get less than 6 hours.
Signal won’t run natively on any of the Linux phones. You have the option of running waydroid in a lot of cases. But when you’re running it in waydroid, the phone can’t go to low power. So it burns your battery to hell and back.
I think your only current option for a daily driver would be to get one of the fairphones and use UBtouch.
Pine is only dedicating another couple of years worth of phones. Fairphones is on the struggle bus but they’re still in the game. Most of the newer pixels aren’t supported in any of the distros.
Most of the districts won’t run on any of the newer phones.
One of my bigger concerns from all this is that reduced access to users to install apps might have chilling effects on app development. It’s great being able to get apps from Itch.io, GitHub, and FDroid, but will developers continue releasing there if the user base dries up? I guess apk-mirror will likely still continue, since they’re ripping from the Play store anyway.
Change.org is where action goes to die.
why are you upvoting this inane, useless, poser, impotent bullshit? we is petitioning evil corp to be a smidge less evil what the fuck?
exactly. Petitioning those who have already demonstrated that they don’t care unless you have leverage is meaningless.
use leverage, in what ways you can. make a habit of it.
Just stop paying Google money and stop using their ad revenue generating services. Google doesn’t want consumer customers anymore and want gov/mil/corp going forward, one would guess. If you have to use YouTube for some reason, adblock the hell out of it.
List of things they canceled in the last few years alone:
- cancel nest cameras
- cancel nest smoke alarms
- cancel nest secure
- make pixel android hardware inferior
- make android more closed every year, removing filesystem access, deleting old apps from store, etc. etc.
- Chromecast killed
- google one VPN killed
- google podcasts killed, and that is just a simple app that plays rss fed mp3 files hosted on third party servers!
- google music killed
Most of this list is Google slowly exiting the consumer space
Chromecast is kil?
Also, Google Music? I thought they had YouTube Music. I do remember Google Play Music (RIP collections of songs and albums by rather big artists I purchased for 0 Monies about 10 years ago and could download as files but have since lost)
A chrome cast killed my parents.
Google will not acknowledge any Petition.
The only real solution is to install an Alternate Android or Linux Phone OS
The number of available unlocked phones is shrinking and even the new ones are running old hardware.
I want something with a recent processor, a good camera, GPS, Tailscale, 18 hours of battery life a good enough browser to get to my bank and edit photos and a watch that gets a few days of run on a charge and i’d like to have enough admin access to code turning on and off radios and services based on location and relatively good security.
Linux is not up for this yet, postmarket is moving quickly, but it’s still way behind
Hallium+ubuntu touch is fragile if you change the image.
Graphine and Lineage have security third and a questionable future if android upstream goes to shit.
I think we’re watching a major shift happen, similar to when smartphones took over. At the moment, I can’t see the market ever opening back up the way it was, because apparently smartphones are produced at a loss. If there’s really no way to manufacture them at a reasonable cost, they’re never ever gonna let go of the hardware control ever again. The last couple decades were just a long con to grab market share, now we’re in the late stage where they lock down and grab as much data as possible, laws be damned.
I just spent too much time writing another comment on this post, but I have the same wants as you:
recent processor, a good camera, GPS, Tailscale, 18 hours of battery life a good enough browser to get to my bank and edit photos
I really think we’re watching the smartphone era fade away for tech-minded people, and it’s time for us to just ditch the expectations and let go of the all-in-one convenience. Phones for talk/text, dedicated devices for everything else. Most of these specs you mentioned can be exceeded in a compact touchscreen 2-in-1 netbook, for about the same cost as a flagship phone, and be fully compatible with Linux. Currently tablet sized, almost small enough to fit in a purse, but hopefully smaller variants come around in the future.
Only issue is GPS and camera. Phone GPS modules aren’t very precise as it is, hopefully we get a compact USB receiver someday. And cameras never really made sense in a phone to me. Loved the convenience, and I will miss them dearly in my future phones, but a cheap digital camera will beat all but the high end flagship phones, both in price and image quality.
Wouldn’t it be better to petition a political power… Such as the EU or the UK parliament?
This is already sorted out by law in the EU. Now they just have to wait for Google to follow up on their intent.
The best thing would be to stop using google services but many (most?) banking apps refuse to run on phones without Google’s blessing. It’s fucked up and should be illegal
Don’t use banking apps. Use banking websites. And if your bank does not allow you to do everything on the website, change banks. I did.
can’t, without 2fa from the banking app on my phone.
I recently read a Kevin Mitnick book from a few years back. At the time, he recommended buying a cheap Chromebook, locking it up at home, and use it for banking - and ONLY banking. Never anything else.
Nowadays, a person could do that with a phone.
a lot of stuff in my country now requires i have my bank phone on me to make transfers.
yes, i do hate it.
Do you actually have to open the banking app? Or is it one of those TOTP codes? Because if it’s a TOTP code, you can use any password manager, including keypass xc on Linux.
If they force you to use the app, switch banks.
no totp code. i’m forced to use banking app 2fa.
i don’t know of a single bank that isn’t doing this over here, i would switch in a heartbeat.
It’s likely that the smaller the bank is, the less likely it is to be doing this. So maybe a local bank over a national bank or maybe an older bank that’s been around for a lot longer instead of a neo bank.
When I switched banks, I went from a NeoBank to a bank that has been established for quite a while because it has older technology.
i’m now wondering if its possible to extract the totp code somehow hmmm…
I am about to check/do this. Problem is the national ID system, based on apps that work the same way.
How do elderly people deal with it because they are less likely to have smart devices or less likely to understand how to use them properly?
Whatever way they deal with it, you can use as well.
I have never heard of anyone not “dealing with it”. Most probably they are just asked to go in person to some physical office with a passport or something. In that case, no thank you.
My banking app works without google :)
Which ones ?
S-mobiili, the banking app of S-pankki here in Finland.
That would be the best thing, but that’s a really tall order.
The only product capable of handling what they’re doing is Apple and they’re just as locked down, if not more.
The Linux phones aren’t really there yet, and the Halium-based models are unpleasantly locked down as well.
The mobile market is really stagnant. We need some fairly recent hardware with open software on it, but even if the market was ready to buy, the software is nowhere near ready to fill the need and the hardware is becoming less available by the day.
Remember after widespread public outcry, petitions, and developer pushback google still went ahead with Chrome’s Manifest v3 because it made adblockers worse? This won’t accomplish anything.
On the one hand I support this wholeheartedly. On the other, this may be the fuel finally needed to push a Linux phone or two more mainstream. I’m conflicted.
Use of non-play store apps is not mainstream enough for Linux phones to get more than a little bump from this.
At this stage, it helps when more devs are motivated to switch over and build/improve stuff to cover the things they want to do with a phone. And there’s relatively many devs among those who use F-Droid.
I’m not technically affected by Google doing l this just yet, because I don’t use the Play Services, but with that move coming after they encroached on Custom ROMs twice, I can tell that I need an exit plan. And there’s nothing quite for motivation than slowly being backed into a corner.
I hope something good comes of it.
Honestly? even if we succeed in this , Google will simply fuck things up in something else, the only real solution is that it completely looses people acceptnace , and that’s the hardest part because the majority don’t think about changing things if it’s comfortable enough
Like shelving Android completely like so many of their successful products?
Kinda, or any action that pulls the rug enough so that Google makes concessions because it can’t use its privileges as a corporation , but it’s hard to see this happening now
