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I’m on the fence with getting a new phone. Should I buy something now, like a Pixel 10 or Fairphone 6 and flash Graphene/eOs on it, or wait for next gen which might have these restrictions?
TD;DR
(FOR EVERYONE)
Here is the petition that we all need to sign:
https://www.change.org/p/stop-google-from-limiting-apk-file-usage
(FOR DEVELOPERS or “DEVELOPERS” 😉 )
Here is the form that we need to fill:
(Please UPVOTE this so others can see!)
Time to popularize Linux phones. I read that the security model is lacking, but especially given that Android is Linux too, it shouldn’t be too difficult to catch up. The EU is also interested in tech independence, so that could be one of the sources of funding. And there are a few viable early projects, like Ubuntu Touch and Sailfish.
There need to be enforced of competition law here. Companies aren’t going to voluntarily support a platform with few users. Users aren’t going to move to a platform without critical apps.
We live in a dystopia were you have to have the banks app to do online banking even on your desktop. You can’t charge your car without an app. You can’t navigate your car without a map app that has traffic information. Etc etc. I want FOSS alternatives to all these, but there isn’t and Google could take even having a FOSS platform at all.
This something we need regulators to fix. It is a politically problem, not a technical one.
America screwing up trust should wake up Europe to dealing with American tech monopolies. Now it’s not something just nerds and economists complain about, it is a geopolitical problem.
Corporations are getting WAY too much fucking power over our personal lives, it’s at critical mass where their power is superseding that of our basic democratic rights.
We all knew it would happen, and here we are. We need to fight the fuck back with everything we’ve got, and coordination and planning is the first step.
There has to be something already happening, where do we sign up, who do we get in contact with? Where’s the team?
Does anyone know or have any leads on that? I have the possibility to devote my life full time to it and I’m feeling like me and many others are not being utilized the way we could and are capable of.
The fight was always going against these monopolies.
In the UK with have OpenRightGroup to some extent the Greens. In the US EFF, FSF, SFC. In the EU ESFe, Pirate Party, Greens.
There are many groups fighting the political cause. They have had victories over the years, but winning the odd battle doesn’t win a war. They all need support.
Until now, a lot of open source has tried to be nonpolitical, but that may be changing:
https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/SFKNTZ-welcome_to_fosdem_2026/
you have to have the banks app to do online banking even on your desktop
I have never heard of that. Can you give an example?
HSBC business. There is no fob. You have to get a code from their app to login online. That app refused to run on LineageOS with MicroG, regardless of the boxing and lying to it I tried. It does work under GrapheneOS with boxed Google services.
That sounds obnoxious they don’t support the usual MFA platforms
And at the same time there’s Fidelity (and others) using voice authentication as the sole verification of account ownership when calling in (I think they finally fixed this a couple years ago)
It’s pretty rubbish. I was under pressure from a few angles to compromise more with Google. GrapheneOS is were I am. But I want to be on a prober Linux. But it’s just not possible without competition law being enforced. It’s political problem not technical.
IDK, I’d think the best path forward would be to just fork Android and move on from there. That’s what Graphene OS already does. Just standardize on Graphene OS for everything and get them more devs / resources.
GrapheneOS has strict standards for what phones they support, which is why you can currently only install it on Pixels.
Sailfish is not very alive. Ubuntu Touch too.
But honestly yes. I think the problems are mostly in hardware support.
The political problems driving the push for independence are fairly recent, so the current state is unlikely to be extrapolable.
There are devices using these operating systems that are also gaining popularity, like Jolla, Volla and Fair phone.
Android is not Linux (the OS), it just uses the Linux kernel. That means almost nothing is transferable from one OS to the other unfortunately.
You can run Android apps on Sailfish via AppSupport
That’s all Linux is though, arguably
not even arguable, you’re right
VPNs will be forbidden, age will be verified.
Coincidence that all are gaining traction?
The tech companies are doing a great job at making me uninterested in the hottest new phones. I used to follow the news about them and know the tech specs and stuff, because I’m a nerd and gadgets are fun and smart phones in particular are the intersection of SO much technology and engineering. Moore’s law was alive and well during all my formative years, so I am even conditioned to expect the excitement.
But lately, not only have I been ignoring what the big players are offering, I have been ignoring the phone I already have! Instead I have a PC at the end of the couch with a monitor on an arm that s swings right over my lap.
I use my phone pretty much just for music, web browser, Voyager (Lemmy on the go), and occasional texting. When I am at home I will sometimes misplace my phone for hours and just not worry about it.
I have already pushed the megacorp phone + social media experience so far out of my daily life, that if future options for open linux phones are rough around the edges and don’t have tap to pay then oh well I don’t think I care.
It’s much easier to live without the shiny new thing once you see how well your brain does when separated from it. (and you have some loved ones who are still hopelessly addicted to the scroll)
Sometimes I use my phone so little that I only need to charge it every 2-3 days. Nearly everything that it does my PC can do better and not try to lock me in to a dozen different
monthlyweekly subscriptions.PCs are the best, especially the keyboard (I don’t like using a mouse), the shortcuts, and the terminal.
I just got a Pixel 9a and put GrapheneOS on it straight away . my battery with my current usage says 4 days hahah. my old phone was 1 day maybe. I loose my phone around the house , my friends know I don’t text back for awhile.
Twinsies 👭
Everyone is talking about getting a fairphone and whatnot but I’m concerned about the open source apk communities shutting down since the market share and interest is killed by this.
My main issue is losing YouTube ReVanced. I refuse to pay for Premium! Especially to one of the wealthiest companies in the world!
Sorry to piss off all the Apple shills on here, but sounds like an opportunity to me. I think there’s enough of us that want something better and some traction with Graphene and some Linux options. This should be a spark to ignite some fires. I’m disappointed but unsurpised by this news, but also a little excited about the window of motivation and opportunity this opens.
Honestly, I’m worried. Current Linux options are expensive and or shitty. IDK if Sailfish is still a thing. I can’t use Apple. If I keep taking good care of my not-so-shitty Xiaomi phone, maybe I have a couple more years until I’m pwned.
PostmarketOS seems promising, though.
I look forward to LibrePhone coming online. I hope it comes soon …
“Librephone — Free Software Foundation — Working together for free software” https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/librephone
SailfishOS is still very much a thing and they have a brand new phone on the way. Since it hasn’t been released yet it’s hard to get into specifics, but early interest seems to point in a positive direction at least.
PostmarketOS is already in a good state for a secondary device, though I don’t think it can completely replace an Android phone just yet. Most devices still have some fundamental hardware support issues even on the more well supported phones (camera is the big one, call audio is also problematic on a lot of devices). However, as a pocketable Linux machine, it is wonderful. I got a second cheap SIM card so I can have data on my OnePlus 6 postmarketOS phone as there are a lot of tasks that work better on Linux than Android. I keep an Android daily driver but am trying to do less and less on it and more on the postmarketOS device.
If you care about using third-party Android apps, I have good news for you, but grim news for the ecosystem. You will still be able to use third-party apps. But it’s going to be harder. You’ll probably need to use something like Shizuku or an ADB tool. The first wave of those affected won’t be you and me; it’ll be people who aren’t quite as technically competent. Then, slowly, a chilling effect will echo across independent development.
Could you go over what Graphene is for phones? Is it easy to switch to an alternative to android?
Its a version of android OS that can be installed on Google Pixel phones. Its a relatively easy switch if you’re technically inclined, but the device needs to be carrier unlocked.
If it’s just a fork of Android, doesn’t that mean 194 days from now they either need to branch off entirely and write their own code from here on out…
Or…
Never advance the base code?
No. As long as the base remains opensource (AOSP), they can remove the bad parts. Graphene has made numerous contributions to AOSP, I’m confident they can manage that. And if the user base growths, I hope their fundings will follow.
It would be a good thing for the world if AOSP was forked with big resources behind an open project with an open governance. But that needs lot of resources.
Neither is true, that’s not how forking works. But there is some truth to it in that it can start to become significantly more difficult to keep in sync as time goes on, depending on how obnoxious the security becomes and how many places they have to remove it.
Consider the trivially naive case where Google implements this feature in a single function: “function app_is_signed() -> bool” then the fork just adds “return true;” to the beginning of that function, and happily merges every other update Google makes from then on with zero issues. Even if the code for “app_is_signed” itself changes, nobody cares, because the first thing it does is return true and everything else Google ever tells it to check or do is ignored, the function can still be used everywhere throughout the code, it just no longer actually checks anything in Graphene, whereas it does check things in Google’s Android.
Of course the reality is much more complicated than that, but the principle is the same. It’s only a question of how obnoxious and difficult Google chooses to be about it. They could move the function around every update, or use many different functions, make a whole system out of it, make it do crazy cryptographic validations and checksums in various different places of the code, have watchdog tasks that are checking that the validation code is getting used. They could be really, really obnoxious about it, if they want to be, and they have more resources than the Graphene OS developers probably do to undo and keep undoing all these obstacles, so if they really want to devote that much time and energy to making Graphene’s position untenable, they can. But they could also be doing that now, and they’re not. Crackers have been fighting these sort of battles against copy-protected software for ages, it’s the same principles, and much of the same economic choices go into it. How much does Google want Graphene OS to go away? How much is it worth to them? It has to have a dollar value to them, and that dollar value might be significantly higher than they’re willing to bother with.
Worst case scenario where Google makes it extremely difficult going forward, what is the hard part about just never rebasing onto future work from Google?
From what I’ve seen there hasn’t been significant core work on Android for a long time. It’s been mostly changing from rounded corners to square corners to rounded corners, or shoving AI into every nook and cranny.
I’d think a small dev team like Graphene could maintain their AOSP fork moving forward.
I absolutely agree they can maintain an AOSP fork going forward, and I think that’s completely realistic and I would be surprised if that is not the case.
But I was answering OP from a strictly technical perspective about the potential difficulties they could, theoretically face while doing that. Since you asked what is the hard part, I’ll answer along those lines (again, with the caveat that I don’t think these are going to pose realistic obstacles for the GrapheneOS team in the near term) My point is not to say it’s impossible but I think it’s important for people to be aware that this approach comes with risks, and those risks will grow over time especially when you’re up against a non-cooperative upstream that is one of the largest and richest tech companies in the world.
For one thing you’re never going to support any new phones without either pulling driver support from AOSP or reverse-engineering the hardware and drivers yourselves, or accepting that some parts will just… not work. So you get stuck on older and less capable hardware. Maybe you don’t care about that too much, and that works fine for awhile, but eventually the cracks start to show. Now you have to either start figuring out how to get into the newer hardware, or you have to start getting custom newer hardware of your own, which is $$$.
Using closed hardware this way as leverage is a pretty common way of getting in the way of open source development, and Android hardware is very closed. Similar tactics are already even being used against x86 PCs now with things like TPM and Secure Boot. It doesn’t completely brick your system on day one of course, but the erosion of support begins when they start writing software that intentionally relies on these features to say “oh, sorry, this software you want to use? it won’t actually work on the open source OS/open source client because they don’t have access to this hardware… what a shame.” One or two pieces of software, no big deal. But they won’t stop there, eventually it’ll be like half the software, then over time it’ll become 90% of the software, you won’t be able to find alternatives. They can often afford to be more patient and relentless about this shit than we are. The battle will continue, and there’s no sure path to victory. Forking is one tool we have, and that’s great, but we also have to remember that it’s not a flawless, unstoppable long-term solution that we can play as a trump card whenever corporate interests do something bad. They don’t just give up. They have other means of getting their way.
I’ll switch in a heartbeat if they support a nonGoogle phone
They’re working on it. Unfortunately most phones have poor security hardware, which is why its limited to Pixels at the moment.
It’s Android with all of the Google removed where possible and sandboxed where not. You can choose to install the Google Play services and use it like any other Android phone or use it without any Google software.
Some things won’t work, namely things like some banking applications and NFC payments, because they require on hardware attestation that Google will not allow Graphene to pass. Essentially everything that isn’t banking/payment related works exactly like any other Android phone.
It is just a secure phone (though you can still install Facebook on it if you want) that is designed around mitigating attacks that could violate your privacy and security.
Very easy to install, you just buy a Pixel directly from Google (don’t buy from the carriers, they’ll be locked). Enable OEM Unlocking in the Developer menu and then plug it into USB and you can install it directly from the Graphene site via WebUSB. It takes about 5-10 minutes, then your phone will reboot (It’ll give you a scary looking screen about not running a Google OS that you’ll see every time it reboots but it’s just informational, it doesn’t affect anything and the system will boot into GrapheneOS in a second or two).
The more complete instructions and WebUSB install process:
What really bugs me about it: The first step from “how to ungoogle your phone” is “go, give money to Google” by buying their hardware.
Why do banks need a hardware attestation, out of curiosity? I’d assume that banking apps are just clients so all that matters is if they have creds or not.
The banks don’t want their payment systems being accessed by devices that are compromised by malicious actors.
The attestation chain allows for Google to tell the apps ‘Yep, this system is running a known safe image that has been crytographically verified using the secure hardware on the device’. The apps will only allow their payment systems to be accessed (like, to send an NFC payment) if this check can verify that.
If you want technical details: https://developers.home.google.com/matter/primer/attestation
They don’t NEED it for NFC payments to work, this is a way of limiting attack vectors on their payment infrastructure (or, cynically, a way for Google to ensure that no competing OS can exist because people would rather give Google all of their privacy so they can pull a phone out of their pocket rather than a credit card.
Dear terrorists, I don’t like your actions, but if you still exist and want to cause destruction and deaths, please, do it by attacking main offices of big corporations. That will be a tragedy for whole world. Thank you!
Terrorists tend to act across borders and so they are interested mostly in global corporations. If only there was one single building that housed all of them at the same time. Some buildings where they all engaged in trade around the world, centralized.
Then that would make your scheme easy.
you mean this place?
I feel like no one got the hint I was talking about the World Trade Center. What I’m saying is Al Quida basically already did what he is arguing for. I’m calling him an unaware al quida sympathizer. Advocating for terrorism is bad. Worse if you are actually arguing for 9/11. Even worse if you know so little that you don’t even realize that’s what you are doing.
The only response I’ve seen so far from F-Droid is that they’ve put up a banner to Keep Android Open. Has there been any kind of plan for next steps?
They responded to it when it first came up 4 months ago. I’ll paste my appropriate comment from that time.
The f-droid team spoke to that in a recent post. The post basically said that if that change isn’t stopped on a government level there’s no way for them to continue working. They didn’t mention roms.
Edit for the link: https://f-droid.org/en/2025/09/29/google-developer-registration-decree.html
Remember to contribute to postmarketOS!
Fucking love postmarketOS. First OS to improve on Maemo on an N900
I’m doing my part ! Mail send with help from fdroid.
This is why we should use things like GPL.
Call your representativesHire a lobbyist to donate millions of dollars to election campaigns for your representatives
Doesn’t even take that much. Most can be bought with a couple thousand.
Has anyone tried a Murena (/e/os) phone?
I am thinking about it.
My next phone will be running /e/OS. Seems to be a suitable alternative for my needs.
So, does it mean that degooglized android phones will suffer as well?
Not yet, but surely AOSP distros are in the crosshairs next if they’re not already.
This will take effect for only google “certified” phones. If you’re using a custom rom with no gapps (including play services) installed, you will most likely be not affected.
If some of your apps rely on play services, i can heavily recommend microg as replacement for it.
Do I have to install microg or graphene or whatever on my Google Pixel before that date or miss the boat?
Have been putting it off.
GrapheneOS has sandboxed play services that you can easily install to make sure apps work. my banking app only works with play store services so I installed them and set them to zero permissions. You can also make a second profile with nothing installed and switch when you need those apps. MicroG has never worked for me on any phone.
