It feel like we’re losing to Google, day by day. They aren’t killing AOSP directly, but they are making it useless step by step.
Now it’s Google Play Services, Play Integrity checks, installation source checks… more and more apps just refuse to run without GMS. Banking apps? Most of them don’t work. And it’s only getting worse. I run vanilla AOSP on my main profile, no Play Services. I keep GMS only in my work profile for the apps that absolutely need it. But now even some regular apps that don’t need any play services won’t work on my main profile anymore. They simply block your from running , like le chat.
Maps is google’s most important app there is no way to run without play services. Sure we can use webview or gmaps wv, but they don’t provide turn-by-turn directions. Earlier maps used to work without play services, but two years ago, an update stopped it from working. Now that old version is out of date and no longer works.
Google is slowly making GMS very important to run. The problem with GMS is they require to run as system app and has to have all the permissions by default.
Hope EU puts pressure to make google allow apps to run independently without GMS or atleast install them as user apps(like graphene os sandboxed play services).
If we keep going on like this, AOSP can only run fdroid apps in the future.
Some people say you can use a de-Googled Chromium browser to enjoy the fruits of Chrome without supporting Google’s ad business. I say just use Firefox.
By the same token, when some people say to buy an Android phone and deal with CFW, I say just get an iPhone.
I mean either way, Google gets your money and you contribute to Google’s market share by buying one. Not using Google Play Services as an individual does not hurt them nearly as much as their efforts to keep you from doing so implies it does.
Of course, switching phones can be costly, but if you’re in the market for a new one, I would say if you’re going to pay roughly the same price, let it be the more private one, albeit the one that is further from open source. I mean it runs iOS, which is a stripped down version of macOS, which is UNIX certified, but you can’t run a few apps that Apple doesn’t approve of. Fortnite is back and emulators are back though, so a lot of bases are covered.
That said… the keyboard sucks. Sometimes if I’m gonna be typing (e.g. using Lemmy), I’ll actually turn on my old Galaxy S10, just to use Gboard (which is on iOS but sucks there). I like my 16PM for a lot of things, but typing isn’t one of them.
So yes. You can stop rewarding Google’s bad behavior by not buying their phones. Draw a hard line between your personal data and their servers. But in doing so, consider getting in bed with a different monster rather than “the devil you know.” It’s not an easy decision. And, as a guy who’s been mainly on iPhone for almost 10 years… I kinda want a Pixel. Maybe not the newest one, but I mean, I’m using a 6-year-old Galaxy phone and it’s fine. I like both platforms. Both have their strengths. But I personally trust Apple more than Google. To each their own though.
ITT: no one has any idea.
hint: class war
Of the largest android sellers, only samsung requires gplay. Xiaomi, vivo, oppo, realme, honor, are all chinese companies that require non-bundled google play for their domestic (and maybe other countries?) releases. Google can’t alienate these sellers, and if they did, all of these companies would create their own AOSP fork (or just switch to HarmonyOS)
I recently bought a xiaomi android tablet that doesn’t have google play services luckily.
Xiaomi is terrible when it comes to locked bootloaders unfortunately.
mine is unlocked and rommed. they’re fine in that aspect unless something changed recently?
It is only slightly on topic, but I’d like to give a hateful shout out to Ticketmaster/Live Nation’s new “mobile only” ticketed events that require you to have an iPhone or fully Google blessed Android phone. They do not allow you to use a QR code or printed ticket anymore, only their app with a constantly changing bare code or Google wallet (unsure of the IOS experience).
I am going to a concert this weekend and I either have to dig up some old phone that can work with this app or sell my tickets.
Someone recently crack their shit code. Can use offline app after extract secret once. Will link once find.
Edit: https://conduition.io/coding/ticketmaster/ app (javascript) https://github.com/conduition/ticketgimp
Thanks, that might be a handy workaround.
Boop, source found.
Thanks!
I stopped going. Fuck it. Not giving in to their bullshit.
I’ve been quietly boycotting them for over 13 years now, shortly after online scalpers started having their field day with their sites. It sucks not being able to go to any major shows but I have made myself compromise by going to small local shows only and it hasn’t been that bad.
Everyone votes with their wallets, so as long as people keep paying, they’ll keep making us jump through more and more hoops.
That’s how I’m feeling I will go after this concert since they already have my money.
The local folks probably deserve tye attendance more anyway. So many nepo babies…
It was the fees for me. Their CEO needs to be Luigi’d for leading a parasitic company that has made so many music venues go under.
Real question is
Why can’t a rooted android fake play services?
Afaik this is possible, but the banking apps don’t like rooting either. No achievement there.
why can’t we sandbox them in a goody two-shoes kind of environment?
idk, maybe the app wants to check if it runs on normal phone hardware, not some reverse engineering virtualization? Or something like: if the OS is verified and unrooted, no secrets get out?
Funny thing is I can use banking grapheneOS phone and the main Health insurance app, but not the Health Insurance TeleDoc-App. Personally I think apps that need GSM or at least be officially google boot verified are apps made by lazy morons, but that’s just a guess.
that’s exactly it, what i’m questioning though is why can’t we make a virtualized environment that can fool these apps since they all use the same api and are all ‘lazy’ in their implementation (not all of them though).
Apps check if Google says this device is stock and original. Booting alternative OSes is allowed but frowned upon. And of course doesn’t get a Google approval signature. Something like that. Basically programmers not wanting to make the checking themselves and relying on Google to tell them what devices are “secure”.
I thought that was the reason for the cloned app that runs outside the Insular sandbox. I am dumb on the subject and making assumptions though.
Maps?
Use OsmAnd and MagicEarth? I’ve been using it for years now. Works fine.
Also Theres comaps
I enjoy Organic Maps.
EU won’t be too friendly either given the nature of their recent identification app. You should still write to your legislators, but they’re a mostly tech-illiterate bunch, so expect it to be a low ROI activity.
Really do consider donating to projects like GrapheneOS. The GrapheneOS team are a very passionate and clever group, and I’d like to think that they can at least give us something to work with, even if Google completely cuts the cord. Hopefully they can also secure an additional revenue stream once they release their own phone.
If it really does all fall through and there’s no deGoogled way to run Android apps, I’ll keep a separate phone, preferably with a removable battery, with regular Android just to host the proprietary apps. Treat it as a work phone, i.e. power off when not needed, don’t connect to my main home network, don’t do anything that doesn’t need to be done on it. Proprietary apps only make up a small fraction of my mobile workflow, so everything else stays on another phone that respects my privacy.
I am thinking a tablet with Linux and a hotspot rather than phone number. Maybe supplement with a dumb phone in a Faraday bag for your phone, Iike on Swisscows.
if u rely on GMS so much, have u tried replacing it with microG?
it works but it can be messy sometimes. it also doesn’t pass play attestation, which is the big problem here.
I’m not sure what the point of the post is? Is it to share frustration? Searching for a solution? Sorry, I may be not good at inferring this, but I don’t get it.
IF you are in solution-finding mode, then there are a few things that you can do.
- You can use those banks that work without google. I’ve found 2 in the Netherlands, for example. One of them stopped working a while ago, I’ve wrote about that to their support and had to discontinue, withdrawing all my funds using a Dutch procedure for full withdrawal from a bank. After half a year or so I’ve noticed they’ve fixed it and work without google again. I’ve returned as well (it’s convenient for me to have 2 banks). I’m sure as hell banks watch for their usage statistics and wouldn’t like seeing people leave their bank if it can be fixed with a simple reversal of whatever the dev team did lately.
- You could try Linux phones such as PinePhone to see which use cases can it already cover. 30%? 70%? 90%? You’ll know what to even wait for in the Linux landscape to be able to switch. You’ll get a bit of power or mental control if you acquire this knowledge.
- Funnily, you can expect some good news coming from all those fights between US and China, because that makes a LOT of devices ship without google services. And some people in your county (I assume it’s not China, otherwise you wouldn’t have these problems) may have phones bought there, so you won’t be alone when pushing for such changes.
point 3 is is also some leverage google has over chinese export phones, if the scales tip their direction. play ball or get dropped by everyone automatically.
Maybe postmarketOS?
There is microg which can replace GMS. But we really need an alternative, not based on some company’s shit.
Keep in mind GMS does not need to run as a system app. On GrapheneOS it does not.
At least for me only about 15% of my apps need GMS and I only run GMS in my private space which most of the time I lock.
So yes I do not like needing GMS but it is not so doom and gloom.
does it work on other roms?
Does what work? If you mean GMS sandboxing, that is ROM specific. Up to what the ROM supplier does.
Why would one need another ROM. GrapheneOS is one of the best. So is Google hardware in terms of lifetime cost, capability, and security. What other supplier gives 7 year support?
Generally with android it is best to choose the ROM and then the best hardware for it anyway. The best ROMs often have limited hardware support. There are not that many reasonable ROMs anyway. Nor are there many hardware choices that aupport most ROMs fully.
Why would one need another ROM
because it only runs on a very specific phone we can’t obtain in most of the planet
Google phones are pretty widely available in many countries not just the US. But sure good point, there are many exceptions too.
maybe many, but not most. grapheneos makes me saddened that added privacy now costs a premium, and it’s only accessible to a subset of people.
The big deal is how long a phone gets updates. If you divide Pixel a-series pricing by the 7 years of support, they are not that expensive.
What is expensive is buying a new phone everytime they go out of support. My old LG had maybe 1 year of updates when I got it years ago and it was a $250 phone. Still ran it for 6 years but most of that time had no updates which is not great.
My point is cost depends on how you measure it.
I can get 7 years of support from lineageos already, without having to pay a premium.
and then again:
it’s only accessible to a subset of people
you don’t seem to get we can’t buy it even if i wanted to pay a ridiculous price for it
What will it take to make a phone that comes with GrapheneOS directly? I have access to some good connections in China, what phone spec could we prototype to have a phone coming with GrapheneOS? I am ready to throw my savings at starting this business. Or should I reach out to GrapheneOS people directly? (Lineage works also)
GrapheneOs is currently discussing some stuff with OEMs but more help wouldn’t hurt I bet.
As per my 30min research, GrapheneOS depends heavily on pixel internals, but I will highjack one of the mastodon posts maybe somebody will spoonfeed me the definitive answer.
I live in a very low cost area, hopefully I will manage to get a nameless phone to run GrapheneOS or LineageOS at low cost, forward most of the income to the open source projects.
It might be too naive but I am giving it a shot.
There are a million maps apps, even google itself has two (Waze). Banking is easily accessible thru a web browser. Also, rooting your phone gives you ability to fake a lot of the requirements to make stubborn apps run.
I am sorry I tried many many maps apps, but none come close enough to replace google maps completely. No reviews, photos, live traffic, raw data etc. Google maps is truly miles ahead of the alternatives, especially in India.
It’s easier and nicer. But it’s also shitty because of what you mentioned.
The thing is, that’s how it’s going to stay unless people stop using it. You can get this info you mentioned somewhere else, or simply don’t need it, as I said, yes it’s harder and less nice to live without it, but it’s not like you can’t live without live traffic data or whatever. Start using CoMaps, contribute to open street map, leave reviews on other review aggregators, etc etc
rooting your phone gives you ability to fake a lot of the requirements to make stubborn apps run.
Rooting also completely breaks the ability to run some apps with no recourse for spoofing the fact that it’s a rooted device.
Which ones? It’s pretty easy to pass Strong Integrity.
Passing strong integrity check isn’t always enough. My banking and government 2FA still don’t work on rooted devices (or graphene with locked bootloader and play services)
What is a good alternative that actually does navigation and searches on places as well as gmaps? I’ve been using OsmAnd and it’s absolutely dogshit compared to it. Even the navigation, the arguably most important part, is pretty bad.
Edit: actually spent some time looking again, and CoMaps does this quite well. This is replacing OsmAnd+ for me.
I only use Lineage and have done so for years without any problems since CyanogenMod 10.1.
Do remember that it is the choice of the developers to use google services and nothing to do with google.
When you say “Le Chat”, do you mean Mistral AI assistant/chatbot? Its probably stopped working since GPT‑5.
Currently it is not possible to run “Le Chat” ai on a phone without google,
Again its the devopers choice. They could develop a non-google Le Chat.
who on earth needs a chatbot on a phone?
I have never have any problems finding open source alternative apps.
MAPS: Comaps, Organic Maps and MagicEarth, all provide Turn by Turn navigation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turn-by-turn_navigation
I dont use any Banking Apps. Why do you need a banking app? I login to my bank in the comfort and safety of my home.
Lineage:
https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/
If you must use google try E/OS. It Uses MicroG and works very well.
microG is a FLOSS implementation of Google play services
I mostly agree with what you’re saying. But it’s really easy to make an argument for why an alternative works perfectly when you say “you don’t actually need that” every time something comes up that doesn’t work.
With a web browser and user agent spoofing, that’s basically how it works. I don’t want any Facebook/Meta apps on my phone, so I use a desktop Google Chrome rule for all Meta URLs in my browser and user the web versions. Mobile is slowly taking over, but most things have a web version.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t work for everything. The Quest 3 requires an Android or iOS device to set up. At least an old cell phone on a throwaway Google account works for most of these, since they don’t need to be used often.
