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 Now that old version is out of date and no longer works.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.
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:
you don’t seem to get we can’t buy it even if i wanted to pay a ridiculous price for it
You may or may not have 7 years of support as the binary blobs are only updated for a limited period and this is often a lot less then 7 years.
still worth it over a phone that costs the price of an used car to import into my country.
if all i were looking for was long support id get a samsung. what i really get custom roms for is privacy and control over my own device. that’s the entire point of getting grapheneos, no?
GrapheneOS gives several features not in other ROMS at the cost of requiring in support Pixels. These include full update support including binary blobs, locked boot loader, and device attestation support to the extent possible, It prorities security over most other things including lomg multi-device support which of course would be nice.