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Google is slowly closing access to everything. It's a boiled frog situation. All the red flags are there. We're fucked.
keep the faith - we are not fucked, we just need to move to different systems entirely.
There is currently no alternative to android. Every alternative is both less secure and less usable.
If there were other systems I'd be using them already.
Less reason to buy a Pixel, then.
Uhg then what? Samsung's got too much of their own shit data harvesting crap on top of the Google stuff. All other phones basically have shit cameras. Time to go to iPhone? Seems they're all the same at this point 😜
If you're in Europe, Fairphone is an option. I'm pretty happy with mine.
Graphene is centered around security. I've heard bad things about Fairphone in that regard - the Graphene team even talks about them in the replies on that thread.
Respectfully to the Graphene team, they say that about literally every other OS.
Read their comment and I'm left scratching my head. Their role in security with the straight android phone (not the /e/OS version) is simply pushing security patches as/when they get them from the Android team, as they're using straight Android. Security is handled by Google for Android, not them. When it comes to /e/OS, no idea how good/bad it is, but apparently Graphene has some beef with Murena (the people who make it), at least according to their comment.
Not at all knowledgable about mobile kernels and drivers to comment on the rest of it. I do know Fairphone 5 uses an unusual CPU normally used for SoC as that was the only CPU that was both good enough to run Android reasonably while simultaneously providing very long-term driver updates (they're aiming for a minimum of 8 years of updates).
I can't speak to beef, but there is more to Android security than what Google provides. That's what Graphene is for, to make Android even more secure through hardening various attack surfaces and introducing other completely new security features. If that weren't the case, Graphene wouldn't be necessary on Pixels because Google does monthly security patching for them.
It's also at the firmware level, which Google does not provide except for on their own hardware, and on top of that Google phones are some of the only ones capable of providing some security feature at the hardware level. This seems to be the main thing the Graphene team is trying to point out.
Their role in security with the straight android phone...is simply pushing security patches as/when they get them from the Android team
If that were true there would be no reason to use GOS. The entire point is that they introduce new privacy and security options into the OS.
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The FairPhone is expensive and I'm not sure it can run Android Auto properly. If I can't run my own OS anymore, Android will be an ugly alternative to the iPhone and I'd have to go back to iOS, it's absolutely stupid from Google to do this.
Fairphone is not expensive. All the other phone are too cheap due to slave like labor both in the raw materials and production of the phones. Fairphone pays every one along the production chain fairly.
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Honestly if Google is going to close all their shit, then yeah, absolutely.
Sony mostly pass the camera quality test†, the "fit and finish" test, and ship a relatively clean Android OS.
You also get options to have otherwise-long-forgotten features like 3.5mm headphone jacks and MicroSD slots, and Sony's waterproofing is second to none for phones that you wouldn't naturally describe as "ruggedised".
There are unavoidable issues around pricing (high) and availability (low), but by most of the metrics people would choose to measure phones' quality, features, performance, etc, they are actually doing a great job with their products (at least now that they also offer a respectable duration of OS updates and support).
If you are looking for it too, they tend to be at the upper end of manufacturers for open-source code and documentation availability: https://developerworld.wpp.developer.sony.com/open-source/aosp-on-xperia-open-devices, though with that said due to the relatively small audience for their products, availability of other people's custom ROMs will not necessarily be extensive.
I'm on my fourth of their phones (Z2 2014, XZ2 2017, 1ii 2020, 1vii 2025), every upgrade time I've looked around, and every time I've failed to find something I want to own more than another one.
† The caveat here is they're highly skewed toward operater control; you're very much expected to participate in the photo-taking process and I'm painfully aware that's not what most people want these days. Low assistance provided, basically zero "AI" processing, just lots of rope with which to hang yourself. It'll take beautiful pictures once you get accustomed to it though, whaddaya gonna do?
If it's all going to be proprietary nonsense then we might as well support our local businesses, if you ask me.
Our local down the street phone building businesses?
Artisanal hand carved phones
Ya you know the ones, there's a bunch, there's... Uh... I'm drawing a blank.
pretty much, i went with a oneplus, i bought it mint condition on a site, but im likely to get a brand new one in the future if reasonablly priced(the one i have was)
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i went with a non-pixel phone, because of thier OBSESSION with AI-specific chips, and a non-samsung one. i just like OPR12 for its battery life among other amenities..
Running the so-called AI workloads on the edge is what we want. Especially if the alternative is to run them on google servers.
This is really concerning for the Android ecosystem.
It will make development much harder and slower for CalyxOS and Graphene - which is very bad news as they are tiny teams.
As I understand it this affects all models to a degree, even Fairphone, as source code for Pixels made it easier to see how code could be adapted to support new Android features/APIs/etc for third party phones.
Whelp guess I'll be hoping Linux phones rapidly improve in quality and availability.
You've got to be kidding me man, I wanted to buy a phone that I could put a custom ROM on for years to come, I originally got an ASUS Zenfone for the same reason, and JUST as I get them both, they start locking things down. At least I was able to get lineage on my pixel for now, but who knows about updates!
Without this source, lineage is cooked too.
I havent even had one with grapheneos for a year yet, what the fuck google...
Same. It's about a year for me. And it's not like the phones are cheap.
the silver lining to all this - devs & users might start turning their attention to linux phones:
Are they ready for prime time? Because I'd love a Linux phone but it's sounds like it's be such a step back in usability. But perhaps that's a feature
Not even close from what I've seen, basic stuff doesn't work right.
from my research these 3 are the most polished. (you also have mobian & postmarketos)
If you want something set up out of the box, I would buy the FLX or maybe sailfish.
(Ubuntu touch does not support encryption yet)
I believe both have android app support, but it does drain a bit more battery as its using waydroid.
Sailfish has Aliendalvik for android app support, it's proprietary. I've read good things about it: https://blogs.gnome.org/jdressler/2023/12/20/a-dive-into-jolla-appsupport/
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Linux phones are looking more attractive every day now.
I'm using an Ubuntu touch device as my main driver these days (currently on volla Quintus)
It's good, but it's not there yet in terms of ease of use. If you're not a Linux enthusiast, you will likely have a bad time on UT (can't comment on sailfish, though I'd imagine it suffers in a similar way).
The largest problem is app support... By a mile. Most apps I use are just web apps I've had to manually setup. You can emulate an android and boot into it with waydroid, which will allow you to install apks; But honestly that feels like a cop out... which is why I try to make use of web apps where I can. (It also destroys your battery life... As you're essentially running two phones).
I figured it's not quite there yet. I hope market forces will solve this eventually. If Google manages to make android bad enough, demand for an alternative should arise. I'm already running Linux on my desktop quite happily, thanks to windows 11.
I remember a couple of months ago it was reported here that Google was making Android closed-source and I commented that this will be the end of custom rom's and this was received by the community poorly as many stated that they would still be releasing the code but not their AOSP apps (or something like that) but I already see the writing on the wall. Google doesn't want to be open-source, they where in the past because that gave them free coders to fix their shit and make them more profitable, but now they just want our data and the open-source community is against that, so they are closing doors to the community in order to be able to truly make money with people's information. Wouldn't surprise me if the next Pixel in the works is going with a similar approach as the iPhone and only allow for an eSim as well.
theres more profit to be like apple.
Bought a Pixel 7a for GrapheneOS recently. Wanted to buy a new Pixel tablet for the same. Too bad, no more Google hardware for me.
i almost got a 7, but look at how bad thier uses of exonys chip, battery drainage and obsession with AI, i went OP instead, a brand new OP will be my future purchase once this one craps out.
I won't jump to conclusions yet as the OG announcement causes fears that grapheneOS team weren't worried about... But I for sure don't like where this is heading.
Edit: https://aussie.zone/post/21515124 Disregard, i should know better than being a optimist..
What's with the universal images that Android got support to several years ago? I thought that would stop the need of having custom device code.
GSI can be functional but they frequently break something in my experience . Tried using GSI for my Xiaomi phones and they often lead to problems such as the camera and 5G not working properly.
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this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2025
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