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Several phone brands rumored to be planning a major shift away from Android (www.phonearena.com)

submitted 1 month ago by commander@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[-] apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world 192 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Before anyone gets too excited, the headline is clickbait. The bigger Chinese phone brands are looking into de-googled Android. They are still going to use Android.

several prominent Chinese smartphone manufacturers, including Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, and OnePlus, are exploring the possibility of developing versions of the Android operating system that do not rely on Google Mobile Services.

Chinese laptop makers are also in search of an OS that isn't Windows. Queue a race to prop Linux with Android support on that side of things.

[-] LMurch@thelemmy.club 75 points 1 month ago

de-Googled android sounds even better. The story is cooler than the title!

[-] eco_game@discuss.tchncs.de 30 points 1 month ago

I like your spirit, but I don't think a Chinese equivalent to Google Play Services would be more desirable

[-] woelkchen@lemmy.world 18 points 1 month ago

de-Googled android sounds even better.

They are already degoogled for the Chinese market. What the Chinese Android variants to not have is a shared replacement for Play Services and a shared app store because everyone is doing their own thing for maps API, payment, ...

[-] apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world 8 points 1 month ago

I run that already with CalyxOS. I dig it.

[-] agitated_judge@sh.itjust.works 23 points 1 month ago

It also says:

It is currently unknown whether these companies would aim for compatibility with existing Android apps or follow the path of Huawei's latest HarmonyOS NEXT, which removes Android app support entirely

So, it's not clear yet.

[-] radiohead37@lemmynsfw.com 19 points 1 month ago

The US/China decoupling is happening everywhere.

[-] libra00@lemmy.world 9 points 1 month ago

The front line is everywhere, there be no shelter here.

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[-] troed@fedia.io 5 points 1 month ago

Waydroid is pretty nice, integrating the Android apps as regular apps in the Linux UI.

[-] network_switch@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 month ago

Waydroid is very close to greatness. My major hope there is Valve contributions to Waydroid for probable Steam Deck integration will make it incredibly seamless. There’s also the Android Translation Layer being developed

https://gitlab.com/android_translation_layer/android_translation_layer

[-] knighthawk0811@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 month ago

de-googled Android you say?

ISeeThisAsAnAbsoluteWin.jpg

[-] zipzoopaboop@lemmynsfw.com 2 points 1 month ago

KDE connect is already pretty sweet

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[+] Lembot_0002@lemm.ee 95 points 1 month ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

[deleted]

[-] redlemace@lemmy.world 37 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Exact! And please no bloatware!!

Oh wait, before anything else : NO, and I really mean NO AI and/or VR shit. Just none. None A T A L L

[-] catloaf@lemm.ee 7 points 1 month ago

So AOSP

[-] 01189998819991197253@infosec.pub 4 points 1 month ago

So you exclusively want ai. Got it.

-Microsoft, probably

[-] altphoto@lemmy.today 4 points 1 month ago

Clippie coming right up!

[-] muusemuuse@lemm.ee 2 points 1 month ago

Dude, you get free third party bullshit with every update. What’s not to love?

[-] tal@lemmy.today 21 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I don't believe that they're likely to do GNU/Linux. I bet that they're going to do a fork of Android off AOSP or something like that.

Android's had a huge amount of work put into it to make it suitable to be a consumer mobile phone OS, and the companies here aren't doing this because they want stuff that GNU/Linux does, but rather because they're Chinese companies worried about a US-China industrial decoupling and its risks for them. Like, they were okay with the technical status; what changed was that they started to worry about having the rug pulled out from them.

That being said, I can at least imagine that helping GNU/Linux phone adoption. So, think about what happened with video games. There were some major platforms out there -- MacOS, iOS, Windows, various consoles, Android, GNU/Linux. That fragmented the market. Trying to port software to all platforms became a huge pain. What a lot of game developers did was to target a more-or-less platform-agnostic engine and let the engine handle the platform abstraction.

If the mobile OS space fragments further -- like, Android splits into "Google Android" and "China Android"

my guess is that that'll help drive demand for platform-agnostic engines to help improve portability, and porting one engine to GNU/Linux is a lot easier than every individual program.

[-] ptz@dubvee.org 14 points 1 month ago

Is this the year of the Ubuntu Touch Smartphone?

Probably not, but it should be.

[-] Num10ck@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

is it ready for normies to daily drive?

[-] ptz@dubvee.org 4 points 1 month ago

Seems pretty polished, but I genuinely don't know. None of my devices support it, so I haven't had the opportunity to test drive it.

At some point, "normies" are just going to have to break down and learn something.

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[-] bdonvr@thelemmy.club 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

No. I have a second phone with it just to play with.

It's functional, but rough. App support is lacking, VoLTE doesn't work still which means on countries like the US which shutdown 2/3G you cannot make or receive calls. The UI is clunky and dated.

I think a lot of these issues would go away pretty quick if it got a lot of attention. But then it's unlikely to get much attention without that stuff. Vicious cycle. It's a good base to build on.

[-] cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de 10 points 1 month ago

I would love to have a phone that I could just plug into a USB C dock and use as a normal computer. They've got plenty of processing power for that now. Every single program I use except for games could run on a phone if it used normal GNU/Linux.

[-] Buelldozer@lemmy.today 1 points 1 month ago

Samsung Dex already does this with Android.

[-] ilinamorato@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

Honestly, I think the old FirefoxOS could do well these days. Literally everything an app can do can be done by a browser with a decent caching/local storage scheme. Slap a decent camera on that and it would be amazing.

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[-] undefined@lemmy.hogru.ch 2 points 1 month ago

postmarketOS?

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[-] Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world 17 points 1 month ago

It makes sense for Chinese smartphone OEMs to move away from the Google version of Android. In the medium to long term you are setting up yourself for failure if you are reliant on an American company.

Unfortunately, the United States cannot be trusted.

[-] radiohead37@lemmynsfw.com 4 points 1 month ago

It’s not like China can be trusted either. This is a matter of not relying on your adversary.

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[-] libra00@lemmy.world 13 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

You probably should've led with the fact that this is Chinese phones, not like Samsung and shit.

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[-] vermaterc@lemmy.ml 11 points 1 month ago

Please, do not post clickbait

[-] altphoto@lemmy.today 5 points 1 month ago

Google meet Zune!

[-] DrFistington@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

Yeah bullshit. What mobile is are they moving towards? Oh, Android OS? Yeah makes sense since there isn't any competition

[-] MTK@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

Title is misleading, they are moving away from google services.

[-] BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

Aww, and I here I was hoping multiple vendors were FINALLY going to contribute to mobile linux.

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[-] network_switch@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 month ago

Anything closer to supporting regular Linux applications the better. Though I’d expect anything like this to just be Android with well funded alternatives to Google applications/services. Whatever happens will be good for non-Google/Apple/Microsoft directed platforms

[-] daggermoon@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago

To what? Linux? I'll believe it when I see it.

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[-] AI_toothbrush@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 month ago

You mean the brands that literally do this already? Pretty bad article

[-] Teknikal@eviltoast.org 3 points 1 month ago

Harmony Os will probably end up taking over realistically just due to everything going on in the world.

[-] woelkchen@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

Harmony Os will probably end up taking over realistically just due to everything going on in the world.

For Huawei but their competitors have no interest in that. Just look at the degoogled Android phones for the domestic Chinese market: Everyone ships their own app store and replacement APIs for PlayServices (not compatible to Google's). So app developers need to target each vendor's flavor of Android individually. It's insane.

The logical way would be to create a joint venture for a common app store and PlayStore replacements but they don't. Maybe this story is about exactly that but it should tell you that Xiaomi and the others have no interest in being controlled by a 3rd party.

[-] vga@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

USA is being horrible at the moment, but China has a LOT of convincing to do before I'll let them deliberately have my data.

Best way remains to raise as high a digital moat against everyone. If you need a smartphone, get a Pixel, install Graphene on it and as few apps as possible.

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[-] justi@lemm.ee 1 points 1 month ago

One can only hope

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this post was submitted on 02 May 2025

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