Sounds like good ideas that'll be a pain in the ass for innocent power users.
Until they sign back in to their own phone..? How is that a pain?
Not eveyrone has or needs a google or any system-wide account to use their phones.
This assumes everything works fine. It's probably an edge case, but on my Nexus 6P an update somehow messed with my encryption keys, and the screen lock pattern that I'd used for over a year stopped getting recognised. I can't remember the solution but I vaguely remember having to factory reset. Whatever the solution was, it wasn't too different to what a thief would do... I was bypassing the screen lock after all.
because I want to get rid of google, and not use or even have a google account anymore
If you don't sign into a Google account, you will never arm this mechanism at all.
Then don't buy their devices? What a novel solution.
Who's devices? This is not a manufacturer dependent thing.
Android is useful without any google built-in software, and unfortunately it's not affordable to avoid having a smartphone in today's world.
If you wanted to say to not buy Android devices, all I can say is you are very ignorant. And ignorance is a lot of things but novel.
I do not know if your being sarcastic, ignorant, or lazy, but there are other companies out there that produce cheap phones with operating systems other than android.
cheap phones with operating systems other than android.
Who please? All I know of are Apple, or Nothing Phone- they're not cheap IMO.
Genuinely interested though, I'd love to deGoogle.
Since you asked nicely:
https://pine64.com/product-category/pinephone/
https://www.punkt.ch/en/products/mp02-4g-mobile-phone/
https://shop.puri.sm/shop/librem-5/
https://www.kaiostech.com/explore/devices/
https://shop.jolla.com/details/91eb91d3-c3de-41d0-b3c0-7075a339112d/
There's a reason iOS and Android OS both dominate the market: they do literally everything all these phones attempt to do but better in pretty much every single way, including the ability to easily de-Google ironically.
Aha! I have heard of Pinephone. Had forgotten them. Will investigate these others. Cheers!
Looks like they "just" have to stop signing in with a Google account, and may have to enable adb and install apps using it / e.g. Shizuku
Okay, according to the article, this functionality will only activate after you have signed into a Google account for the first time on the device. So, at least for those of us who use custom software such as lineage OS, that won't matter since we don't put a Google account on the device to begin with in a lot of cases. A lot of us boot the phone for the first time, skip the entire setup wizard as fast as possible without signing in or any of that stuff, and then immediately enable OEM unlocking and flash the lineage or whatever software.
I also imagine FRP will be ignored by custom ROMs even if the secret data is set.
Well, that won't matter unless it's a brand new phone or has been properly erased because you won't be able to install lineage anyway unless one of those two conditions are met.
"Theievs" definitely not targeting power users...
I'm more focused on the adorable plushie in the hero image 🥹❤️
So... I flash wrong ROM, wipe everything and install the correct one and I'm screwed? Or do I just login with my Google account?
I think you would be fine. You’re only restricted if you log into the vanilla ROM, do some stuff, and later if you want to use the vanilla ROM again you’ll be required to login to the account you used last on the vanilla ROM to make it happy with the device.
I don’t expect custom ROMs will have any compatibility with this feature. I believe they would bypass it entirely.
I guess they can skip this crap completely whatsoever
The more I hear about Android 15,
the less excited I get for it..
for me it's been the same since 8. sure there are some good changes, but generally it's forced restrictions upon more forced restrictions, and I hate it
Google is making Android worse and worse in each release.
Why exactly is this worse?
It is an optional feature that the majority of people will be using, making herd immunity for those who do not
yeah great, EDL mode still is exists...
True! But it still hurts the resale value because users are likely to notice a device with broken secure boot if you were to somehow use it to forcefully flash a modified ROM.
Are you proposing this mode could be used to somehow clear the secret data?
My understanding is EDL mode can refuse to flash some partitions and some devices will not enter this mode if fastboot is working, which also enforces preventing access to some partitions. Most people who use EDL already unlocked the bootloader, but I don’t think this method works on all devices if the boot loader is still locked.
And for those who dont install GApps...?
Still neat I guess.
This could still be bypassed by flashing a new OS that deliberately messes up the userdata wipe-persisting secrets. Well idk if there's a way to prevent that, but I guess really needy and tech-savvy people could recover lost devices that way
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