13 ms·

If this finally pushes adoption of truly open Linux phones, then this will end up being a good thing, and the greatest favor that Google could do for the open s

If this finally pushes adoption of truly open Linux phones, then this will end up being a good thing, and the greatest favor that Google could do for the open source community. Tragically, Linux phones have languished and are in an absolute state these days, but a lot of the building blocks are in place if user adoption occurs en masse. (Shout out to the lunatics who have kept this dream alive during these dark years.)

spacebuffer 8mo ago
For me as a desktop linux poweruser, I find this potential transition pretty intimidating, I've never flashed a phone with a custom rom let alone switch to a completely different OS, and I am not sure if the phone can even be reset to its original OS, if things go south.
- chrneu 8mo ago
  It's relatively easy. It's basically a command for each step you want to do and it tends to fail gracefully nowadays. If you can install a linux distro you can flash a custom rom on a well-supported phone. If it were more mainstream I could see GUI apps to manage all this for people, if they don't already exist. Idk I just use adb.
  - paulryanrogers 8mo ago
    It's also high risk. I've bricked two phones doing it.
    - Onawa 8mo ago
      I've been flashing phones for over 2 decades and have never bricked a phone. How did you manage that?
      - user3939382 8mo ago
        Are you seriously implying that flashing phones doesn’t risk bricking them or you’re not aware of that risk are you serious?
        wolrah 8mo ago
        > Are you seriously implying that flashing phones doesn’t risk bricking them or you’re not aware of that risk are you serious? Yes, that is generally the case. As a general rule with an Android phone reflashing the OS itself or the bootloader carries no risk of bricking the device (meaning making it impossible to recover without specialized hardware and/or opening up parts that were not intended to be opened). There are plenty of ways to "soft-brick" a device such that you might need to plug it in to a computer, and adb/fastboot can definitely be a pain in the ass to use (especially on Windows), but if you have a device with an unlocked bootloader it's very rare to be able to actually brick the device while doing normal things. Now, if you're doing abnormal things like reflashing the radio firmware you can absolutely brick some devices there, but you don't have to do that just to boot an alternative OS and generally shouldn't be doing it without very good reason and specific knowledge of exactly what you're doing. I'm not going to say there are no devices where the standard process to flash an alternative OS is dangerous, but none of the relatively common ones I've ever owned or used have been built that way because OEMs don't want their own official firmware updates to be dangerous either. tl;dr: It is sometimes possible to brick a device by flashing the wrong thing incorrectly, but the risk of doing that if you are just installing an alternative OS through a standard process is basically zero.
        luz666 8mo ago
        I am seriously unaware of the risks and also flashing brand new phones :)
        kllrnohj 8mo ago
        "flashing" a phone is largely the same as any OTA update. There's of course always a risk of it going wrong, disk failures are always possible, but it's exceptionally hard to do so accidentally. Especially with custom ROMs where they basically never include a new bootloader, so "flashing" is no different than installing an OS on a desktop system - it's just writing to the boot partition. Which you can always do again since the bootloader is still available.
    - crtasm 8mo ago
      Potential for a brick varies massively depending on phone model, doesn't it?
    - a456463 8mo ago
      I flash phones almost every other week. And tablets. I have been flashing since Androids came out. But never bricked. But maybe that is why I don't have any problems.
    - Markoff 8mo ago
      it's pretty much impossible to hard brick phone, you can almost always recover it I'm running custom ROMs for the last 15 years
  - eldaisfish 8mo ago
    That describes relatively easy for you, but not for the average person who can’t even be bothered to change the default ringtone.
    - keyringlight 8mo ago
      The challenge I've found when looking for instructions for flashing one of my old phones is the assumption of knowledge some rom builders have, or perhaps an assumption about their audience. This seems like it has the potential to bit someone in the ass because if they're relying on other sources like the lineageOS wiki or forum posts elsewhere for example there's no guarantee it'll stay available, complete, or relevant to their variant over time. It's an added burden for what is a gracious volunteer role, but it's a handicap if they want more people using the fruits of their labor.
    - yellowapple 8mo ago
      I can't be bothered to change my phone's default ringtone and yet I've had very little issue installing LineageOS and GrapheneOS on the various phones I've owned over the years.
- fenykep 8mo ago
  /e/OS at least has a browser based installer[0] for quite some supported phones. I definitely recommend trying it out, installing a custom os on my phone gave me the same feeling when I first ran debian on a laptop struggling under windows (even though the performance gains aren't that apparent in my opinion). [0]https://e.foundation/installer/ https://e.foundation/installer/
  - microtonal 8mo ago
    The /e/OS installer is terrible though and often fails, even on their officially supported phones (like Fairphone). The standard recommendation in their forums is nah, just install /e/OS through the command-line. Also, /e/OS has pretty bad security practices (shipping very old kernels, very old vendor firmware, and missing most AOSP security patches). Also, be careful to follow the instructions really carefully. For some devices it's really easy to get the phone in a boot loop, where the only resort is to get your vendor to repair it. E.g. Fairphone 6 has downgrade protection and will become a brick if you relocked the phone when the old system's Android SPL is newer than the new system's.
- mistercheph 8mo ago
  Don't worry if you're not ready, just as on the desktop, there are pioneers ahead of you that will clear the way <3
shimman 8mo ago
Expecting Google to give up control of one of the only alternative operating systems is right up there with believing in the tooth fairy. What you're saying should happen, but it will only happen when the government legislates it happens; which frankly they should be doing (along with nationalizing a few other software projects to be fair). A trillion dollar transnational corporation with massive monopolistic tendencies will never ever do the right thing. Expect to force feed it down their throats.
- yason 8mo ago
  In general, governments seem to be much more invested in making it illegal to have anything that is too open and too free. Even EU is lusting for draconian control features like chat control where you don't own and operate the software you installed on your device even if, at the same timem, they're trying to gnaw on the influence of Big Tech.
  - hunterpayne 8mo ago
    > Even EU is lusting for draconian control features Even the EU??? Huh? Did you misspell 'especially' there? Because when your governments want to spy on your own citizens more than the big tech companies want to collect data for advertising, you probably have a problem.
IshKebab 8mo ago
> If this finally pushes adoption of truly open Linux phones... It won't.
good8675309 8mo ago
Until Android is crippled it will continue to take resources away from Linux Phone development and companies that will launch phones for it
- andrewmcwatters 8mo ago
  I got downvoted heavily about a year ago saying we need to abandon Android and the industry needs to pivot back to just putting GNU/Linux on a phone already. Of course, now Google is doing what Google was always going to do.
beeflet 8mo ago
The limitation of linux phones is hardware. I have been watching the progress of postmarketOS on the fairphone 4, and looks promising.
- fsflover 8mo ago
  https://puri.sm/posts/the-danger-of-focusing-on-specs/ https://puri.sm/posts/the-danger-of-focusing-on-specs/ Sent from my Librem 5.
  - beeflet 8mo ago
    I don't care about specs, I care about functionality and price. The camera on the pinephone doesn't practically work because it is too slow and the quality sucks. You basicially cannot record videos whatsoever. I can't use the device for GPS navigation. I can run whatsapp within waydroid, but it isn't practical due to the battery life and startup limitations that imposes. The GPU on the pinephone sucks, is underpowered, doesn't support OpenGL ES 3 or vulkan, and the user interface is always slow as hell to navigate. So practically I cannot use it as a daily driver. Librem 5 does have enough GPU horsepower, a functioning camera, and good pmOS support. But $800 is a lot to ask to test out switching to linux with no guarantee that my workflow will work or I will have enough battery life. It looks like the librem 5 can't record videos or do GPS navigation yet. I am looking at the librem 5 specs again. The EG25-G is probably a better starting point for the modem now that it has been better documented and reverse engineered as a result of the pinephone project. It is interesting that the L5 has a generic smartcard reader though.
    - fsflover 8mo ago
      > But $800 is a lot to ask to test out switching to linux with no guarantee Commercial phones' costs also include the data value they continuously steal. > It looks like the librem 5 can't record videos It can: https://social.librem.one/@dos/115893142828953827 https://social.librem.one/@dos/115893142828953827 > or do GPS navigation yet Yes, it can: https://forums.puri.sm/t/is-gps-supposed-to-work/21147/76 https://forums.puri.sm/t/is-gps-supposed-to-work/21147/76 > or I will have enough battery life Fortunately, you can replace the battery on the go. But yes, if you make no compromises, you will never win a tiny bit of freedom.
observationist 8mo ago
Even if you have linux, there are still third parties that have control over your hardware. Even if you're using graphenos, you can't block the sim or the cellular radio stack, and likely other modules on the SoC, from at-will access to every sensor on the device. You can at least protect your files, unless there's a mitm or other vector that graphenos can't cope with. And at worst, they can simply clone all your encrypted bits and wait on Moore's law or sufficient cubits to go back and crack the copy, on the off chance there's anything they want with your data in the first place.
- fsflover 8mo ago
  My phone has hardware kill switches for modem, WiFi/Bluetooth and mic/camera. All three together also kill all sensors.
  - observationist 8mo ago
    If it's got a sim card, it's still phoning home and providing location data. You can't escape the panopticon. A faraday bag gets you mostly there, though, but the point isn't that you can maneuver against it, it's that the device and its operation is fundamentally compromised by design. There's a whole lot of shady crap underlying the infrastructure and the hardware that consumers cannot touch, pinephone / librephone or otherwise. It's not designed for consent. At best you can gain ephemeral relief, but even that is illusory, because by simple process of elimination, differential analysis allows fine grained ID and tracking of people even if they don't have accounts, phones, interact with websites, etc. It's not a shady cabal of lizard people, it's just the grubby natural alignment of interests by a wide ranging set of companies and regulators and groups who allow it to happen without imposing any accountability, and ensuring that the system remains structured such that no effective accountability can be imposed. Extorting constant streams of data for adtech is too valuable and the entire thing is too complex for silly things like ethics to interfere.
    - fsflover 8mo ago
      > If it's got a sim card, it's still phoning home and providing location data Only when the kill switch is on. I control it. Also, it's possible to get AweSIM service hiding your data from the mobile operators.
cwillu 8mo ago
It won't though, because there's a ecosystem of banking/insurance/whatever apps that have bought into the android/iphone lockdown mindsete that people will simply be locked out of. Open alternatives can grow when there is a viable means of slow growth, and cutting off the oxygen to such things is the implicit intent.
- ipdashc 8mo ago
  > banking/insurance/whatever apps I know banking apps are the typical example, but I've always wondered why. I use my bank's app maybe once or twice a year when I need to Zelle someone, which I only need to do when they don't have Venmo. (Unless we consider Venmo a banking app.) I only have one bank's app installed, the rest of my banks I only interact with over their website, on desktop. As for insurance, I've never had an insurance company's app installed. Am I just an outlier here? Honestly, if I switched to a non standard OS, I'd be more annoyed about losing, say, Google Maps, Uber/Lyft, or various chat apps. Banking and insurance just don't come to mind at all as something I need my phone for.
  - BenjiWiebe 8mo ago
    I can't deposit checks over the website, and I use a bank with no physical locations near me.
    - nradov 8mo ago
      That's true, but the notion that we're still using paper checks in 2026 is so crazy. And yet they remain the cheapest way to handle many transactions in the US financial system. Like a lot of small healthcare providers still prefer to receive paper checks from insurance companies because the electronic payment processors take a 3% fee.
      - hermanzegerman 8mo ago
        Why won't they just use Bank Transfers? Using Checks or Credit Cards for Payments between companies sounds completely insane and stupid
richardboegli 8mo ago
Have a look at this post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46723594 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46723594 from Emre @emrekosmaz It is a smartphone that runs Android, launches Debian, and dual-boots Windows 11 Actual link https://nexphone.com/blog/the-tale-of-nexphone-one-phone-every-computer https://nexphone.com/blog/the-tale-of-nexphone-one-phone-eve...
matheusmoreira 8mo ago
There's no point. Remote attestation means your device needs to be corporate owned to be trusted. Even if you had your own linux phone, it wouldn't be able to interface with institutions such as banks and governments. They trust Google's keys, not yours. This doesn't quite end free computing, it just kills it for normal people and ostracizes us hackers who insist on owning our systems.
- jadbox 8mo ago
  Not sure what gov require, but most credit unions do not use such lockdowns
  - matheusmoreira 8mo ago
    They will.
    - JoshTriplett 8mo ago
      Credit unions, at least in theory, are known for caring more about their customers. It'd be worth explicitly giving them the feedback that you use them via their website or via an app that works on an Open Source phone, and telling them that that's one reason you're a customer.
      - matheusmoreira 8mo ago
        Fraud prevention. If they lock things down, they lose less money to fraud. I think they should just have to suck it up and eat the cost but obviously they don't think that way. Only a small minority even understands and cares about these issues. The money they save by trampling over our freedom is no doubt much higher than the value brought in by us. They will no doubt sacrifice us for increased profits if we force the issue. We have no leverage. There is no reason whatsoever for a major corporation to not use remote attestation technology. Banks will use it because fraud. Streaming services will use it because piracy. Messaging services will use it because spam, bots. If you're the corporation, the user is your enemy and you want to protect yourself from him. Governments want this too. Encryption. Anonymity. They need to control it all. Free computers are too subversive for them. They cannot tolerate it.
kelvinjps10 8mo ago
But there is a lot of resources put into the android ecosystem already. Even open source apps like anki, syncthing etc
riedel 8mo ago
Adoption would mean that orgs like the European Payment Initiative behind Wero would adopt Linux phones even other AOSP ROMs. Not seeing that. Banks and streaming platforms that require DRM are keeping most (non-activist type) users locked in.
fwipsy 8mo ago
It may push a minority of users who really care about open source to Linux phones. I expect the majority of users will grumble but cave and re-adopt mainstream Android or Apple.

spacebuffer 8mo ago

For me as a desktop linux poweruser, I find this potential transition pretty intimidating, I've never flashed a phone with a custom rom let alone switch to a completely different OS, and I am not sure if the phone can even be reset to its original OS, if things go south.

chrneu 8mo ago
It's relatively easy. It's basically a command for each step you want to do and it tends to fail gracefully nowadays. If you can install a linux distro you can flash a custom rom on a well-supported phone. If it were more mainstream I could see GUI apps to manage all this for people, if they don't already exist. Idk I just use adb.
- paulryanrogers 8mo ago
  It's also high risk. I've bricked two phones doing it.
  - Onawa 8mo ago
    I've been flashing phones for over 2 decades and have never bricked a phone. How did you manage that?
    - user3939382 8mo ago
      Are you seriously implying that flashing phones doesn’t risk bricking them or you’re not aware of that risk are you serious?
      - wolrah 8mo ago
        > Are you seriously implying that flashing phones doesn’t risk bricking them or you’re not aware of that risk are you serious? Yes, that is generally the case. As a general rule with an Android phone reflashing the OS itself or the bootloader carries no risk of bricking the device (meaning making it impossible to recover without specialized hardware and/or opening up parts that were not intended to be opened). There are plenty of ways to "soft-brick" a device such that you might need to plug it in to a computer, and adb/fastboot can definitely be a pain in the ass to use (especially on Windows), but if you have a device with an unlocked bootloader it's very rare to be able to actually brick the device while doing normal things. Now, if you're doing abnormal things like reflashing the radio firmware you can absolutely brick some devices there, but you don't have to do that just to boot an alternative OS and generally shouldn't be doing it without very good reason and specific knowledge of exactly what you're doing. I'm not going to say there are no devices where the standard process to flash an alternative OS is dangerous, but none of the relatively common ones I've ever owned or used have been built that way because OEMs don't want their own official firmware updates to be dangerous either. tl;dr: It is sometimes possible to brick a device by flashing the wrong thing incorrectly, but the risk of doing that if you are just installing an alternative OS through a standard process is basically zero.
      - luz666 8mo ago
        I am seriously unaware of the risks and also flashing brand new phones :)
      - kllrnohj 8mo ago
        "flashing" a phone is largely the same as any OTA update. There's of course always a risk of it going wrong, disk failures are always possible, but it's exceptionally hard to do so accidentally. Especially with custom ROMs where they basically never include a new bootloader, so "flashing" is no different than installing an OS on a desktop system - it's just writing to the boot partition. Which you can always do again since the bootloader is still available.
  - crtasm 8mo ago
    Potential for a brick varies massively depending on phone model, doesn't it?
  - a456463 8mo ago
    I flash phones almost every other week. And tablets. I have been flashing since Androids came out. But never bricked. But maybe that is why I don't have any problems.
  - Markoff 8mo ago
    it's pretty much impossible to hard brick phone, you can almost always recover it I'm running custom ROMs for the last 15 years
- eldaisfish 8mo ago
  That describes relatively easy for you, but not for the average person who can’t even be bothered to change the default ringtone.
  - keyringlight 8mo ago
    The challenge I've found when looking for instructions for flashing one of my old phones is the assumption of knowledge some rom builders have, or perhaps an assumption about their audience. This seems like it has the potential to bit someone in the ass because if they're relying on other sources like the lineageOS wiki or forum posts elsewhere for example there's no guarantee it'll stay available, complete, or relevant to their variant over time. It's an added burden for what is a gracious volunteer role, but it's a handicap if they want more people using the fruits of their labor.
  - yellowapple 8mo ago
    I can't be bothered to change my phone's default ringtone and yet I've had very little issue installing LineageOS and GrapheneOS on the various phones I've owned over the years.
fenykep 8mo ago
/e/OS at least has a browser based installer[0] for quite some supported phones. I definitely recommend trying it out, installing a custom os on my phone gave me the same feeling when I first ran debian on a laptop struggling under windows (even though the performance gains aren't that apparent in my opinion). [0]https://e.foundation/installer/ https://e.foundation/installer/
- microtonal 8mo ago
  The /e/OS installer is terrible though and often fails, even on their officially supported phones (like Fairphone). The standard recommendation in their forums is nah, just install /e/OS through the command-line. Also, /e/OS has pretty bad security practices (shipping very old kernels, very old vendor firmware, and missing most AOSP security patches). Also, be careful to follow the instructions really carefully. For some devices it's really easy to get the phone in a boot loop, where the only resort is to get your vendor to repair it. E.g. Fairphone 6 has downgrade protection and will become a brick if you relocked the phone when the old system's Android SPL is newer than the new system's.
mistercheph 8mo ago
Don't worry if you're not ready, just as on the desktop, there are pioneers ahead of you that will clear the way <3

shimman 8mo ago

Expecting Google to give up control of one of the only alternative operating systems is right up there with believing in the tooth fairy. What you're saying should happen, but it will only happen when the government legislates it happens; which frankly they should be doing (along with nationalizing a few other software projects to be fair). A trillion dollar transnational corporation with massive monopolistic tendencies will never ever do the right thing. Expect to force feed it down their throats.

yason 8mo ago
In general, governments seem to be much more invested in making it illegal to have anything that is too open and too free. Even EU is lusting for draconian control features like chat control where you don't own and operate the software you installed on your device even if, at the same timem, they're trying to gnaw on the influence of Big Tech.
- hunterpayne 8mo ago
  > Even EU is lusting for draconian control features Even the EU??? Huh? Did you misspell 'especially' there? Because when your governments want to spy on your own citizens more than the big tech companies want to collect data for advertising, you probably have a problem.

IshKebab 8mo ago

> If this finally pushes adoption of truly open Linux phones... It won't.

good8675309 8mo ago

Until Android is crippled it will continue to take resources away from Linux Phone development and companies that will launch phones for it

andrewmcwatters 8mo ago
I got downvoted heavily about a year ago saying we need to abandon Android and the industry needs to pivot back to just putting GNU/Linux on a phone already. Of course, now Google is doing what Google was always going to do.

beeflet 8mo ago

The limitation of linux phones is hardware. I have been watching the progress of postmarketOS on the fairphone 4, and looks promising.

fsflover 8mo ago
https://puri.sm/posts/the-danger-of-focusing-on-specs/ https://puri.sm/posts/the-danger-of-focusing-on-specs/ Sent from my Librem 5.
- beeflet 8mo ago
  I don't care about specs, I care about functionality and price. The camera on the pinephone doesn't practically work because it is too slow and the quality sucks. You basicially cannot record videos whatsoever. I can't use the device for GPS navigation. I can run whatsapp within waydroid, but it isn't practical due to the battery life and startup limitations that imposes. The GPU on the pinephone sucks, is underpowered, doesn't support OpenGL ES 3 or vulkan, and the user interface is always slow as hell to navigate. So practically I cannot use it as a daily driver. Librem 5 does have enough GPU horsepower, a functioning camera, and good pmOS support. But $800 is a lot to ask to test out switching to linux with no guarantee that my workflow will work or I will have enough battery life. It looks like the librem 5 can't record videos or do GPS navigation yet. I am looking at the librem 5 specs again. The EG25-G is probably a better starting point for the modem now that it has been better documented and reverse engineered as a result of the pinephone project. It is interesting that the L5 has a generic smartcard reader though.
  - fsflover 8mo ago
    > But $800 is a lot to ask to test out switching to linux with no guarantee Commercial phones' costs also include the data value they continuously steal. > It looks like the librem 5 can't record videos It can: https://social.librem.one/@dos/115893142828953827 https://social.librem.one/@dos/115893142828953827 > or do GPS navigation yet Yes, it can: https://forums.puri.sm/t/is-gps-supposed-to-work/21147/76 https://forums.puri.sm/t/is-gps-supposed-to-work/21147/76 > or I will have enough battery life Fortunately, you can replace the battery on the go. But yes, if you make no compromises, you will never win a tiny bit of freedom.

observationist 8mo ago

Even if you have linux, there are still third parties that have control over your hardware. Even if you're using graphenos, you can't block the sim or the cellular radio stack, and likely other modules on the SoC, from at-will access to every sensor on the device. You can at least protect your files, unless there's a mitm or other vector that graphenos can't cope with. And at worst, they can simply clone all your encrypted bits and wait on Moore's law or sufficient cubits to go back and crack the copy, on the off chance there's anything they want with your data in the first place.

fsflover 8mo ago
My phone has hardware kill switches for modem, WiFi/Bluetooth and mic/camera. All three together also kill all sensors.
- observationist 8mo ago
  If it's got a sim card, it's still phoning home and providing location data. You can't escape the panopticon. A faraday bag gets you mostly there, though, but the point isn't that you can maneuver against it, it's that the device and its operation is fundamentally compromised by design. There's a whole lot of shady crap underlying the infrastructure and the hardware that consumers cannot touch, pinephone / librephone or otherwise. It's not designed for consent. At best you can gain ephemeral relief, but even that is illusory, because by simple process of elimination, differential analysis allows fine grained ID and tracking of people even if they don't have accounts, phones, interact with websites, etc. It's not a shady cabal of lizard people, it's just the grubby natural alignment of interests by a wide ranging set of companies and regulators and groups who allow it to happen without imposing any accountability, and ensuring that the system remains structured such that no effective accountability can be imposed. Extorting constant streams of data for adtech is too valuable and the entire thing is too complex for silly things like ethics to interfere.
  - fsflover 8mo ago
    > If it's got a sim card, it's still phoning home and providing location data Only when the kill switch is on. I control it. Also, it's possible to get AweSIM service hiding your data from the mobile operators.

cwillu 8mo ago

It won't though, because there's a ecosystem of banking/insurance/whatever apps that have bought into the android/iphone lockdown mindsete that people will simply be locked out of. Open alternatives can grow when there is a viable means of slow growth, and cutting off the oxygen to such things is the implicit intent.

ipdashc 8mo ago
> banking/insurance/whatever apps I know banking apps are the typical example, but I've always wondered why. I use my bank's app maybe once or twice a year when I need to Zelle someone, which I only need to do when they don't have Venmo. (Unless we consider Venmo a banking app.) I only have one bank's app installed, the rest of my banks I only interact with over their website, on desktop. As for insurance, I've never had an insurance company's app installed. Am I just an outlier here? Honestly, if I switched to a non standard OS, I'd be more annoyed about losing, say, Google Maps, Uber/Lyft, or various chat apps. Banking and insurance just don't come to mind at all as something I need my phone for.
- BenjiWiebe 8mo ago
  I can't deposit checks over the website, and I use a bank with no physical locations near me.
  - nradov 8mo ago
    That's true, but the notion that we're still using paper checks in 2026 is so crazy. And yet they remain the cheapest way to handle many transactions in the US financial system. Like a lot of small healthcare providers still prefer to receive paper checks from insurance companies because the electronic payment processors take a 3% fee.
    - hermanzegerman 8mo ago
      Why won't they just use Bank Transfers? Using Checks or Credit Cards for Payments between companies sounds completely insane and stupid

richardboegli 8mo ago

Have a look at this post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46723594 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46723594 from Emre @emrekosmaz It is a smartphone that runs Android, launches Debian, and dual-boots Windows 11 Actual link https://nexphone.com/blog/the-tale-of-nexphone-one-phone-every-computer https://nexphone.com/blog/the-tale-of-nexphone-one-phone-eve...

matheusmoreira 8mo ago

There's no point. Remote attestation means your device needs to be corporate owned to be trusted. Even if you had your own linux phone, it wouldn't be able to interface with institutions such as banks and governments. They trust Google's keys, not yours. This doesn't quite end free computing, it just kills it for normal people and ostracizes us hackers who insist on owning our systems.

jadbox 8mo ago
Not sure what gov require, but most credit unions do not use such lockdowns
- matheusmoreira 8mo ago
  They will.
  - JoshTriplett 8mo ago
    Credit unions, at least in theory, are known for caring more about their customers. It'd be worth explicitly giving them the feedback that you use them via their website or via an app that works on an Open Source phone, and telling them that that's one reason you're a customer.
    - matheusmoreira 8mo ago
      Fraud prevention. If they lock things down, they lose less money to fraud. I think they should just have to suck it up and eat the cost but obviously they don't think that way. Only a small minority even understands and cares about these issues. The money they save by trampling over our freedom is no doubt much higher than the value brought in by us. They will no doubt sacrifice us for increased profits if we force the issue. We have no leverage. There is no reason whatsoever for a major corporation to not use remote attestation technology. Banks will use it because fraud. Streaming services will use it because piracy. Messaging services will use it because spam, bots. If you're the corporation, the user is your enemy and you want to protect yourself from him. Governments want this too. Encryption. Anonymity. They need to control it all. Free computers are too subversive for them. They cannot tolerate it.

kelvinjps10 8mo ago

But there is a lot of resources put into the android ecosystem already. Even open source apps like anki, syncthing etc

riedel 8mo ago

Adoption would mean that orgs like the European Payment Initiative behind Wero would adopt Linux phones even other AOSP ROMs. Not seeing that. Banks and streaming platforms that require DRM are keeping most (non-activist type) users locked in.

fwipsy 8mo ago

It may push a minority of users who really care about open source to Linux phones. I expect the majority of users will grumble but cave and re-adopt mainstream Android or Apple.