cross-posted from: https://jlai.lu/post/24787719
Starting next year, Google will begin to verify the identities of developers distributing their apps on Android devices, not just those who distribute via the Play Store.
Is this just a signature check when installing? Could it be bypassed by getting your dev cert and just signing everything you want to install? Things like obtainium and fdroid could even have a “load your own cert” option and automate this.
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Apparently they’re doing it to comply with the EU’s Digital Services Act. But they’re doing it in the USA too.
My personal favorite is how they are doing it to prevent data theft and malware. All they have ever done is trick people out of data. All of their shitty apps that I can not remove from my Samsung phone ARE the malware I do not want. Fuck Google and every person that works there!
Luigi #2 where are you?
For fucks sake, let’s find out what Fairphone needs in the US to be used with other services and create a gofundme for them to get it. Goddamn I am beyond sick of Google’s shit right now. It is constantly a nightmare to get around their bloatware and deal with the rest of the surveillance nightmare on a daily basis. Fairphone works on T Mobile but they suck!
Wish we lived in a world where open source was funded even at a single percentage of what this oligopoly pulls in each year. We’d have a viable alternative to the duopoly by now.
Baby steps: I wish it was mandated that any software receiving even a penny in public funding must be open source down to the last byte.
The world is ruled by force and not by justice which does not exist, so soon we will most likely live in a dystopia.
I’m probably going to spam this around a bit, since most people don’t seem to know about it, but a reminder that FuriLabs has a (GNU+)Linux phone with decent spec.s and the ability to run Android app.s (from what I’ve heard) pretty decently: https://furilabs.com/
Biggest drawback is it’s based on Halium. Usual growing pains of a new product/company apply but apparently the company is pretty responsive and their dev.s have worked with customers to get things like calling working with the carrier and bands of their country where it hasn’t worked before so improvements move pretty quickly.
Collection of different experiences I’ve variously seen online over the last year or so:
- https://clehaxze.tw/gemlog/2025/07-20-flx1-actually-usable-linux-phone.gmi
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41839326
- https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1fa1ljn/furilabs_flx1/
- https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1j46f2w/flx1_linux_phone_display_out/
- https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/03/furiphone_flx1/
I don’t own one, myself, so I can’t give any personal experience but I’ve seen it around for a few years now but most people don’t seem to even know about it. Maybe there’s a reason for that? But none I’ve ever seen anyone say.
Why does every interesting / unique phone have to be phablet sized. ;(
I dunno if sufficiently so but their new model is smaller and thinner, competitively: https://furilabs.com/shop/flx1s/
Loses the removable battery and headphone jack (sadly), though; but you do gain hardware switches and an extra 2GiB of RAM.
Still too big for me to comfortably use and carry around, unfortunately.
That sucks; if I hear anything about any decently-operating Linux phones of reasonable size, I’ll try and let you know.
With a microSD slot and a 3.5mm jack, too. I’m just gonna go ahead and save this
yup, they are closing in. i wonder why the surveillance wing of the fascist regime wants to control everyone’s digital life that more tightly.
you guys may have the power to protest this before it goes worldwide. i wonder if there will be real pushback.
It is unlikely that there will be a real resistance, the majority will resign themselves like submissive cattle and only a few will try to fight to the end, I have already seen this in history.
I mean, some of us did when GrapheneOS and folks started to bootlick goolag for their walled garden in pro of security as well as the economical breach they did not cover (Pixels are not available to everynyan) and even incentivated.
Yet here we are again.
Yawn. Guess more people will just have to not install gapps…
Let Google know what you think about this: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfN3UQeNspQsZCO2ITkdzMxv81rJDEGGjO-UIDDY28Rz_GEVA/viewform
Love it!
Time to fund /e/OS GraoheneOS etc but also bridges like Waydroid until we can use e.g. PmOS and avoid Android altogether.
Time to fund /e/OS GraoheneOS
no.
those are just android with some modification. two years from now google can easily disrupt them too.
phones need a copyleft new OS. not a foss one, an actual copyleft one. with an independent group managing it.
an OS that a company can decide what app I can run on it is just a surveillance apparatus gadget.
google never wanted user to have control of their phone even 10 years ago.
the easiest way to check this is to see if you can stop an installed app to ever do stuff without you explicitly opening it. they are so many “triggers” that apps can register and run based on them that user cant do anything about them. “wifi connected” “wifi disconnected” and so on.
if an app can “listen” to these triggers and I cant disable it from listening to them (even for non-system apps) them I don’t really own my phone. then android is just a attention stealing spam machine at best and spying and terror gadget for world’s supremacist regimes too.
I think even apple iOS has that option (disabling backgournd refresh per app ) and in that regard is better than android. If I wasn’t against non-foss software and I didn’t live in Iran, at this point apple iOS is not that different fro google and is more polished too.
Sure I’d support that, is there such a project or starting one? If not what’s the closest?
So I guess my next phone will be a Chinese phone. Even if it spies on me, I’ll have the freedom to install whatever I want from anywhere.
The Chinese have a golden window of opportunity. Let’s hope they don’t mess this up.
It might just be time to kick that “smartphone” addiction and just use burner phones.
Aside from Signal messenger, I feel like I could go back to having a casio watch, some sort of GPS in my vehicle, and a dumb phone. My phone is ancient and hasn’t gotten a security update in years, I was thinking of going Graphene next but maybe the solution is to just dump it and go full 1990s again.
Maps and encrypted messengers.
Is sad that PinePhone are inaccesible in a lot of places. They dont send where I live because they use DHL (shitty service which charges 34 euros to send from the capital city to where I live because is “remote area” despite is the city in the airport and is nearer than the capital city) and the pricing was 1.5 times the price of the product so they cancelled the option (as well as they dont know the different custom that may exist in special zones in the same country).
This is why you use a proxy service. Also more secure against interdiction attacks.
The provided (Pine64) could just use a different shipping company for those cases, such as Seur which is more reilable and fair than DHL. Yet they hold themselves in that.
Those proxy services usually do not target custom stores (Banango and Guanxe Prime).
Also, it leaves you unprotected if something is bad with the goods, as the return parcel ticket targets the initial destination.
ProxySto.re
Anonshop.appYou definitely can buy from custom stores. Just send them the URL and the Monero.
They dont send to my place :3
The second one has the same problems I mentioned in a post before and in the service to send anywhere, 600 USD is prohibitive.
It seems Google has been tightening control over Android in recent years and this looks like the next major step. Most people probably won’t care and the only realistic option for users who value software freedom and privacy is to wait until Linux or another free and open-source OS becomes a viable alternative. Overall a disappointing turn of events for the mobile computing space
FairPhone with /e/OS by default is the EU answer by the e-Foundation
Only available to people who can afford nearly an iPhone x3
Well, it’s not a cheap phone, but it’s a phone for the rest of your life, it’s full modular, that means, you can fix and change everything by yourself any component of the phone, no need to pay money to an technic workshop. Apart it offers also sys specs which fits the price.
All this still does not matter if you cannot afford it. It is as simple as that.
Well, even if you can’t afford the price for an FairPhone, you can use /e/OS or also LinageOS in your Phone instead of Android, they are free and full based on the Android code, so all your apps will work in these without problems, but without Google breathing in your neck, dictating which app you can use and which not. You can also use some Linux distros made for Mobile, like Ubuntu Mobile and others, but these are not so compatible with Android apps, despite that Android is also an modified Linux, so it’s better to use the mencioned de-googled forks.
They’re closing in on alternative ROMs with their fucking shitty device integrity checks, I’m afraid it’s only getting worse. I literally had to switch back to stock Android because none of the e-government apps of the country I live in NOR two out of my three banks work on /e/. Literally impossible to participate in society unless I sell my soul to Google, sadly.
I really hope we’re able to fight back and win the war.
That’s sad, and so backwards…
If they really wanted to make sure the data on the phone is safe, the integrity checks should be about making sure the phone is built from FOSS with available source code, that can be publicly audited and even the banks themselves could check it for security… which should actually rule Google services out, not the other way around!
mobile computing space
I’m starting to feel like the Mobile Computing space died somewhere around when the Subnotebooks and the PDAs died and we’ve been living illusions ever since.
It’s the Mobile Appliance™ space now.
