Google: “Based on this feedback and our ongoing conversations with the community, we are building a new advanced flow that allows experienced users to accept the risks of installing software that isn’t verified. We are designing this flow specifically to resist coercion, ensuring that users aren’t tricked into bypassing these safety checks while under pressure from a scammer. It will also include clear warnings to ensure users fully understand the risks involved, but ultimately, it puts the choice in their hands.”
Thank god. I would’ve ditched Android for good if this went through, and while it sounds like it would be annoying for casual users to enable unverified apps, at least we can still install them.
They’ve already lost my trust. GrapheneOS or LineageOS are the only safe bets now.
safe or just safer?
If you want perfectly safe code it yourself and install your own network of towers. Then make sure you send one of the devices you’ll have to design and build yourself to anyone you want to contact.
Otherwise, you’ll have to make do with safer.
For now
We are designing this flow specifically to resist coercion, ensuring that users aren’t tricked into bypassing these safety checks while under pressure from a scammer. It will also include clear warnings to ensure users fully understand the risks involved, but ultimately, it puts the choice in their hands.
The current system requires user to enable developer options, which is already hidden behind a dark pattern (tapping the Build number multiple times) then enabling the installation of apps of unknown sources for specific apps, which also comes with a warning.
It’s basically what we have already, so cut the bullshit and leave it be.
On Samsung it’s: download APK, run it, see the warning, tap “allow third party installations”, flick a switch, tap “install”.
That’s not what the phrase “dark pattern” means.
Err, that’s not true on the last fee devices I’ve used, Pixels and a Fairphone. Installing apps from APK files doesn’t require me to enable dev options. In fact trying to install an APK from say Files brings me straight to the permission setting. It’s also per-app. It can be accessed under Settings > Apps > Special app access > Install unknown apps.
That’s not a dark pattern…
that warning was not at all prominent, and as others have said, t does not exist anymore on modern android
In some ROMs at least, unknown sources for specific apps is not in the developer options.
dark pattern
This is not what dark pattern means.
Also, I don’t think enabling developer options is required to install arbitrary APKs.
… continues to make Play Integrity an integral part of Android and making all the stupid banking and govt apps requiring having it on your phone thus making it harder to de-google.
still no… fuck you.
Degoogle now before they install their malware on your device(s).
If you can get your hands on a pixel, get grapheneOS. If not, get LineageOS or degoogle your phone. With LineageOS you’ll have to make do with internet banking instead of banking apps.
Depends on the bank.
This is what I’m struggling with. I use an app-only challenger bank, so I feel a bit stuck unless I change everything…
Aren’t there challenger banks that have website interfaces?
Yep. Monzo implemented an emergency-use website about 5 years ago, Revolut shortly after (and I think they have a desktop app now). I’m with neither (though I can SEE my accounts online, I cannot DO anything with them).
Well some thing is going to change no matter your struggles. :(
So true. I’m loathed to lose the interest rate, but needs must when the devil drives, and boy is he driving right now.
I had one bank like that but when I called them they were able to disable the app challenge and use text/email instead. The catch was that if I ever opened the app again it was re-enabled.
It’s literally ONLY got an app. No web, no branches. They’ve become quite common and popular in the UK (like Revolut).
Not to be that kind of guy, and I upvoted your comment, but isn’t it ‘make due’? I might be wrong, however.
I’m glad banks around these parts don’t require an app to function.
So I just read what they are going to do and this article is just clickbait. Basically they still want you to dox yourself but it’ll still work like iOS Test Pilot. Google is still full of shit and lies but hey at least you don’t have to pay them money until enough users download your app if you want more.
So it’ll basically still kill apps like F-Droid or you downloading an app from the internet to run on your phone. You’ll basically have to signup to install third party apps on your device per app in general and alot of the convenience and developer community will still just leave android as a whole.
You’ll basically have to signup to install third party apps on your device per app in general and alot of the convenience and developer community will still just leave android as a whole.
Leave android and go where?
If android goes the way it’s going, then iPhone is the obvious choice.
Not really an option considering it’s even more locked down.
Hope Valve comes up with something eventually, after all they’ve been getting into x86 emulation for mobile ARM chips lately. Granted, it was for VR, but still.
Hope Valve comes up with something eventually
That could be interesting. I want to see how SteamOS goes, but the potential is grand.
In terms of the iPhone being locked down, I’m not sure what you’re looking to do but I personally managed to get ad-free Reddit, YouTube and YouTube music ad-free (+sponsorblock) just using apps from the App Store. All of them free or one-time payment of 3 euros. It was actually easier to do than with Android where I had to “sideload” stuff from GitHub since Android is owned by google and all frontends to their programs are banned.
As long as you get yourself an email that isn’t iCloud you can also take all your contacts and email with you wherever you want. Then you can install KDE Connect as you would on Android and can send files freely between you phone and Pc.
This is all to say, I don’t feel more locked down on the iPhone than on Android, which was a surprise for me.
Incentivizes developing for linux phones, ppl choose android for the freedom
Who do we donate to?
They’ll probably also release a new API to allow apps to check if user have enabled sideloading. Then overzealous apps like fucking mcdonalds will throw a hissy fit about it and refuse to work unless you turn it off. Also your bank too, just to really make it as hard as possible to include sideloaded apps on your phone.
Just recently mcdonalds app stopped working if installed in a secondary profile. Fuck them.
Let em all shut me down. If they don’t need my business, I don’t need theirs. I just found out that Casio makes a g-shock with Bluetooth and you can screw with it using python and an unlisted API.
One more nail in the coffin for my smartphone footprint. I just want an 8" linux tablet, a watch that can give me messages from signal and a battery powered access point.
Please tell me there is a video about this that is not on youtube.
The biggest problem are the banking apps. If you’re standing at checkout and your payment app says
“Unverified apps have been detected on your phone. Please uninstall and try again.”
99% of people will delete FDroid and never sideload anything ever again.
You know it’s kinda funny that I can’t even run the MC Donalds app without doing some fuckery. But my banking app will throw a hissy fit if I try to sign into my account without a rooted or custom ROMed phone because that’s how they know it’s me apparently. Also shame that my banking app stopped supporting Android 8.0 a few years back. I miss my LG V20.
Why the fuck would a McDonald’s app care?
Who knows. Maybe they have that one dev on the app team that’s on a crusade to detect every single abnormality.
He might also be following the rooting/magisk scene. Back then whenever magisk updates its root hiding system and successfully bypasses apps, mcdonalds are the first to detect it again. He’s so fast that back when I was still using a rooted phone, I’ve never successfully bought a meal with the app.
Now they’re blocking work profiles on non-rooted phones, which is a native android feature and not a security risk. But they’re still blocking it anyway because it’s slightly abnormal lol.
Google also extending this to things like fireOS
it would not, because fireos was based on ancient versions of android like android 11 or earlier, and the block is enforced via google play services which isn’t present on there.
but new fireos doesn’t run android apps at all. New devices temporarily run android apps on a VM hosted on AWS servers and then stream the video, but only if those apps are distributed on the amazon appstore, and it’s a stopgap until the devs make their apps compatible with the new OS.
And old fireos devices will start to gradually uninstall “dangerous” sideloaded apks
Good news! But it doesn’t change the fact that Google tried to do this in the first place.
Good, but I still don’t trust Google and I really want Linux (you know what I mean) on my next phone.
Agreed, this was a warning shot, we know what to do now.
That’d be nice, but Linux on phones is still a pipe dream.
I saw there is pine phone that is supposed to have Linux or it doesn’t? Didn’t look much into it but was thinking about trying it out.
I have a pine phone - they’re super neat because linux on a phone! but… not really usable yet. Not getting texts, random bugs (they fixed the one where you could only receive calls, not make them, but that took a year or more), incredibly laggy UI even just trying to navigate,the battery life is abysmal, the battery management hardware is lacking and the software is even worse, the UIs that exist are poorly supported, basic apps are decently represented but anything not built for mobile is going to be godawful to get working (esp. through something like waydroid), the UI stabbed my puppy, the devices are so underpowered you’re gonna be unable to do things like have two apps open at once or have a video playing in one tab while trying to navigate in another…
The pro phone has supposedly improved the hardware issues, but it’s new and niche enough that I haven’t seen much of a consens emerge (or hardly any in depth testing at all, really). Fairphone is much more usuable, still not without it’s glitches but much better than the pinephones.
It’s great that smart people are working on this, but I don’t think we can expect hobbyists to make a useful OSS implementation of smartphones. Especially since there is so much dependence on the hardware. We either need a company that can throw some weight behind it, or just straight up governments that value it (e.g. from a sovereignty point of view).
The Linux phones that exist today (including Pine Phone) are more like early dev kits. They have really weak specs, are incredibly buggy, lack all sorts of features you’d expect, and I’m not totally sure if you can even make calls through them because phone carriers require a verified device and proprietary tech to work.
There are efforts to get things in order but these will take maybe 10 years at this rate.
I can absolutely make phone calls with both my One Plus 6T and my PinePhone.
It’s not that straightforward - pinephones have varying results depening on carriers, Verizon is notorious for blacklisting them while most of the other major carriers are hit or miss on if you’ll get penalized.
Linux on phones or desktops suffer from one major problem as I see it, too much choice.
You make a Windows app it has to work with the latest couple versions, same with Mac.
Make one for Linux and you have to test it against dozens of popular distros, package it in multiple ways, and hope the dependencies are gonna match.
It’s an awesome system for IT people and server admins, but for the end user, ehhh… That seems to be the problem things like snap and flat packs are aimed at fixing, which could transition to phones but first you gotta herd the cats into an agreed state.
That’s not really the case. Have a look at AUR or GURU repo - most proprietary software is installed by simply applying the same steps an apt, dnf, whathaveyou package manager would.
Why would multiple distros be a factor? A Linux phone would be its own unique distro.
The issue is device firmware. The OS has to fit the phone, not vice versa.
In itself true, but if you have several competing distros then you run into the problem of attracting developers to the platform if none have a solid market share. It’s a bit of a chicken and egg thing, if a platform doesn’t have a sizable user base it’s hard to attract developers and it’s hard to get a user base without readily available apps.
You don’t have that many competing distros in mobile linux.
You don’t have any because it’s not a thing yet.
I think you’ve misread, I typed “many”, not “any”.
AFAIK Faiphone 4/5 and OnePlus 6 are in a very good state on PostmarketOS and continually improving. I don’t think it’s unrealistic to say we’ll have fully working devices in half a year - year with the amount of progress that’s happened since the PinePhone and was boosted again by the original Google announcement.
Look at furios’s phones. They seem yo work.
Fairphones are probably not daily-able for now, sadly. E.g. on FP4 GPS doesn’t work at all and there are issues with charging/battery reporting AFAIR. OnePlus 6 is definitely more promising ATM, but there are camera issues and you need to do a weird reflashing dance to get GPS to work. Otherwise it’s… passable as a daily phone.
Battery fuel guage is almost ready for FP4 at least:
https://fosstodon.org/@z3ntu/115435804332775702
And there has been recent successes by the same guy (employed at Fairphone) on getting cameras working (main post of the thread linked above).
These are recent improvements, and I really hope they can solve the audio stability and GPS stuff so I can move. Thinking of trying out Ubuntu Touch before a mainline distro is ready.
Ooh, cool! Might be my new phone when the current one cacks or Android becomes completely unusable.
Having no call audio on FP5 is a dealbreaker to me, but if it’s only 4g/5g calls and BT audio and mic works I’ll gladly use IP comms only. Need to dive a bit deeper I suppose, and the incentive will come from Google.
Isn’t oneplus 6 a phone from
2018???
it is, but SD845 is still pretty fast
Nothing wrong with it, if you just use it for music listening/youtube/light browsing/satnav/messaging, snapdragon845 is more than enough. Consumables like batteries and back glass can be bought new from AliExpress for like $10. The screen is OLED and so prone to burn-in, but will probably last at least a few more years before cacking it completely.
Probably not good enough for modern gaming and stuff, but passable for most tasks.
It’s almost like technology doesn’t actually need to be a conveyor belt of spending thousands of dollars on new products that turn into literal e-waste after a year or two. The money-printing treadmill for these trillion dollar corporations would be in immediate jeopardy!
Imagine! Using an old device that still works and performs all its functions perfectly! You’d have to be completely nuts!
/s
FWIW I’ve been daily driving SailfishOS on various Sony Xperias for 5 years now. It’s not fully OSS, but it is a fully valid Linux OS.
I’m curious: I’m currently evaluating mobile Linux OSes to transition away from Android. What I got going right now is Ubuntu Touch on a Fairphone 5, but there’s one big drawback with this one for me: the lack of a decent native Signal client.
I’ve always planned to give Sailfish OS a spin, and I’m almost certain I can install it on the FP5 easily. But I’m not all that keen on ruining my Ubuntu Touch install, and possibly not being able to reinstall it if I want to go back.
So before I install Sailfish OS on it, can you tell me if it has a decent Signal client? If it doesn’t, then maybe it’s not really worth investigating in the first place for me.
I meant have you tried it? Do you know if it’s any good?
Yes and yes, but I have no need for it.
I prefer to use Signal’s Android version by way of SailfishOS’ App support.
I mean, you can run a Linux phone now, but you aren’t going to have a large software library optimized for touchscreen/phone use, and the hardware options are pretty disappointing compared to Android.
I still haven’t been pushed over the edge, but I’m definitely keeping my eye on it. I’m just not willing to develop software for Android. I know that GNU/Linux phones will stay open. I am not at all sure that Android won’t wind up locked down by Google at some point, and over the years, it’s definitely shifted in that direction.
My current approach is to carry around a Linux laptop and try to shift my usage more towards using the Android phone as a tethering device for the laptop, to get Internet access everywhere. That’s not always reasonable — you need to sit down to use the laptop — but the only thing that the phone really has to be used for is dealing with text messages and calls. If you really wanted to do so, you could run SIP service from the laptop over the phone’s data service, not even rely on the phone’s calling functionality, but the laptop isn’t really set up to be able to idle at very low power the way a phone is, be able to wake up when a call comes in.
And it does have some nice benefits, like having a real keyboard, a considerably more-powerful system, a much larger library of software, and so forth. You can move the phone to somewhere where its radio has good reception and just have it relay to the laptop, which isn’t an option if you’re using the phone itself as the computing device.
I’ve been eyeing Volla for a phone with Ubuntu:
https://volla.online/en/devices/
Unfortunately, not so cheap that I could just go for it for fun, so it’ll have to wait until I actually need a new phone …
Yes, Open Google free Android or a Linux without Google.
Isn’t the first just AOSP? GrapheneOS ships Google free.
AOSP has been neutered as much as Google has been able to. This was the reasonable next step.
True, but what I’m saying is there is an open model. If another community of devs wan’t a “Linux-based mobile OS”, they can fork AOSP like Graphene did. IE complain about Google, not Android.
Graphene works. No tracking, tons of FOSS and commercial apps, it just lacks some banking apps. One gap, vs all that exist between now and another Linux phone.
LineageOS is another option for other phones, also far ahead of other Linux ideas.
Yes, but you can expect almost no useful updates from AOSP anymore, which means it’s up to groups like those who develop GrapheneOS to keep up with what people expect while Android ostensibly keeps advancing, and they only support one hardware line.
Yes, but in 12 months a Linux phone won’t even be close to where even 4 versions ago Android is. As long as Graphene (or Lineage, or Fairphone, plenty of models) keeps the security updates covered, there are good options out there.
So the question becomes when, not if, a Linux phone reaches parity with AOSP-based phones.
Thank god. I would’ve ditched Android for good if this went through, and while it sounds like it would be annoying for casual users to enable unverified apps, at least we can still install them.
You would have ditched Android for ios if it were implemented?
At least the apple ecosystem all works. Androids full of shit that will never be fixed. Looking at Google cast in particular. There have been many others too.
Ive been using Android for more than a decade, fwiw
I would not have done so, but I think there’s a reasonable argument that if Apple and Google’s mobile platforms are indistinguishable in terms of user freedom and Google is going to try to be Apple, ya may as well just go with the better Apple
Not hardly. I’ve been looking for a reason to support Linux phones, and that would just have been the thing to do it.
For now. You just wait. Evil corp is gonna evil corp it all up.
I miss the days when their slogan was “Don’t be evil”
Yeah, Google used to be the “Cool” company back then. I used to root for them.
Lots of companies feel the need to serve their users on their way up.
Once they feel they got much or most of the market on lock, they no longer need to justify themselves to their users, and a cycle of pure valueless exploitation begins, aka enshittification.
Eh, I’m probably gonna ditch that smartphone thing anyways, at least for a while. Android becoming a closed-off garden was the last straw and I was kinda looking forward trying to go without a phone to test if I can adapt. I started leaving the house without my phone more and more and I kinda like it.
Sure, it’s fun and convenient to have the Internet in my pocket. Heck, it’s even required in some cases, but this digital mess we are currently in is too much for me. I remember how I was looking forward having one back then; I was really looking forward having acces to the Interney wherever I was, but nowadays I kinda miss being less conected from all the bullshit especially when outside.
I guess I could get a linuxphone one day if I miss having a phone (if I somehow manage to completely remove the smartphone from my life in the first place).
are they actually being rid of the “give us your id and pay to be certified to install” nonsense
It sounds like they’re just going to make it more difficult to sideload.
My guess is they’re going to do what Microsoft do (or used to do until about 6 months ago) when you want to sideload anything on their consoles: They charge you. You buy dev access for your account and use it to unlock your phone.
Straight from the playbook. Announce something terrible, then back off with something bad. Everyone calls it a win.
See: Wizards if the Coast, Unity
Rockstar too
And 5 years they’ll try it again.
Do terrible thing A to test the sentiment, probe the reaction, backpedal a bit, admit caveats and facilitate pre-planned option B, try again after a few days and gocus on it died down.
At one point we’ll need diff monitoring on the TOC and all other legal imprints :|
No freaking way this was because of “feedback”. This was because the European Commission will keep escalating their fines if Google keeps at it with the monopoly bullshit.
The EU is just a bit behind being maliciously lobbied to death (eyeroll).
(See Digital Omnibus Act)Quite some time ago, the messaging I was getting from Microsoft was that Windows 10 security updates were going to end this year. I didn’t really keep up with the news on that front, but I did notice that there was some kind of law suit in the EU that from what I recall basically came down to the fact that MS would have to continue to provide security updates to Win 10 free of charge for EU users.
Literally within the last week, a buddy of mine asked me to look at his computer and see if I could upgrade it to Win 10. I could not, as it doesn’t have a supported processor. But what I noticed is that MS now offers the option to extend security updates until 2026 with the click of a button.
So, thanks EU folks! Already knew ya’ll were awesome, but I assume this change of heart from Microsoft was a result of that suit. I appreciate it.
We are designing this flow specifically to resist coercion, ensuring that users aren’t tricked into bypassing these safety checks while under pressure from a scammer.
Translation: if they want scamware, it better be from Google Play, where Google gets a 30% cut. On top of the cut they got for the phishing link in Google Ads.
And if anything thinks I’m being hyperbolic, go on Google Play and search for pretty much anything. Or turn off your adblocker.
The fee is 15% below the first $1M of revenue and it should go without saying that app developers only pay that fee for paid apps, in-app purchases or digital subscriptions. It’s very unlikely that a scam app would be paid, or work off a subscription, and if those phishing ads are doing their conversions, you’ll never see the user again.
I doubt Google’s making more than a few cents off each of these scam apps.
Helped a disabled pensioner recently with her phone that kept plaging loud obnoxious ads at her even while locked.
She had 4 different “virus scanners” that were all fake adware.
