There is no alternative.
Apple isn't going to let them build on top of iOS, and anything except those two is dead in the water because it'll never have users because it is missing a bunch of critical apps, and will never have those apps because it doesn't have users.
Remember when we thought IE's monopoly could never be broken? Or windows?
Anything can and will go down. Nothing is forever.
IE was a web browser. Breaking it was a matter of making a web browser good and compatible enough.
It's a completely different situation here.
IE's monopoly was replaced by Chrome and Safari's, and Safari only exists because Apple gives you no choice but to use it on iOS. Firefox had a brief spot on top, but it really didn't last that long.
Windows still has the vast majority share of desktop.
Chrome is the outlier there. It didn't come with any desktop OS and still got near 100% market share, even before Android contributed to that. How? It's worth studying.
The made the best browser on the planet in Google's Bell Labs era and then they used it as leverage during their "do evil" era.
Well, the web was already designed to be compatible with multiple browsers, so that's one element there.
It wasn't really at that time. IE was really quirky and a lot of sites were tailored to those quirks and failed on standards-compliant browsers :S
Yes but that's my point. Monopolies don't last. We have other ones now yes. But that's because the earlier ones died.
And yes we still have windows as the major desktop OS but don't forget, in the 90s/early 2000s windows was equivalent to computing.
These days the desktop OS is much less relevant than it was and many people don't even own a laptop or desktop anymore. They just do everything on their phone. And Microsoft totally and completely lost that race.
> There is no alternative.
There have been several projects like Ubuntu Touch to create an open Linux for smartphones.
That would be an open alternative.
Android is not open.
Android is an open source Linux distribution for smartphones. It doesn't have to be used with Google Mobile Services. AOSP is far more private, secure, usable and compatible with a far broader amount of apps. Why wouldn't we use that as the starting point even if the goal was to diverge?
The AOSP is fully open source. What you suggest is a significant step back in terms of privacy and security.
The AOSP does not run modern Android apps, since Google has been replacing the APIs those apps require with closed source versions (that only ship as part of Google Play) for over a decade.
No, that's a widespread misconception. Google Play services is nearly entirely APIs for using Google services. It hasn't replaced AOSP functionality and the AOSP APIs are still there. If you want to avoid Google services then there isn't much that's useful in Play services. Getting developers to not depend as much on Google services such as supporting UnifiedPush in addition to Firebase Cloud Messaging leads to those apps no longer requiring Play services for that functionality.
That is not true. AOSP can run all modern android apps, and google play APIs are provided as alternatives, but not replacements, for AOSP functionality.
Which of my banking apps are running on any of these?
FuriLabs makes a Linux phone that is designed as a daily driver. Looking at it to replace Android.
That's a huge downgrade for privacy, security, usability, battery life and compatibility with apps. GrapheneOS is Linux too. Linux doesn't mean glibc and systemd. Linux is unfortunately not a great base for an OS focused on privacy and security but it's the only practical choice at this time. In the long term, it needs to be replaced as the bare metal kernel.
Testing the FLX1S for a few weeks as a media player, modern day iPod tool with offline content storage / temp caching. Battery is better than current Android phone. Both have areas of better usability.
I would recommend it as tool for a Linux app designer to use with testing and user improvement. Helps find issue not present on a laptop or desktop. Highlights the difference in solution choices; Python vs Node.js vs Rust.
I'm getting away from Google as far and fast as possible. The sooner the bandaid is pulled the better and more freeing. Google's path with being able to reject those that they don't seem worthy to run on Android, that is a prison.
Personally, I should have root access to the device so that all content which must be archived can be or consumed with another tool; Category Theory. I should have direct access to copying or backing up SMS with ease. Watching the network traffic to know what is actually going through.
Security is also being able for one to learn about the actual operations and test and validate them.
So say you use a USB device to host the kernel boot image which then requires manual password authentication to decrypt physical device drives. Without the USB device, it boots into duress mode.
Duress mode provides a false shell into a working phone. Physical security system do this, by provide false statements of what is going on. Wipe the real stuff in the background if need be.
GraphneOS is using a Linux Kernel. I'm looking for something more Linux Distro style of implementation. Not choosing GraphneOS is pure objective to remove myself from Google and Apple as much as possible in a communication tool.
Android device has become phone and text only. Linux device has become my engagement. Going for a walk without primary communication is peaceful.
This, 100%. It's exactly why I would choose a standard Linux distro any day over GrapheneOS. Biggest reasons for me being:
- No dependency on Google - Actually free and open OS (this means: root access to device, being able to customise any part of the distro/WM/DE, full, low-level access to external devices etc)
I have it. It's far too slow to be useful, and it's not the hardware's fault. GTK and Libhybris are bad separately and hot garbage together. This problem won't be going away while the hardware is relevant.
Which model of phone from FuriLabs?