As per the other comment at this time, when a cell maker wants to sell their products in a country/region, they make a deal which may involve security updates for the phones sold in that country/region.

It still doesn't claim to be ready for a general audience.

sure, and for the iphone crowd i wouldnt recommend it

Important with regard to that is "Android" can mean more than one thing

and im obviously talking about anything not fully stripped of google services

my original complaint wasnt including graphine and that lack of clarity is on me

You can't trust any of these megacorporations to do anything other than maximize their own profits

don’t both sides same this, anyone paying attentions knows google has been especially bad this year

the sad fact is ios is the lesser evil atm for personal privacy gag

No it's not. Open source Android distributions usually use kernels compatible with the OEM proprietary drivers, so stuff actually works. Something like that might be possible for desktop-style Linux, but that's not what the existing distributions actually do.

phone makes phone calls, camera does camera things

banking is fucked but meh

what exactly do you need? i actually like graphine but the problem is hardware keeps getting more hostile towards it, wont be long before it’ll be much worse

this may be the last non adversarial generation of it

It's a Pixel 3a XL, which does seem to be one of the better-supported phones on PostmarketOS, which I see has renamed itself Nura and might work better after a reinstall instead of an upgrade in place. It still doesn't claim to be ready for a general audience.

how is android not getting to be just as bad [as iOS regarding vendor control over app installation]?

Android is absolutely getting worse, but it's not as bad yet, and as bad isn't on the current roadmap. Important with regard to that is "Android" can mean more than one thing, including Android Open Source Project, Google-certified Android with Play Services and the like, a vendor distribution, or a third-party distribution. Even the worst case, a notarization-like system on Google-certified Android coming in the future, will be possible to turn off with an officially-supported procedure.

how can anyone trust their personal data being safe

You can't trust any of these megacorporations to do anything other than maximize their own profits, Apple included. It's possible to decide exactly how much Google stuff you want in some of the above descriptions of "Android" with increasing hassle as it approaches zero.

and if you are running graphine or the like it’s the same boat as the linux os options

No it's not. Open source Android distributions usually use kernels compatible with the OEM proprietary drivers, so stuff actually works. Something like that might be possible for desktop-style Linux, but that's not what the existing distributions actually do.

‘an older phone’ is doing some heavy lifting there

you got oneplus fairphone and pixel all working fine and heavily commnuity supported

limited hardware choices is always the trade off

as to apples control, given the september vendor lock change and the continued increase in locked boot loaders how is android not getting to be just as bad?

but all of that is moot

https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2026/10/26/google-changed-gmail-on-october-16-check-your-account-now/

signs have been more and more obvious this year, how can anyone trust their personal data being safe

and if you are running graphine or the like it’s the same boat as the linux os options

Neat. I'm stuck with Ms auth as work requires it

I ran 15 on my Pixel 9 Pro up until I installed Graphene last week, skipping 16 entirely.

Joke's on them. Google already bricked my LTE chip.

I actually have PostmarketOS installed on an older phone. It's both really cool, and nearly unusable as a phone. It's slow. The battery lasts about four hours. The cameras sort of work... or did. I just opened it to refresh my memory of what was broken about the image quality and it says "no camera found". I hope Linux phones get better, but I can't replace my Android phone with this now or soon.

As for iOS, I have no comment on whether it's better than Android or not, nor do I particularly care. Apple's strict control over the app ecosystem is so unacceptable to me that it makes the platform a non-starter regardless of its merits. I continue to be surprised that's not a majority opinion among tech-literate people.

Thats actually a pretty conmon feature. Obviously the password managers do though keeping passwords and mfa in the same place kinda negates the multi in multifactor.

Twilio does as well.

Don't know about Google's, its been like a decade since i used it. It just was the worst.

Aegis does too but it requires a bit more work to sync the backups to cloud storage or what ever you choose. That's actually a key feature for a lot of people looking to own their data though.

quite the contrary things have only gotten worse

its simply what has and how that has rearranged the order of shit tiering in the mobile phone offerings

What magical new mobile operating system that supports current, real-world use cases was released in 2026?

You started this thread, and continue to defend it, so yes, absolute fanboy.

/c/unpopularopinion

Says the fanboy

because clearly its about the vulnerability and not the refusal to actually fix it

im pretty close to becoming the tech guy with a gun next to his toaster, im sick of what the nerd reich has done on all levels of tech

not much i really do on a phone any longer that cant just be done on a pc

This is capitalism at work guys. The only way out is to end it is from the root cause.

i understand wsnting your launcher open source but i have no launcher that makes me want to leave the microsoft launcher