749
Google Keeps Making Smartphones Worse (jacobin.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
155 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Google’s Android, the world’s most widely used mobile operating system, started life as open-source software. In its quest for ever-greater profits, the tech giant has been gradually eroding Android’s open-source nature over the last decade.

Originally published on The Lever, but that one asks you to sign up.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 2 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Those apps are installed in the squashfs image. Such images are write once, read many and thus they can't be mutated at runtime.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

    I know, and that's exactly my point. They used to be in the user space, now they are in the system partition. They CHOSE to do this.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Yeah. That's a good point. I don't know why anyone would put any frequently updated app in squashfs.

    I guess you can use the app right after you factory reset even if you don't have much data which might be something? Are updates smaller since they're just deltas?

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    In all honesty, I have no idea. I didn't give the stock firmware enough time on my phone to check on anything other than the amount of tracking and the move to the system partition.

    As for the reason for putting them in this partition, I'm sold on the idea that it's to keep the levels of invasion as high as possible while removing the user's options to get rid of them.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent