Yea, who are google and apple to tell us what to do with OUR devices that WE OWN anyways?

I will never buy a smartphone(or a computer) that I can't replace the stock OS on, because the transaction for me and the device maker should end when I buy their device, period.

The entire business model of selling me a device only to then extract the maximum possible amount of data points, sell that data to fuck-knows-who(compromising my privacy, and possibly safety), and maximizing targeted ads to attempt to manipulate me is beyond absurd.

It's like "jaywalking" oooh oh no don't "jay" walk, don't "side" load; conform to our business machines! Your natural existence and free movements are an inconvenience to us therefore you have to change.

Or whatever bullshit--however they couch it.

"Warning: If you unlock your phone, it might explode or you might become a terrorist. Also we won't pay your money back even if there is faulty hardware because there is non zero chance you might have caused it while unlocking"

I like the term sideloading. It describes an installation method we don't otherwise have a word for.
I'm loading a software package from the side -- from a system running parallel to the target system.
I do hate the use of the term to try to demonize a completely standard practice. Like when using wget to request files from a fileserver was described as hacking.

That's sort of where I'm at right now to be honest. Google has removed or plan to remove basically everything that gave Android an edge over iOS. Meanwhile Apple, for all their flaws, has actually put out some pretty compelling offerings with the iPhone 17 line both hardware- and software-wise, and has made meaningful improvements in the realm of repairability and side-loading, albeit under regulatory pressure. At this point, it's looking like going to be harder than I'd like to choose between the two when I go to replace my phone in 3-5 years - provided both companies stay on their current trajectories.

That's been my reason to switch. When Android 12 removed or hid a lot of the functionality and customization that I used daily on my Pixel 4a5g, I switched to an iPhone. It's a shame I had to sell back my iphone 14 pro to my provider (due to the plan I had chosen), otherwise I'd have kept that one, but I'm currently running the 16 Pro, and intend to keep that for another 4 or 5 years.

Apple has 2x very publicly resisted government demands for user data and campaigned against laws to institute backdoors into their software and services. They’re not perfect by any means but they are by far a lesser evil.

A fully capable Linux phone is the dream, but most people aren’t going to use one. For the majority of people, I would recommend the company that refused to listen to the US and EU about weakening the security of their products over the one with the business model of relying on advertising to you and selling your data.

Mostly agree except about disconnecting from the internet, classic SMS/voice calls aren't any more private than VoIP.

Your best bet for location privacy is E2E encrypted services like Signal over wifi, plus MAC randomization and a VPN on untrusted networks. I'd say GrapheneOS is good enough for most people, but mobile Linux has also come a long way.

Yoink from github via Obtainium.

Also, obtainium can also yoink from gitlab, selfhisted forgejo, codeberg and also fdroid.

There are more than these 2, they are just ubiquitous.

Sailfish is another one, UBPorts, Danctnix, ... They have no marketshare worth considering for companies so they lock their services down to the 2 big ones and everything else in their eyes is "unsupported" at best and "not secure" at worst.

I'm all for linux, I miss the market before iPhone domination. Weird ass symbian phones, windows phones, nokia taco phones, there was all sorts of stuff. I wish we could have a market like that with lots of diverse phones that all run different operating systems. I also wish we could step away from app stores and we could just start building websites again, phones are fast enough now

Have you looked into GrapheneOS support for your device?

Thia guy i know to a tee. He'll defend capitalism to the death and say how the left is evil and anarchy capitalism is the only way.

Idiot. And he pitches about everything in life capitalism causes. I point this out and he says well yeah but thats just bad capitalism not good capitalism. Also he loves fElon, so there's that.

It was annoying. Couldn't mention any brand name in any context without getting an "/r/hailcorporate" comment.

Idk man, PRC isn't exactly FOSS friendly. I mean they are pushing their corporate platform called "WeChat" which requires a smartphone. Many of mainland China's services require a phone number verification, and phone service require Identification. They've started developing things like "HarmonyOS" and started going Closed Source and blocking .apk installs (allegedly, I can't confirm). Bootloader unlocking has become a pain in devices like Xiaomi. Etc...

I'm more wiling to bet on the Europeans to develop FOSS stuff.

when you install western apps on a modern chinese phone, it will complain that it doesn't have a license from the ICP. For now there's a "install anyway" button to bypass it, but for how long?

The GrapheneOS people. Everyone in their IRC unironically thinks Iphones are highly secure, in part BECAUSE they are proprietary. But they also don't tolerate any criticism of Google, especially if you criticize Google for being proprietary.

I saw one person saying basically that yesterday, but it was heavily downvoted.

They can upload their ID to google, pay $25 USD, and then sign their apps using their own signing key which was pre-approved by Google.

Its the same for apple, but I think their fees are like $99 per year.

There are also reports of Google potentially leaving in a ADB bypass for it.

They care about privacy as they consider themselves the owner of your data.

The Librem 5 is a Linux phone and already has open board design files, available here.

It won't affect you in any way directly. The issue is it very well may affect what apps are available and regularly updated on Fdroid and other app stores or repos.

Dire, from what I gathered

Installing non-approved apps on custom roms will still work.