Anyway, how many times have you been recorded on a phone call by some faceless corporation, then wished you had a copy of the recording after they “reviewed” it then came to the opposite conclusion the recording should support?

In some countries, regulation works in a way that the economy gets a chance to fix issues before the legislative needs to intervene. And with the Japanese and their massive issues with rampant sexual abuse... I get where that one came from, in addition to the two major phone brands not wanting to be associated with sexual abuse (which the last comment of the thread also references).

And personally, I do believe that this is the better way when forced with widespread ignorance of difficult to enforce laws - target the "accomplices" or "toolmakers".

Having said that, the hardware being restricted to Pixel devices was always a tenuous proposition based on Google's design choices. If Pixels remain supported whilst adding Motorola, that's only a good thing.

newpipe or tubular for youtube. ive also been using freetube lately. its just the desktop ui ported to an android app so its not as good as newpipe, but im using syncthing to sync freetube's settings/subscriptions between desktop and mobile

comaps is better fork of organicmaps and has better people running it

the fossify apps are great for the basics, sms, phone/contacts, gallery, calculator etc

droidify is a nicer front end for the fdroid store imo

keepassdx for passwords

kde connect or localsend for one-off file transfers between devices, or syncthing for things you need to sync all the time

and hacki for hackernews!

btw. Spotify really doesn't work without gapps? what a crap app then, I am using phones without gapps for 10+ years and only very few apps actually don't work without (usual suspects being anyone using gmaps) them despite warning shown

The workaround to drag a shortcut to the New Incognito Tab intent is clunky as it launches a new tab each time

A lot of people use Brave, which has the features "forget me when I close this site" and "clear data on exit"

Just set it so that it doesn't bypass do-not-disturb and it'll have the same result while not disturbing sleep. Those awake will get the notification, and for the others, they can see it in the morning.

https://www.chp.ca.gov/news-alerts/alerts/Ebony-Alert/

https://www.chp.ca.gov/news-alerts/alerts/Feather-Alert/

Sometimes they do it even twice in the same week. They're probably worried about a repeat of the Valencia floods and getting blamed. So they're constantly covering their asses. But I'm sick of them crying wolf all the time.

We don't have this amber thing but it works the same way (prioritised cell broadcasting) so it can be blocked.

The app is com.android.cellbroadcastreceiver on Android 13 and above

But yeah I view this in the same vein as the governments wanting to hijack our phones for spying on us (chatcontrol) or forced identification (the topic of this article). I'm sick and tired of my phone taking orders from other people than me.

This made me chuckle.

The author should not have conflated GrapheneOS and Android, it makes it seem like problems are GOS's fault, when it applies to all Android devices. It would be more accurate to call it an iOS to Android migration guide.

You do not need to treat GOS any differently than any other Android variation, you can use all the same apps you would like, there is no rule against using privacy invasive apps on GOS. If you want the best apps, sometimes you have to go with ones made by trillion-dollar companies that vacuum up data. GOS can even let you use these apps in a privacy-preserving way, with the network toggle and sandboxing.

>It is not trivial to synchronize data across machines in a secure and decentralized way. Privacy and decentralization are difficult problems to solve, with ever-changing goal posts. Apple decided to abandon even attempting to do this, and instead went with a band-aid approach that it calls “iCloud”.

I wouldn't underestimate iCloud with advanced data protection, it is arguably the most comprehensive and affordable e2ee cloud plan available.

>No globally-consistent way to “Undo” an action (unlike Shake-to-Undo on iOS).

I don't think this is a good feature, I am glad it is not built into Android.

>Sometimes the screen cannot be turned off when on a call. I've never experienced this.

>OS can’t handle lots of files in folders. Folders with thousands of files are very slow to load and sync. Sometimes music apps fail to load all songs.

I have a 30+ GB music library and I have not had any issues. Android has a plethora of amazing music apps compared to iOS. See Powerampapp.com.

>Poor UI guidelines cause serious problems. For example, many music or video players don’t work well with the timeline playhead because it’s too close to the edge of the phone’s screen. Attempting to scrub near the beginning or end of a song causes Android’s gesture navigation (back button) to be triggered instead, closing the app.

I find the UI on Android to be much more fluid, reactive, and functional. This may have just been the specific app. GOS or Android cannot stop someone from making a buggy app any more than Apple can. There are many more Android apps that are Free and Open Source, which has a huge host of benefits. Material 3 expressive is the newest google design guideline and it looks a lot better than liquid glass imo. Yes, this is more recent against this blog, but it is being recommended now.

>Sometimes toggle swtiches in settings are also menu items that can be clicked to access more settings. Extraordinarily confusing UI/UX.

Apple also does this, see wifi in control center. I don't think it is confusing once you use your phone for a few days.

>Essential features like text-to-speech, speech-to-text, or “look up definition” have to be manually installed and setup. I see less system apps as a pro, although GOS is working on, or added a built in tts or stt functionality recently iirc.

>Doesn’t always recognize wired headphones when they’re plugged in the first time. Sometimes even the second time. Could be related to one of these issues.

This has not been a problem for me. The usb control is a massive security improvement and comes with a sane default. Just works in my experience.

>Max volume is rather low for wired headphones, and there doesn’t seem to be a way to increase it.

Have not had a problem with that.

>Seemingly no way to select text in photos without an Internet connection, unlike the built-in AI-based offline-first feature in iOS Photos.

Ente photos has good device-based OCR.

> the GrapheneOS community also recommend the Aurora store

Aurora store is not recommended because it weakens security with no privacy benefit.

> One of the most annoying aspects of GrapheneOS is how its lock screen works.

This is completely outdated, inaccurate and confuses the way the lockscreen works.

>No privacy-preserving Maps app at the level of quality of Apple Maps or Google Maps.

Again, not a GOS problem. You can use the apps from the companies that spend millions on their Maps apps, or you can use the perfectly functional maps based on OSM.

>App Store madness.

If you don't want to be confused, just use the play store like is stated. It is secure and consistent. You ask for more freedom, you get the more freedom. Again, more complaints about apps specifically, not even the app not working due to GOS hardening, just the app.

>Contacts, Email, Calendars

There is no reason you can't use iCloud mail, proton mail, or Gmail on android. The vast majority of even privacy concious people do not self-host mail.

>Passwords

Even more user friendly, you can use free bitwarden, which is better than Apple Passwords or others that are not cross platform.

I switched from iOS to GOS a few months ago, and I have had nothing but good experiences. Contrary to what you may hear, GOS works absolutely fine out of the box. I have never had an app that doesn't work, you can install polished closed source apps without network permission, and the UI is miles ahead of iOS. I highly recommend anyone to try it out.

Keep an eye on michaelgeist.ca. If there are petitions to sign to oppose it, you'll probably find out there.

Not using grapheneos though because pixels are expensive in my country. Also, I disagree with them on some points, like rooting. I don't think me having access to root makes my phone less secure. Obviously it should be secured properly so only I can use it, but that can be done. After all even an unrooted phone still has a root account and runs stuff as root, you just can't access it as a user. That means the OS vendor (grapheneos in this case) has more access rights on my phone than me (how else are they going to install updates), to me that's not right.

I just want to be able to inspect what is going on on my phone. What apps are storing about me on their private storage, and to be able to add root CAs so I can MITM their traffic to inspect it.

I still keep my old phone around with BankID just to be safe, but so far I haven't had any issues.

> (3) (A) Except as provided in subparagraph (B), a developer shall treat a signal received pursuant to this title as the primary indicator of a user’s age range for purposes of determining the user’s age.

> (B) If a developer has internal clear and convincing information that a user’s age is different than the age indicated by a signal received pursuant to this title, the developer shall use that information as the primary indicator of the user’s age.

Turns out the age signal is not enough. Liability-wise, you'll probably be doing face and/or ID scans, too, even if the law doesn't explicitly call for it.

Developers will just implement the strictest state's censorship and age verification schemes for everyone, which has already happened. My state has no age verification laws, yet platforms, and even Android itself, are trying to get me to scan my face and dox myself to use them. I can't even look at spicy tweets online without verifying my age with the X app, they're censored for my own protection.