Honestly I would love to see Linux devices mature for once, We really need something outside of the duopoly
Maybe when valve starts stepping in into shoving steam on your phone? /shrug
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This is what I keep trying to pitch to others I think anybody who believes they can get away with just using a dumb phone is in a serious position of privilege. I need to scan QR codes just to enter certain parts of my university. There are areas of my city an Uber will pick up just fine but a standard taxi would not go to. Many jobs require you to have an app to clock in and out or making adjustments to your schedule and no a standard retail, warehouse or fastfood job is not gonna just supply you with a device they simply would not have the budget for that. Families with complicated lives may sometimes need to order out which thankfully pizzerias in Chinese food places still will do over a traditional phone call for deliveries but if thatâs not part of your diet or thatâs not something you desire well tough shit you either go out or doordash. The culture has shifted so fundamentally around needing a smart phone or expecting you have one and then caring about privacy & security complicates things even further. Itâs already a pain in the ass to convince the average person to hop on to Signal. If I didnât have a smart phone chances are I would have to convince somebody to use something even more obscure and I just donât see that happening. I use an iPhone just so I can have basic and end to end encryption with others without having to pitch anything. I especially at my age and aspirations cannot just opt out of networking with people. if the future of mobile devices becomes at its most bleak then the answer would just be to minimize it usage as much as possible Doing more analog tasks is probably gonna have more permanence on your habits anyway rather than throwing out the baby with the bathwater. The good thing is a lot of modern dumb phones actually do have the ability to hotspot so if you do still want to have a solution with a dumb phone but still need a smart phone this is probably the best middle ground but I notice a serious disconnect amongst the people who will think that the dumb phone is the best solution
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This is really sad to see, but not disappointing in the slightest, which makes it even worse. Louis Rossman called the fate of AOSP death by a thousand cuts
We need to start thinking of alternatives, we used to meme on Linux phones for their lack of security and support but soon they may be our only alternatives to the Apple-Google duopoly. EU regulations might cut Europeans a break here but itâs very unreliable.
(also the dumb phone lifestyle might actually get a good deal of people to take their first steps out of the typical ecosystem, particularly those who arenât tech savvy. Itâs not the best deal for everyone but worth exploring as a gateway to the privacy pipeline)
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Iâm not sure this is that big of a deal given theyâre still releasing security patch source code on its own branch on a monthly basis. This only impacts feature releases and patches, which IMO is less of a big deal to wait up to 3 months extra for.
The biggest worry is not security patches but new pixel devices
If I remember correctly it took around 4-6months after the pixel 10 release for Google to finally put the 16 QPR1 source code for Graphene to the support the pixel 10
Iâm not sure what part of this is acceptable
Imagine buying a brand new Pixel only for GOS to not have it because of issues like these that is mostly because of the AOSP clamping
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i think this is more about principle than anything else
Android was founded with an Open Source ideology. Slowly but surely more features and apps started being gatekept behind the invasive play services with this move the problem will exacerbate people cant move to alternatives if they dont have certain features. The Custom ROM scene used to be thriving now in my opinion the only ones worth a damn is GrapheneOS for priv/sec and Lineage if you care preservation of older hardware.
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They already said they arenât publishing the Pixel device trees in the future, which seems to me like a much larger problem and cause of delay for third-party ROM developers than a delay on AOSP.
it was a delay on AOSP not the device trees, device tress was not what grapheneos wanted, they wanted Android 16 QPR1 which that took months
This is an easy one. If the restaurant does not provide a paper menu or a kiosk to order from, walk out.
The same idea applies to other services such as concerts. If some things cannot be bought or used without a spyphone, I will do without them. Out of principle, I refuse to run commercial spyware like social media on my Pixel running Graphene. I have a separate profile for a couple of closed source apps like airline tickets. That profile is only used very rarely.
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Yes or ready to make huge concession from the reviewed I watched.
Kinda stating that you live countryside and being like âI donât have a car, I walk! 
â, yeah sure bro enjoy your walk to the groceries store itâs only 50min one way. 
Thatâs cool + safe(r) tho! 
This is very shit tho.
Wonder in which part of the world you are btw. 
Not sure I understand or can relate but sorry for those yeah. 
Iâd still go out and bring the food, but itâs not feasible for everybody yesâŚ
Yes, I like to be a di*k at some places and just say that my battery just died and that I want an analog version of the thing. Makes people angry. 
I think that privacy while being younger is not that critical, I feel like itâs more important when you have someone/something to protect.
Also, itâs not impossible to have this kind of behavior but you will face huge isolation at school if not on Instagram (or whatever the trendy shady app it is nowadays) yeahâŚ
Oh yeah, the famous: carry both dumb and smart phones at the same time.
Yeah butâŚno, thanks! Defeats the entire point.
At the same time, itâs not a bad thing to opt out from permanent tech and try to orient yourself in a big city without a phone just by learning the whereabouts/alike. Not for everybody, but cool to not lose that kind of skill in 2026. 
Yes. I can get my noodles at the competitor next door, sad for you not for me. 
If their places closes, wonât be crying about it. Business rewards the fittest.
I agree yet I think that weâre in the privileged group with our age/income/geographical location so that we can even get that right: to walk out.
I mean, itâs also a personality trait I guess: refusing some hobbies or not caring enough to bend the knee in the first place. 
So far Iâve had to walk out because of QR code or app menus few times. Right now itâs easy because most restaurants currently donât do this, but it is slowly shifting towards expectation of having a smartphone (though I donât think itâll become 100%). Unrelated to smartphones but related to privacy, my most frequent reason for walking out is because they point CCTV at their customers while they eat and have conversations. Itâs a real shame society is degrading the way it is.
That said, in the future smartphone use may become a defacto mandatory condition for participating in society for most people. Living life without a smartphone may become a privilege, as @heash.0831 put it.
Iâm not an anti-phone absolutist, but I donât want my life to be controlled and time taken away by smartphones, and I do not (yet) have GrapheneOS or anything that is private and secure. Googleâs recent behavior worries me.
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Iâve been thinking about this news. I realized that, beside that QPR UI update, I have no idea what updates have been getting released in the new versions of Android for the last couple of years. I think Android is feature-rich enough for me now that I wouldnât care if they announced that it was feature complete and stopped releasing updates all together. I only care about its security, privacy and freedom (ex. ReVanced) that I didnât have under iOS. As long as the GOS team has access to the security binaries that theyâll keep releasing, thatâs good enough for me.
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Thatâs fair, I also donât think Android changes have been as major as they have been back then. but I still think Googleâs clamping on AOSP is having quite the effect on many things including GrapheneOS, Was the pixel 10 delayed release not foreshadowing enough for you all? Christ the balls to even cope like this is crazy.
Donât get me started on the sideloading clamping too
Not mentioning a lot of other custom oses dont have this kind of privilege now to support the pixel 10 especially in the necessary event of harm reduction and prolonging the lifespan of the phone.
Maybe if they were funded enough they would figure out the device tree eventually but as for now, thatâs a no and it is a shame.
Yes there is GSI but GSIs do not come with optimizations normally required for phones to be operational and Wouldn support the AVB Verified Boot
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GrapheneOS has nearly entirely automated this process: GitHub - GrapheneOS/adevtool: Android device support and bringup tool, designed for maximum automation and speed.
I donât see any reason you couldnât have a GSI with AVB enforcing.
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You could? Well I would think because GSIs normally are generic and it is not limited to specific devices, having the bootloader locked is impossible or otherwise risky
And again the lack some of the optimizations that makes a device work for things like drivers for example
Interesting, why has none used this to support the pixel 10 or even XDA had any clue? Thatâs so interesting yet baffling
To be fair if Im out with people and if a restaurant serves good food the last thing I want to look at is my phone. QR Codes indicate to me you dont respect my time because a physical menu isnt just going to abrubptly stop working or be janky compared to a website. So I have no problem walking out
I heavy disagree with that, privacy is a boundary with tech. Everyone should hopefully have boundaries
Thats fair, carrying around multiple devices is a hassle
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I have been using GrapheneOS since I bought my new Google Pixel 9a in December. Itâs amazing because itâs the first time in my life that I feel like the OS Iâm using genuinely cares about my well-being, my protection, and my anonymity (yes, Linux does a good job of this, but I havenât been able to completely get rid of Windows for nowâŚ). I think itâs a good time to say that GrapheneOS needs support, and I would be happy to send a bit of Monero every six months. In such tough times, GrapheneOS needs resources, partnerships (hopefully soon), and its users. Without it, it will disappear.
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Some people might also not have the manners and still have their phones in between you and them. 
But yes, very good stance to just walk away. 
I agree on the boundaries.
I should have been more precise and specify that âwhen younger, being known to Big Tech/random ad companies should not be your first concernâ. There is definitely a learning curve to Social media and building nice relationships online.
Definitely a no-go and a lose-lose on every point imaginable.
To be fair I think this is dependent on situations. I wouldnât recommend doing something like this if youâre out on a first date as that could leave a bad impression. A good compromise is to always just look at the menu on somebody elseâs phone because at least all the restaurants Iâve gone to itâs exclusively just to look at the menu. Itâs never to place an order so the waiter/waitress still have to jot it down and bring it to the kitchen anyway.
I guess it depends how young weâre talking about because I started caring about surveillance capitalism around my teens and I think at such a volatile influenceable age where you donât even know yourself Iâd argue youâre just as susceptible if not more to the manipulative tactics of big tech as anyone else is. Now I do think when youâre younger, youâre willing to make more privacy compromises for whatever social benefit if thats what youâre getting at. Though even many adults, donât understand what theyâre giving up so I believe this is more about a lack of education and not necessarily age.
I feel like it comes down to what people consider essential for their day-to-day tasks. The issue is itâs kind of hard to determine that without having some sort of disconnect first. Restrictions on your smartphones may make more sense but it depends how severe your addiction is. If your a maniac you could use DNS/Firewall/MDM to apply only what you exactly need and block everything else but unfortunately these can be heavily flawed and trivial to bypass depending on your OS
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