I read their justifications but I must've missed the part where it justifies anything.
this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2025
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Google calculating:
- no more sideloading, so the privacy and pro freedom people will buy our phones for GrapheneOS
I am saddened by this news 😢
Stop calling this sideloading, it's just installing software on a computer. The term makes it an easy 'other' to be distrusted. And this concerns all apps not just apps coming from a different app store. Google wants to control all the apps you're allowed to install by them
Sideloading is a perfectly good word for a legitimate act.
It's not "just installing software on a computer". It's installing software on a tethered device.
Don't let them twist the word's meaning in order to demonize people.
At this point I think the only thing that may save Google is Larry and Sergey firing Sundar and hitting the reset. Google has been consistently doing the wrong thing for a long time.
It's also worse in every way. All services. All products. They are failing spectacularly.
Users don't matter. They are making more money than ever.
Oh, is this gonna put the kibosh on the Vanced series of apps?
Yep which is why they're doing it
And before you know it, Android will no longer be open source for “security” reasons.
I have absolutely zore faith AOSP is long for this world. The GrapheneOS folks need to find a way off yesterday
The beauty of open source is that Google can't take it back. The worst they can do is close source their own future development. Meanwhile, the community can fork the last open source release of AOSP. Look at what open source devs did with Audacity, for example.
The real fly in the ointment here is Google already did with device trees and driver binaries for Pixel phones; no longer sharing these with AOSP will have a very chilling effect on custom ROM developers who must now reverse engineer needed configs and drivers.
I’ll worried for GrapheneOS because I know the dev doesn’t really want to implement QoL improvements or design updates, so we’re currently only relying on Google's good will with AOSP for that, and we can’t expect much I’m afraid
Don’t get me wrong, GOS is good and all, but some nice features are bugged or getting killed. It might be worth delaying casual updates to fix those
Now we have a new threat: no more third party stores. At this point iOS would even be better, at least there’s some very limited sideloading
Just like Apple, there will be no way to run apps like ICEBlock. Or anything else they don't want you to run.
It's time to make Pine rich.
You can currently sideload a bit on iOS, but it’s a massive pain
Can you sideload ICEBlock?
So like what mobile OS is there now? Graphene which itself is forked from Android? Like we have barely made it to 20 years with this tech and its locked the fuck up with no options for the people. Boutta be using a dumbphone for sure.
There are Linux Mobile OSs making promising developments, like KDE-Mobile. I'm planning on tossing it on a second-device, just to test it for myself.
Good luck with that too, with carriers sunsetting legacy networks, old dedicated dumbphones will no longer work in most cases. KaiOS is sometimes used on dumbphones, but most these days just run a fork of Android designed for dumbphones.
Maybe Meshtastic with an SMS API gateway is the way to go. Or cans and string.
There's still a surprising amount of devices made by HMD (who own Nokia's consumer phone brand, so you'll sometimes see them as Nokias) that run Series 30+ (think old Nokia software with some very slight modern enhancements) but have 4G hardware to play ball on modern networks.
That's a good point. Although living in the now, what did old Series 40 or Series 60 do behind the scenes? Probably not much because the extra power to mine user data wasn't there yet. Also HMD could have made the "+" telemetry. Not to diss it though. I'd much rather risk their software than any other right now.
If you want a half functioning phone I've seen something called PostmarketOS. Seems nice and barely working
I really want PostmarketOS to succeed, even to be good enough as a secondary device. The long term support and software flexibility seems so promising, but it is still nowhere near ready for most people.
Me too! I find the concept thrilling, and while I am usually an early adopter of these things, I could never use PostmarketOS as my daily driver. My phone needs to work..
And we have to pay for this? I thought it would be free. What a scam.
Think of the shareholders!
problem is that you can fork android or make a new linux based os but with manufacturers continuing to lock down bootloaders, good luck getting it on there without making a deal with a phone manufacturer.
plus you can say goodbye to all your banking apps and others that enforce integrity and stuff like that
Yeah, the hardware realm is the real difficult piece, and even if one can manufacture a device with off-the-shelf parts and manage to find chips with enough support for bands/modes for usability on carriers, getting carrier certification is a PITA.