Ironically the fork that only runs on the phones made by the company that also makes Android
this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2026
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They just announced a partnership with Motorola.
I was going to say "isn't Motorola owned by Google though?", but then I looked it up. They're owned by Lenovo. But they were owned by Google! In 2014, which is 12 years ago and I'm going to go crumble to dust now...
Lenovo still not a good company but I likemy Motorola phone
It's a fork and always will, it's still android. I don't get why people refer to it as a different project. It's the same project with tweaks.
By that logic you should call most web browsers Konqueror, because ultimately they all forked from it.
Konqueror? KDE's browser?
I think you meant to say Mosaic.
I get what you are saying. But the difference is more akin to Mint and Ubuntu. Where one started as a fork of the other, which itself was a fork of something else, but at this point in time both are so different from their original source material that they’re all three just considered different distributions of the same thing.
Mint still takes upstream changes from Ubuntu though right?
Ubuntu, Mint, and Debian all still rely on the Linux kernel, though. A better comparison might be how LineageOS is technically a fork of the dead CyanogenMod project, but even before the latter fully imploded was different enough to be its own thing.
Both of them still relied on the existence of AOSP though, for new features, bug fixes, hardware support, certain core functionality, etc. AOSP is a lot bigger than just the Linux kernel, and because of the tighter coupling between hardware and software on mobile devices, there's a whole other discussion about creating a real non-Android OS for them, but I think that's a closer parallel.
Good old Cyanogen, my 10yo found my old nexus one in a draw, charged it up and turned it on....CyanogenMod boot screen, nice.
And Google has been taking steps to make Graphene development impossible over the past few years. It's going to be gone eventually.
With their partnership with Motorola I'm not so sure.
Isn't there also Jolla? Iirc they run on Linux.
Yeah but sailfish isn't open source, and it's not really available North America.
I wouldn't call Android "brilliant" nowadays if you count the forks that come pre-installed on most phones nowadays. It's bloated to the gills and keeps the user locked out of being able to control what certain apps can do and access.
that's why it says "was". in my personal opinion it was always hot garbage but that's besides the point
You either die the hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.
There is nothing free or open about Android, it only looks like it is when compared with iOS.
The source code is still fully available (and even searchable with code references) which is why all of these community and FOSS forks are still possible.
Google is absolutely abusing their influence over the Android brand to continually lock down consumer devices and the versions of Android that ship on them, but AOSP has only gotten more open-source friendly over time if anything. The problem is there are fewer and fewer devices that will actually let you leave branded Android™ for some version of AOSP.
Blame the courts. His can Apple win an anti competitive case and Google loose. All because they where more open.
Ok, so basically what you are saying is Android is "Open" in name only and that in practice it is functionally not open.
No the software is open, it's the hardware you run it on that's locked down to the manufacturers own specific fork.
No, they are explaining that "Android" effectively refers to two different things.
And one of those things, in practice, makes it harder for users to take advantage of the openness of the other.
Only on that platform. The Android™ platform is way more popular than AOSP, but that doesn't mean Android™ precludes AOSP.
For the purposes of making a custom Android-based OS like GrapheneOS, AOSP is better than ever. Whether or not there are actually devices to install GrapheneOS on kind of isn't the point here in my mind since we're talking about which one someone prefers, which means they're already able to use both.
And as GrapheneOS' existence demonstrates, it's still pretty easy and even increasingly mainstream now to change your device's firmware. GrapheneOS currently is only built for Pixel devices, made by Google, the company that also develops AOSP and owns the Android brand. In theory Lenovo is going to have a Motorola branded device running GrapheneOS officially in the near future, but Lenovo doesn't have a great track record with mobile software support.
Android™ itself might be getting more locked down and centered around Google's services, but it's still an option to move to something else based on AOSP, and thanks to things like Project Treble (which is enforced by Google Play's compatibility tests), you might not even need device-specific firmware to have a usable and pleasant non-proprietary experience.
The situation with Android is weird, because Google technically owns all of it, but it's completely different departments going completely different directions, and it doesn't help that we all call the entire concept Android when that's technically the brand for Google's special certified versions of AOSP (which also includes the word Android but not as a brand...).
Android exists only as a place to push ads into people’s faces, with a focus on getting ad displays into less affluent markets.
iOS exists only as a platform to sell iPhones and iPads, which naturally has a focus on affluent markets.
They’re both in the control of megacorps and I can’t figure out why people hold up Android as some kind of open source hero besides a desire to hate on Apple.
Android consists of way more free and open source software than iOS. There's a fork of Android, Replicant, which is endorsed by the FSF. Free and open source software does not have owners. It's true that most people who use it (including me) still use versions of it that are mostly nonfree software. But Android is a step in the right direction, while iOS is one in the wrong direction.
It's possible to use an Android phone and rarely or never see ads at all. Pretty much the only place I regularly see ads on my (stock) Android phone is in the YouTube app, and I could probably live without that too if I wanted.
And you can!
Newpipe
PipePipe
Tubular
SmartTube (Android TV)
FreeTube
Flow
NouTube
Invidious/Materialous
LibreTube
SkyTube
YouTube ReVanced
All these apps and more allow you YouTube Premium features for absolutely free!
I already sometimes access YT through Firefox for Android, mainly for playing music in the background. Maybe I'll change that at some point, but currently I still normally use the official YouTube app for watching videos.
YouTube ReVanced is the official YouTube app, just with some code patches applied. They avoid being taken down (RIP original Vanced) by only releasing a patcher app and a bunch of lists of patches for various apps.
It's dead simple (if you're rooted; unrooted requires jumping through extra hoops). You install the patcher app, a specific version of YouTube (which can be done within said app), select from a looong list of patches (everything from removing ads to integrating SponsorBlock and DeArrow [which changes clickbait titles and thumbnails to something neutral] to restoring the video quality menu to re-enabling background play and picture-in-picture mode to hiding shorts and all those react buttons under vids to blocking videos based on keywords), and the app creates a custom YouTube APK with all those patches applied.
It's impossible to go back to stock after using ReVanced. I have over fifty patches applied and without them the app is a web of dark patterns and enshittification. With them I have a simple app with a few buttons per page (just the ones I use) that opens directly to a feed containing only the videos I want to watch.
The downside is it's a pain to setup without root since YouTube is usually a system app, but with root you can even mount ReVanced over the base app so it's completely undetectable by the system (though there's always a chance Google will add something within the app to catch users that the RV team might not catch due to YouTube's infamously convoluted design and server-side A/B testing).
For unrooted you only have to.install revanced microg once and login and the rest is the same as rooted basically just that it installs as an another app.