Concerns over US-China relations may push Xiaomi, Oppo, vivo, and OnePlus to prepare a 'Plan B' for their Android software.
  • vga@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    281·
    2 天前

    USA is being horrible at the moment, but China has a LOT of convincing to do before I’ll let them deliberately have my data.

    Best way remains to raise as high a digital moat against everyone. If you need a smartphone, get a Pixel, install Graphene on it and as few apps as possible.

    • cyberwolfie@lemmy.mlEnglish
      5·
      2 天前

      I really want to get to a point I can transition to using this or another mobile Linux distro. My phone is fairly (hehe, it’s a Fairphone) well supported, but my impression is that basic phone features are still not functioning properly making it more of a pocket computer and less of a phone. I still need phone features. As for mobile apps, I don’t have many needs and I think Waydroid will get me far.

  • haych@feddit.ukEnglish
    1515·
    2 天前

    So that title is just a straight up lie. They want to use a de-googled Android.

    To be honest I was hoping for an alternative OS, competition is always good. But a de-googled Android could possibly be good, but being Chinese I assume instead of Google telemetry you’ll just be replacing it with CCP telemetry.

    • Hanrahan@slrpnk.netEnglish
      132·
      2 天前

      Indded but as an Australian, if I have to have an anal probe i’d rather it from the CCP as they wont share it with my Government.

    • WarlordSdocy@lemm.eeEnglish
      103·
      2 天前

      I mean judging by the current American government id much rather my data is going to the CCP then the American Government via Google as a proxy.

    • SabinStargem@lemmy.todayEnglish
      264·
      2 天前

      Honestly, I think a person in either nation should consider using the opposing nation’s stuff. Harder for the US to backdoor Chinese encryption, or for Chinese to backdoor into an American phone. Play the bastards off each other.

      Odds are, that the Trump Regime will use American apps and phones to identify and track targets for ICE traffickers. China probably does the same to Uighurs. The less attack surfaces they have, the better for their respective peoples.

      • jaxxed@lemmy.mlEnglish
        72·
        2 天前

        Except that there are credible reports of the CCP running police operations on foreign soil.

        • WarlordSdocy@lemm.eeEnglish
          4·
          2 天前

          But what reason would they have to go after you on foreign soil? Unless you’re like actively causing problems for China they’re not gonna spend the effort to go after you for saying “China bad” on one of their phones. That only matters if you’re in China at which point it’s silencing internal discontent. The much bigger likelihood is the American government seeing you, through data Google gathers, organize against US support of Israel or any other position they start abducting people for and grabbing you off the street for it.

          • jaxxed@lemmy.mlEnglish
            2·
            1 天前

            Probably not me. Most of the recorded incidents are against Chinese families that have emigrated.

            I complain about the CCP here and there, but not likely enough for any attention to be warranted.

      • dogs0n@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        20·
        2 天前

        That sounds funny, but In that reality, the government with all its power will find a way in (they probably already have programs (as in departments) for finding their way into other countries tech).

        Better to just install a proper de-googled android build (grapheneos, etc) and only use wifi (if data/phone num not needed) for the best odds.

        In a couple of years (with more r&d, development and investment) I bet this will change to being use a linux phone.

      • piyuv@lemmy.worldEnglish
        82·
        2 天前

        Apple building backdoors for CCP and sharing any and all data with them: am I a joke to you?

    • itisileclerk@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2210·
      2 天前

      US telemetry == CCP telemetry, I can’t see how CCP will be more damaging to regular person.

      • TheFriar@lemm.eeEnglish
        162·
        2 天前

        I think it’s just that they were saying his won’t end up benefitting us. It’s just changing who is holding the binoculars.

        • taladar@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          93·
          2 天前

          Because, at least for now, the US has the greater power to fuck up our lives with the information gathered.

  • flop_leash_973@lemmy.worldEnglish
    301·
    2 天前

    We are going to move away from Google, by basing our new future on AOSP, which is also primary maintained by Google…I smell another FireOS level product on the horizon. Still Android, but worse.

    • wetbeardhairs@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      568·
      2 天前

      That sounds nice and all but linux still is subject to exploits and the open sourced nature of it makes it an enticing target for state actors to include extremely well made obfuscated exploits. I dont know how to win here, tbh.

  • apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3931·
    3 天前

    Before anyone gets too excited, the headline is clickbait. The bigger Chinese phone brands are looking into de-googled Android. They are still going to use Android.

    several prominent Chinese smartphone manufacturers, including Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, and OnePlus, are exploring the possibility of developing versions of the Android operating system that do not rely on Google Mobile Services.

    Chinese laptop makers are also in search of an OS that isn’t Windows. Queue a race to prop Linux with Android support on that side of things.

    • Overshoot2648@lemm.eeEnglish
      6·
      2 天前

      Fuschia? That was a Google alternative to Linux that never panned out. It was weird with streams instead of files.

    • cauthon117@lemmy.zipEnglish
      3·
      1 天前

      German brand Volla has phones with Ubuntu Touch. Even allows dual boot with their own degoogled Android OS. Might be worth checking out.

  • Lembot_0002@lemm.eeEnglish
    1516·
    3 天前

    We need phones with standard Linux. Without strange “Java only mediator” or something. Just a normal OS.

    Android is a pain in the ass.

    • redlemace@lemmy.worldEnglish
      532·
      3 天前

      Exact! And please no bloatware!!

      Oh wait, before anything else : NO, and I really mean NO AI and/or VR shit. Just none. None A T A L L

    • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
      31·
      3 天前

      I don’t believe that they’re likely to do GNU/Linux. I bet that they’re going to do a fork of Android off AOSP or something like that.

      Android’s had a huge amount of work put into it to make it suitable to be a consumer mobile phone OS, and the companies here aren’t doing this because they want stuff that GNU/Linux does, but rather because they’re Chinese companies worried about a US-China industrial decoupling and its risks for them. Like, they were okay with the technical status; what changed was that they started to worry about having the rug pulled out from them.

      That being said, I can at least imagine that helping GNU/Linux phone adoption. So, think about what happened with video games. There were some major platforms out there – MacOS, iOS, Windows, various consoles, Android, GNU/Linux. That fragmented the market. Trying to port software to all platforms became a huge pain. What a lot of game developers did was to target a more-or-less platform-agnostic engine and let the engine handle the platform abstraction.

      If the mobile OS space fragments further – like, Android splits into “Google Android” and “China Android” — my guess is that that’ll help drive demand for platform-agnostic engines to help improve portability, and porting one engine to GNU/Linux is a lot easier than every individual program.

    • A_norny_mousse@feddit.orgEnglish
      8·
      3 天前

      We need phones with standard Linux.

      Already exists. Several iterations are active and work as a daily driver: phone, sms and mobile networking works reliably, apps exist. Just not as many as on Android, and some features are not part of the OS. This is enough for many to declare them “a failure”. That and limited hardware support.

      Google has coddled us for way too long, and at what price.

        • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.orgEnglish
          6·
          3 天前

          Seems pretty polished, but I genuinely don’t know. None of my devices support it, so I haven’t had the opportunity to test drive it.

          At some point, “normies” are just going to have to break down and learn something.

          • lemmy_user_838586@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            3 天前

            I think postmarketOS will probably win out on market share for Linux phones, mostly because it can use regular flatpak apps, you don’t have to develop special apps, which i thought you had to do for Ubuntu touch (which I guess is now called ubports). Not sure, someone correct me if I’m wrong about the specially built apps part.

        • bdonvr@thelemmy.clubEnglish
          51·
          3 天前

          No. I have a second phone with it just to play with.

          It’s functional, but rough. App support is lacking, VoLTE doesn’t work still which means on countries like the US which shutdown 2/3G you cannot make or receive calls. The UI is clunky and dated.

          I think a lot of these issues would go away pretty quick if it got a lot of attention. But then it’s unlikely to get much attention without that stuff. Vicious cycle. It’s a good base to build on.

          • Num10ck@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            2 天前

            thanks for the insight. if you use google voice app on it would that work as a replacement for VoLTE?

            • bdonvr@thelemmy.clubEnglish
              2·
              2 天前

              There isn’t a Google Voice app. It’s not Android.

              You could probably place calls from the browser but not receive them.

              I heard of some people setting up IP phone stuff for it, but it doesn’t seem simple.

    • cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      11·
      3 天前

      I would love to have a phone that I could just plug into a USB C dock and use as a normal computer. They’ve got plenty of processing power for that now. Every single program I use except for games could run on a phone if it used normal GNU/Linux.

    • lemmy_user_838586@lemmy.worldEnglish
      92·
      3 天前

      I was given an old Chromebook tablet by a friend that wanted to get rid of it, and it just happened to have mainline Linux support. I was able to get postmarketOS running on it, and got gnome shell mobile as the DE. It works, and works well. The apps that support the touch interface and are made to be responsive, etc work really well, and the waydroid integegration works fantastically well. I was able to get android version of jellyfin working, with vlc, and a few other apps I use daily. All this in 4GB of ram, I’m really impressed! This screenshot was running gnome shell I think, I’ve since switch to the ‘mobile’ variant of it, and running system monitor with android vlc and android jellyfin running, zoomed out so you could see all the apps running at once.

      1000011835

      Its time for a Linux phone, I put in an order for the 2nd batch of this phone, hopefully they start shipping soon, they supposedly already shipped the first batch to users.

      https://furilabs.com/shop/flx1/

        • lemmy_user_838586@lemmy.worldEnglish
          11·
          2 天前

          Good catch, while I guess they’re not using postmarketOS, that’s what was supported on the device i had, and what enabled me to test out the mobile version to gnome shell, and try out the phone app ecosystem. It seems like its ready for prime time, especially since waydroid performs so well, android apps can fill the void for any missing native Linux apps.

      • Chris@lemmy.worldEnglish
        12·
        3 天前

        They have been promising a good Linux phone for forever. Is this one any good? Will support last?

        • lemmy_user_838586@lemmy.worldEnglish
          11·
          3 天前

          No idea as i haven’t gotten mine yet. They’re still filling the next pre-order batch of production, but from the reviews on their website, it seems as responsive as you’d expect from android, which was a huge problem with Dev phones like the pinephone, they were way too sluggish with terrible battery life.

    • ilinamorato@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      3 天前

      Honestly, I think the old FirefoxOS could do well these days. Literally everything an app can do can be done by a browser with a decent caching/local storage scheme. Slap a decent camera on that and it would be amazing.

      • hazypenguin@feddit.nlEnglish
        16·
        3 天前

        If you can implement an equivalent to Apple’s Secure Enclave on a device running that, I’ll be interested. I haven’t seen even a device running Android doing that yet though.

        • ilinamorato@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          2 天前

          Samsung actually added Knox to their Android implementation a few months before iOS added Secure Enclave. I think Qualcomm had some sort of trusted execution environment around that time, too, if I recall correctly. And Google added Trusty to the AOSP two years ago. So it’s already running on Android, and has been for ages.

          But I’m not convinced a TEE would be necessary for a device that doesn’t run any third-party native code. Browser tab sandboxing is already pretty robust; I haven’t heard of an escalation exploit being found in ages on any major JavaScript engine, meaning that the risk of data exfiltration or bootloader compromise are extremely remote, and would be much quicker (and less risky!) to patch via browser updates than firmware/OS updates.

          The only other reason I know of that you’d need a TEE is for DRM, and I’d be willing to wager most people who would want a FirefoxOS phone would actively prefer not to have that on their device.

    • hazypenguin@feddit.nlEnglish
      16·
      3 天前

      Let me know when there’s a phone with Linux that has a security implementation that matches Apple’s Secure Enclave.

    • YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.todayEnglish
      142·
      2 天前

      Gurl let me spill the tea, there’s word floating round in China that some bde powa playas be considering maybe kinda putting something together.

      • Echo Dot@feddit.ukEnglish
        61·
        2 天前

        Pretty soon they’re going to pencil in a meeting about possibly arranging a committee to discuss preliminary plans to do a feasibility study.

  • Libra00@lemmy.worldEnglish
    281·
    3 天前

    You probably should’ve led with the fact that this is Chinese phones, not like Samsung and shit.