@adi@twtxt.net @prologic@twtxt.net It’s worth bearing in mind that
- Fairphone has taken a considerable amount of VC funding so, sooner or later, that bill will become due: (see: https://techcrunch.com/2023/01/31/fairphone-growth-capital-raise and https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/fairphone)
- Fairphone comes with Google Play apps by default, so it’s also a spyware vector (see: https://mastodon.ar.al/@aral/110978014080809471)
I used to have a lot of hope for them but these two ingredients mean that enshittification is virtually inevitable.
@abucci@anthony.buc.ci Yeah I did a quick conversion of hte price and boi, it’s just as expensive as Apple iPhone(s) 🤣 I don’t need Google/Android garbage that’s just as expensive, even if it’s so-called” easier” to repair on my own (fuck I don’t have time for that!) 🤦♂️
@prologic@twtxt.net What’s the solution to Google/Android garbage?
@adi@twtxt.net Solution to “what”? 🤔
Google/Android garbage
@adi@twtxt.net What is Google/Android “garbage”? (besides being a monopoly). I personally like using Apple products (as long as they stay out of the “Advertising” business and/or continue to give me the choice to turn half their “Cloud” shit™ off)
@prologic@twtxt.net I’ve had a Teracube phone for about 3 years now. Theirs comes with a guarantee of 4 years–if something that’s covered breaks, you send the phone to them and they fix it and send it back, or they send you a new one. I took advantage of that last year when the screen broke; their tech support even helped me figure out how to wipe the phone when the screen didn’t display anything. Pretty painless all around. Have to say I’ve been very happy with it. It doesn’t have the top-end features that new big company phones have, but I don’t want those features so that’s not an issue for me. I dunno if it’s available in Australia or if it’s just a US thing.
@abucci@anthony.buc.ci Is Teracube an Android clone of some kind? And that’s fair and also great service 👌
@adi@twtxt.net @prologic@twtxt.net F-droid. Getting APKs from developers you trust and side-loading them. Some flavor of Linux. Some distro of the open source parts of Android.
There are lots of options. Bit by bit I divest from anything that’s distributed from Google Play. With my latest phone I find and download APKs so that I could have the app without all the Google crap woven through it. By the time I need to replace this one I’ll be fully free of Google Play. Most of my apps come from F-droid now. You can a perfectly functional phone/pocket computer unless you’re addicted to installing dozens of corporate apps.
@prologic@twtxt.net yes, the OS is based on stock Android, so probably wouldn’t be of interest if you prefer Apple.
@abucci@anthony.buc.ci I have no experience with F-Droid! Is their app inventory decent?
@adi@twtxt.net I think it is, and one benefit they have is that you can add third-party repositories to the F-Droid app as you discover them. So, for instance, if you know of a developer who pushes builds to an F-Droid compatible repository, you can add that to your F-Droid app and start tracking updates like you would for any other app in there. Can’t do that with Google Play!
F-Droid tends to focus on open source applications that can be built in a reproducible way, which limits the inventory (though of course tends to mean the apps are safer and don’t spy on you). There are non-free apps in there as well but they come with warnings so you’re informed about what you might be sacrificing by using them.
That said if you have a favorite app you get through Google Play, there’s a decent chance it won’t be in F-Droid. Many “big corporate” apps aren’t, and vendor-specific apps tend not to be either. But for most of the major functions you might want, like email clients, calendar apps, weather apps, etc etc, there are very good substitutes now in F-Droid. You’re definitely making a trade-off though.
What I did was go through the apps I had installed on my last phone, found as many substitutes in F-Droid as I could, started using those instead to see how they worked, and bit by bit replaced as much as I could from Google Play with a comparable app from F-Droid. I still have a few apps (mostly vendor-specific things that don’t have substitutes) that come from Google Play but I’m aiming to be rid of those before I need to replace this phone.
@adi@twtxt.net hahaha in some ways it sure does!
@abucci@anthony.buc.ci Joke aside, I remember enjoying Ubuntu with Gnome 2, now it just seems bloated. Most Linux distros seem bloated.
I’ve really hated the entire idea of app stores. I have been on Google Pixels since the 4, and use Calyxos, so can’t use PlayStore. Aurora comes preinstalled, but it’s kinda flakey.
F-Droid is ideal, all reproducible builds, opensource. It’s totally doable, but thinks like banking apps and utility apps, aren’t on there, as probably never will be as they all do dodgy stuff they don’t want you knowing about.
The reason I hate app stores, is because we already have a (somewhat decentralised) trusted transport in TLS/HTTPS. Like, I know if I’m on the hsbc.co.uk website, I’m 99.999999% sure I’m actually speaking to hsbc. So, then provide me the APK and let me down it. Or, make a decent PWA/WebApp so I don’t need your app.
Thing is. I don’t trust Google or Apple even a fraction as much as I would trust the TLS of the companies domain.
Thing is. I don’t trust Google or Apple even a fraction as much as I would trust the TLS of the companies domain.
That is until the Certificate Authorities get hacked, which I know it “quite hard”, as it would take an inside job 🤣 Or state control 🤔