Google’s Android, the world’s most widely used mobile operating system, started life as open-source software. In its quest for ever-greater profits, the tech giant has been gradually eroding Android’s open-source nature over the last decade.
Originally published on The Lever, but that one asks you to sign up.
Tried to restart my fairly new Pixel phone a couple days ago by holding down the power button, but instead of showing the Power menu it prompted me to ask the Digital Assistant something. Excuse me? I don’t remember enabling that. Every other phone I’ve ever had, holding down the power button has always been the way to power down or restart. I had to search Settings to find how to configure the power button to control the power. Or course maybe I could have asked the Digital Assistant - but fuck that.
https://grapheneos.org/
https://calyxos.org/
https://e.foundation/e-os/
https://lineageos.org/
be free
Graphene is the only one that gets rid of webview right?
What do you mean by webview? If you mean the entirety of webview then no ROMs do that AFAIK. android would be broken without it. If you mean replace Google’s webview with their own version, I’m pretty sure all the ROMs I listed there do it. I didnt fact check it though so feel free to prove me wrong
Yep, this is how they trick people into inadvertently using their shitty ai Spyware. Welcome to the future, yay. Fuck Google and Samsung.
So, how do you power it down?
In Settings you select Power as the function of the Power Button instead of Digital Assistant. Then the power button works like it should.
Sure, but what did they expect you to do before making that change.
It’s designed as an always on device. They expected you to leave it always on. Wankers
On my P7Pro, pressing power and volume up simultaneously brings up the shutdown/restart/lock prompt
Well that is shit.
On android the off button is on the quick settings, and on iphone you hold the power button and one of the volume buttons
No idea. Presumably they expected me to figure out the settings and change it like I did. Or maybe I could have told the Digital Assistant to restart the phone, I dunno.