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A new vulnerability can brick your Android phone when receiving the SMS of Death (m.gsmarena.com)
submitted 1 day ago by to c/android@lemdro.id
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[–] 5 points 1 day ago (4 children)

It's a Pixel 3a XL, which does seem to be one of the better-supported phones on PostmarketOS, which I see has renamed itself Nura and might work better after a reinstall instead of an upgrade in place. It still doesn't claim to be ready for a general audience.

how is android not getting to be just as bad [as iOS regarding vendor control over app installation]?

Android is absolutely getting worse, but it's not as bad yet, and as bad isn't on the current roadmap. Important with regard to that is "Android" can mean more than one thing, including Android Open Source Project, Google-certified Android with Play Services and the like, a vendor distribution, or a third-party distribution. Even the worst case, a notarization-like system on Google-certified Android coming in the future, will be possible to turn off with an officially-supported procedure.

how can anyone trust their personal data being safe

You can't trust any of these megacorporations to do anything other than maximize their own profits, Apple included. It's possible to decide exactly how much Google stuff you want in some of the above descriptions of "Android" with increasing hassle as it approaches zero.

and if you are running graphine or the like it’s the same boat as the linux os options

No it's not. Open source Android distributions usually use kernels compatible with the OEM proprietary drivers, so stuff actually works. Something like that might be possible for desktop-style Linux, but that's not what the existing distributions actually do.

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  • [–] -2 points 1 day ago* (3 children)

    It still doesn't claim to be ready for a general audience.

    sure, and for the iphone crowd i wouldnt recommend it

    Important with regard to that is "Android" can mean more than one thing

    and im obviously talking about anything not fully stripped of google services

    my original complaint wasnt including graphine and that lack of clarity is on me

    You can't trust any of these megacorporations to do anything other than maximize their own profits

    don’t both sides same this, anyone paying attentions knows google has been especially bad this year

    the sad fact is ios is the lesser evil atm for personal privacy gag

    No it's not. Open source Android distributions usually use kernels compatible with the OEM proprietary drivers, so stuff actually works. Something like that might be possible for desktop-style Linux, but that's not what the existing distributions actually do.

    phone makes phone calls, camera does camera things

    banking is fucked but meh

    what exactly do you need? i actually like graphine but the problem is hardware keeps getting more hostile towards it, wont be long before it’ll be much worse

    this may be the last non adversarial generation of it

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  • [–] 3 points 1 day ago (2 children)

    sure, and for the iphone crowd i wouldnt recommend it

    I'm the using desktop Linux for decades crowd, and it's not good enough to replace Android on my phone.

    phone makes phone calls, camera does camera things

    See my previous comment. The camera does not do camera things, even after I fixed the permissions problem for /dev/video* that produced the initial error message. It's a bit like the experience of trying to run Linux on a laptop (other than a Thinkpad) 20 years ago.

    what exactly do you need?

    Bare minimum:

    • A camera. Doesn't need to be good, does need to take pictures that roughly convey reality.
    • Signal. This is my main means of (tele)communicating with people important to me. There's Flare, but that needs to pair with a device running the official client (or maybe a fork).
    • Whatsapp. I don't love it, but it's hard to avoid.
    • A web browser and mail client PostmarketOS Nura has passible options there.
    • A VOIP solution for a USA phone number that can do calls and SMS. I use Google Voice now because it's free; I might pay a small amount for an alternative.
    • Turn by turn navigation for car and bicycle.

    Some things might work on Waydroid, which pretty much runs LineageOS in a VM. It was fussy last I looked at it, and that suggests the obvious option of running LineageOS on hardware, which I do.

    hardware keeps getting more hostile towards [GrapheneOS]

    They recently announced a partnership with Motorola.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 day ago (1 child)

    ok and? my buddy literally has been daily driving one for more than a year and the camera on his pixel works fine, not a 3 though

    im pretty sure he has whatsapp

    i think nav is a bust will agree

    and trust me im huffing the motorola copium but ive learned to be real skeptical

    wont be even the 2nd time they dropped a promise this decade

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  • [–] 2 points 1 day ago

    It's likely I could find a solution or a workaround to most of bare minimum categories if I worked at it for a while. Then I'd have a kind of usable, laggy phone with terrible battery life instead of the decent experience I currently have with LineageOS. Why would I do that?

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