TL;DR
- Efforts like Graphene OS face increasing pressure from apps that refuse to run on non-standard Android.
- The custom ROM project characterizes Google’s approach to device attestation as incomplete and flawed.
- Graphene OS is prepared to take legal action if Google won’t let it pass Play Integrity checks.
The world of mobile phones is a real world example of what we avoided on the PC back in the day when the IBM BIOS got reverse engineered, allowing for someone to put out an IBM compatible PC without having to pay the tithe to big blue first. Not that IBM didn’t do their level best to put those efforts in the ground with their lawyers and the courts as soon as they found out about it. Thankfully the legal system of the time didn’t allow that to happen.
It has been pretty depressing to me that the tech literate have been so easily lulled into accepting such things in the name of “cool toys” and “security” virtually everywhere in modern life besides the PC/laptop/server spaces.
Phones, TV set top boxes, smart TVs, IoT gear. They are all a cesspit of locked down propitiatory and gate kept gardens where nothing happens without the gardens keeper getting a cut and having final say over everything.
This sort of control and gatekeeping from the likes of Google, Apple, and Qualcomm was not something that was hard to see coming a mile away, yet we all collectively let it happen anyway.
From my exposure to supporting said folks with PC related problems, its easy to see the reality here. Phones provide a streamlined experience with zero frills. They don’t want super flexible computing devices, they want appliances. More to the point, the level of care and maintenance needed to have a top-shelf PC experience is time and effort most people would rather not expend. Doing this right was inconvenient to begin with, and left the field wide open for anything that would be easier.
My complaint is not that the “appliance” solutions exist for those that want them. But that there is next to no room in the market now for options that are not those “appliance” solutions for those that do want them but also want to take part in the modern tech world with things like NFC payments without having to trick the services with Magisk modules.
Oh, we’re on the same page there. I’m complaining about that too. Things are shifting from “make the environment easier for some people” to “painstakingly chisel out an expert mode like you’re escaping from Shawshank.” and I do not like it.