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JairajDevadiga Jul 16, 2025

Google Keeps Making Smartphones Worse

Google Keeps Making Smartphones Worse - Lemmy.World

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.

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youmaynotknow Jul 18, 2025

2 days ago I moved from GrapheneOS back to Stock Pixel in my 8 Pro, just to see what all the hype about the new android 16 in Pixel is about. Jesus, this is way worse than I remember. i tried it for 2 whole days, and that shit just won’t allow me to have ANY control over my phone. It’s fucking ridiculous. On Android 15 I was able to uninstall Google Drive, Meet, Youtube, and many other Google apps, this time around all it would allow was “disable”. What’s next, removing the ability to disable (which I don’t trust anyway)?

Fast forward to today, I’m back on GOS, and my anxiety levels are down again. This shit is insane, and I honestly can’t understand why anyone would put up with this crap.

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Passerby6497 Jul 18, 2025

I’ve been considering moving to GOS because of all the Google shenanigans, but I need to make sure everything works since my job means I have dozens of MS authenticator entries for various admin tasks. I really want to try it out, but can’t afford to have to rebuild all those entries on a new system (and the notifications not work)

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youmaynotknow

I had to use MS Authenticator for work and it worked in GOS, notifications and all. Now, that was about a year ago, and I haven’t tried it since. At the speed GAFAM are enshitifying everything, there’s a chance it doesn’t work anymore. I keep a Pixel 8a stock for banking and some other apps that I need (such as EV charging networks) and won’t work or are unsustainably wonky on GOS. As I mentioned in another post, RethinkDNS is worth it, but it does take some trial and error to get it to work without breaking stuff I need, but once I got there, it was all good (that’s how I keep the 8a less intrusive).