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Comments (122)

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  develoopest
  I don't understand why ensuring general-purpose computing is not a priority of the European Union.All that talk about sovereignty, and we are giving full control of our digital lives to 2 American companies.
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  Cider9986
  GrapheneOS has minimal, private [1] system apps so you don't have to debloat anything yourself. Manual debloating is not a good solution at the user level.Some system apps are being overhauled, so that's something to look forward to. Gallery will be [2] based on ReFra [3].[1] Except phone and messaging but that's the cell network.GrapheneOS recommends Signal/Molly or SimpleX instead.[2] https://nitter.net/GrapheneOS/status/2083724696722301266#m[3] https://github.com/IacobIonut01/ReFra
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  K0balt
  Seriously question; why is the answer to this not a phone that can just run GNU/Linux? Is it just the lack of application support? I mean, you’ll have blobs, but at least at the os level you’ll have options?Can’t you run an android sandbox in Linux?Docker phone?I’m sure I’m missing something here, but what?
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  createful
  I think it might be a good idea to pause updates on our Android devices, as horrible as it is for security just to prevent this from happening. My OEM has a lot of bloat (Facebook and other junk apps you can't uninstall, useless system services, etc) that mostly do nothing except provide some functionality I don't use along with analytics every minute so they are uninstalled."Disabling" an app does not do that much, the OS can re enable it with an update or prevent you from disabling it.I doubt there is true full privacy on a phone anymore with a stock ROM.
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  dugite-code
  Ok this is not as bad as I feared, disable still works and that uninstalls any updates that app has gotten.It was always a bit surprising you could uninstall an app in a "read only" partition
• freefaler
  14 years ago, Cory Doctorow warned us about that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbYXBJOFgeIThe modern societies run via those devices and the enforcement will move to the mostly free Internet that was "a long time ago, when it didn't matter as much".
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  jackdoe
  In the next decade open hardware will win, any machine that exposes itself to be programmed by its user will be infinitely better than a machine that doesn't.From keyboards to phones to tractors.The appstore will die, and the walled gardens will die.Unless they use 'for the children' to make open machines illegal.
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  tstactplsignore
  This sucks. I use adb to uninstall all of the system apps like facebook, youtube, web browser, etc. to give myself a minimalist, distraction-free phone that still has niche apps, maps, and communication apps. Might have to look into the expensive light phones as an alternative now if this update hits my phone.
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  ck2
  -cough- Shizuku + ShizuTools pseudo-root via system-user* https://github.com/timschneeb/awesome-shizuku* https://github.com/legendsayantan/ShizuTools* https://github.com/RikkaApps/Shizuku/discussions/462
• spwa4
  Extremely "Googly" responses there. Not a single mention of the strategy of Google to include, oh, payment, social gaming, ads ... effectively building it into the system and totally disregarding the reasoning that people might want to remove or replace Google Play Services for those reasons. Just act like all that doesn't exist.
• Markoff
  Why would you uninstall them over disabling them? They make good point uninstalling is pointless, disabling achieves same purpose and it is safer. You can't use that system space anyway.if you don't want some system app running just "uninstall" (disable) it with Shizuku + Canta on any non-rooted Android, my current phone is the first one in 15 years with Android which I didn't root since unlocking bootloader on XIaomi is pretty much impossible, but anyway I can achieve pretty much same results with Shizuku and additional apps like Canta, Hail, Shizuwall, etc.Potential benefits:as mentioned, Android 17 prohibits uninstalling system apps, but allows disabling disabling apps is usually safer, and they could be re-enabled from Settings in some cases many system apps run in the background after being uninstalled, but it's unknown whether they do when disabled. Neutral:some apps might get re-enabled unless they're uninstalled (or the opposite). Potential harm:that would make it more risky for those who prefer to uninstall instead to save storage most of the already listed apps are primarily tested for uninstalling rather than disabling disabling instead, decreases privacy by not hiding apps, keeping the device unique.
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  jauntywundrkind
  Noose keeps tightening, the war on General Purpose Computing, the war against users owning devices intensifies. How utterly fallen.We'll see what happens with the proposed ADB changes. Lots of no one asking for this, lots of people describing how badly their phone use will be greviously impacted, and seemingly very little discussion/engagement/justification. Maybe they'll fire the bullet anyways. https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/526109803
• kotaKat
  Looking at the comment in the actual code change:"If we are being asked to delete a system app for just one user set flag so it disables rather than reverting to system version of the app."... Joy. This makes the 'nondisable' list an even more unhinged malware delivery mechanism for operators, because you won't be able to disable the carrier shitware app and it gets updates!It's time to start cracking down on malware preloads on phones and the over-subsidization of consumer products. We need to stop accepting $50 smartphones and $100 smart TVs that are crammed with a few hundred dollars of profit for the manufacturer to shove ads and malware at you nonstop out of the box.
• iluvcommunism
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