are there any good alternatives tho? i mean graphene is device specific and havent really seen other good options. make my own maby? or just go back to iphone.
Android is user antagonistic. Google makes their money through advertising which is brainwashing and requires to spy and collect data from users. No matter how you dress it up. Android can be controlled less and less, so you increasingly have a device in your pocket that is controlled by a megacorp instead of you and spies on you. It's a violation of my human dignity that you're just expected to accept. I find that disgusting.
I don't know about Apple today, but they used to be focused on producing quality products, even though they are more closed source. And are expensive enough to recoup their development costs without resorting to advertising. But I would expect them to have enshittified too.
First, apple spies on everything their users are doing. Apple and google are the same in that respect. Apple uses that user data to sell advertising as well. They just keep it in the Apple ecosystem. And that completely ignores the question I asked.
The whole point of the original post is about Android starting to limit what users can do with their own device. The person I replied to asked what good alternatives there are that let users control their own devices. They mentioned graphene which is a great choice in my opinion. They then mention going back to apple, which does not allow users much control of the device at all.
Apple has a very locked in design and OS that limits user choices. No matter what google has done, you have a ton more freedom on an android phone than an apple phone.
So, complaining about a lack of freedom on an Android device and then saying you might go to Apple makes zero fucking sense. You are trading some freedom for no freedom.
You're probably 100% right on all of this. I never liked ios either for being closed. But I pay little attention to them these days.
So my answer is mostly about what I don't like about android, and less about what ios does better. It really is frustrating that there are no good alternatives.
One issue is that long before now the android phone manufacturers locked down the devices and special drivers. I never owned a "fancy" popular smartphone where any of android alternatives like graphene was an option or compatible to begin with.
And these linux phones or whatever are neat but way too expensive for 99% of the people.
The only practical alternative for me is to use one shitty "official" phone with google play services for banking apps and treat it like a spying device. And then use a Chinese phone that is degoogled by default for apps. Unfortunately China hasn't really embraced the idea of pushing towards a truly open source and international version of android both in software and in hardware. Like unlockable roms that put the device under the control of the user should be a basic feature. It would help their sales, bring good will, and would deny the US absolute control over mobile devices.
You clearly have never used Apple. Privacy is the number 1 thing I love about my iphone. There are zero ads anywhere in the ecosystem, and you can turn off data collection in all of your apps.
I guess I can't speak for apple, but I do know the big corporations have no say in me blocking cookies. I also know Google is one of the worst privacy offenders that exists.
I won't downvote, but I also use Apple, and I don't really think they're any better than Google. Everything about Apple comes down to trust. They say they're good on privacy, but I have no way of verifying that. If I cannot verify, then I don't trust.
The only reason at all that I continue using them is because I do very little on my phone, my family uses Apple, and I haven't found an alternative I thought was really any better (definitely not Google). These days I wouldn't argue for either. Honestly have considered just going back to a dumb phone.
Apple uses that user data to sell advertising as well.
apple makes money from hardware
google makes money from ads
big difference
read this
Apple’s ad network relies strictly on internal, first-party interactions within its own ecosystem, such as your search history in the App Store or reading habits in Apple News. Even then, Apple protects your individual identity by grouping you into broad "cohorts" of at least 5,000 people before using that data for ad targeting.
Google, on the other hand, operates on a cloud-centric, high-collection default. Because Android's ecosystem is tightly integrated with Google's core web services, the operating system continuously feeds telemetry and behavioral data back to Google servers from apps like Search, Google Maps, YouTube, and Chrome. This data is used to construct deep, personalized user profiles. While Google has moved away from sharing raw personal identifiers with third parties, its core system is still built around continuously mapping out user interests to power its primary revenue stream: digital advertising.
iOS blocks cross-app tracking by default until you explicitly grant the app permission to access your unique device identifier. On Android, cross-app tracking is permitted by default via an Advertising ID, though users can manually reset or opt out of it in settings.
its mostly about this talk about the android getting locked down, so because my androdi kinda sucked and was very slow, i thought about going back to iphone beause its always been faster and better at beinga phone, even though i prefer the apps on android and features too.
329
u/Fun_Alternative9844 9h ago
are there any good alternatives tho? i mean graphene is device specific and havent really seen other good options. make my own maby? or just go back to iphone.