Debloat non-rooted Android devices

https://github.com/Universal-Debloater-Alliance/universal-android-debloater-next-generation

by zikohh • 2 years ago

303 222 2 years ago

judiisis• 2 years ago

This project is unmaintained since a year. For an up-to-date and maintained fork see https://github.com/Universal-Debloater-Alliance/universal-an...

r4nd_f• 2 years ago

Thanks!

dang• 2 years ago

Belatedly changed from https://github.com/0x192/universal-android-debloater above. Thanks!

jamesy0ung• 2 years ago

Thanks for this! I was able to uninstall Horizon Feed and Social from my Quest 3 using this tool!

LoganDark2• 2 years ago

you CANNOT brick your device with this software!

Disable Knox on a Samsung device and it will brick itself. Luckily when this happened to me I was still connected over ADB, able to re-enable it and the device unbricked

ycombinatrix• 2 years ago

if you were able to reboot the device, was it really ever bricked?

LoganDark2• 2 years ago

Not "reboot". Re-enable the package I had disabled. If I had disconnected the phone from ADB it probably would have been soft-bricked forever.

microflash2• 2 years ago

You can delete Knox on some Samsung phones after reflashing the stock firmware.

cf100clunk• 2 years ago

Similar GUI tool for debloating and customizing non-rooted Amazon Fire tablets via ADB:

https://xdaforums.com/t/windows-linux-tool-fire-toolbox-v33-...

Repulsion9513• 2 years ago

Why? You can disable apps from right there on the phone, what does this add over doing that? The FAQ makes some mention of further "uninstalling" them from the user profiles (and deleting cache/data, which you can also do in the settings), but it's not clear to me what that means.

cmeacham98• 2 years ago

Some OEM bloatware apps cannot be disabled in the Android UI but can be disabled via ADB.

pooper4• 2 years ago

Metro by T-Mobile has some strange bloatware that I was able to disable with adb. I can't imagine living with this garbage day in and day out. Makes me wonder if this is why some people in the US believe iPhone is better than android — they've only experienced carrier bloatware infested android devices.

smusamashah2• 2 years ago

On Android TV you can not disable/uninstall the default ad filled launcher without adb.

midasz• 2 years ago

I just did yesterday on a new chromecast Google TV thingy with the inbuilt function of Projectivy launcher. Installed the launcher, checked the box in settings and now even when restarting I don't see the default launcher.

oliwarner3• 2 years ago

It's quicker, can be run pre-setup and as others have said, can remove things that you cannot remove through the standard package interface.

morsch5• 2 years ago

I bought -- full price, retail -- a midrange Samsung phone for a relative recently. The amount of bloatware was incredible. Various social networks and shopping apps were preinstalled. In addition to all the Samsung apps that more or less duplicate the Google stack, poorly. The entire setup process was full of dark patterns designed to extract as much data from you as possible. No way a regular person gets through that without missing something.

daniel_reetz• 2 years ago

I was furious when I found out that the default keyboard was infested with Grammarly, sending all my keystrokes without consent. Embarrassing for a $1200 flagship device.

resource_waste3• 2 years ago

This is a user/psychology problem.

No one in their right mind is suggesting Samsung. Heck, similar to Apple, you have swaths of people warning you about Samsung.

Samsung lives and dies off their huge marketing budget. Buying their phone is more of a psychology thing, than 'I did lots of research and I bought a high quality phone'.

magicalhippo2• 2 years ago

On my S21 it's an option. I can't recall turning it off, but it (and the other 3rd parties) are off. Perhaps I did so indirectly during initial setup.

autoexec4• 2 years ago

The first time I had a samsung phone I noticed after about two weeks that every single word I typed into any application was being collected and sent to a third party whose privacy policy said it was used to collect data about my interests, my social life, to make guesses about my intelligence level and education, and that the data would be sold for "market research" among other things.

No user would ever suspect that the keyboard that came with their cell phone would be letting third parties read all their texts and emails to do those things. I'd assumed the keyboard was just a part of the OS. I only found out after I just happened to long press a key long enough to get an "about samsung keyboard" window and clicking around to find a privacy policy that said which company they were sending keystrokes to, and then reading that company's privacy policy.

I immediately found an open source keyboard to replace samsung's with. I'll say one thing for them, collecting everything everyone types into their devices meant that the samsung keyboard had really good spellchecking/predictive text capabilities. I'd never go back to using it, but there are times I wish the keyboard I replaced it with had a better spellchecker.

rightbyte6• 2 years ago

Oh dear. I had disabled the Samsung keyboard for some other, but it seems it got reenabled again.

Maybe Google broke some API endpoint and the old keyboard didn't do the update grind.

No warning what so ever for their spyware taking over the keyboard functionally.

The need for some FOSS mobile is really over due by now.

Edit:

I immediately found an open source keyboard to replace samsung's with

Which keyboard did you pick?

MaxBarraclough2• 2 years ago

I noticed after about two weeks that every single word I typed into any application was being collected and sent to a third party

How did you discover this? Has it been written about? Seems pretty scandalous.

andrepd2• 2 years ago

Indeed. 99% of people will never even realise this is happening. Its crazy that "reading everything typed in a person's device without that person's awareness" is not something that has been legislated into oblivion.

hulitu• 2 years ago

No user would ever suspect that the keyboard that came with their cell phone would be letting third parties read all their texts and emails

When we were young, this was called a keyloggger and one running was a sign that your computer was compromised.

I guess times have changed.

bboygravity3• 2 years ago

I find it mind blowing that:

1. Samsung is able to sell phones like that legally. 2. People are not in jail. 3. Governments somehow think it's ok that random companies can see everything their citizens do online. National security risks maybe? Trade secret issues?

It's almost suspicious to the point where I would start thinking those third party spy companies are possibly (US/5 eyes) government run?

idle76• 2 years ago

I suspect it's npt just Samsung. Both google and microsoft (SwiftKey) does the same thing.

The worst part is that the most used national ID-function now stops you from using third party "approved" keyboard due to (misguided) security reasons. Both AnySoftKeyboard and AOSP keyboard is banned.

HenryBemis• 2 years ago

NoRoot Firewall app (I'm not affiliated). I must have brought it up in every Android security related post in HN that I've came across.

I use it on all my Android devices. I block all traffic in most apps.

Some Android phones allow you to allow/block Data and/or WiFi separately. My Samsung 4G tablet doesn't allow me to switch off Data or WiFi for some apps, especially the system ones.

This is where NoRoot Firewall does all its good work. It has Global Block list (all ads/trackers go there) and for each app I individually block or allow certain IPs.

So if "Samsung Keyboard" app wants to send your typing home, you block Data/WiFi and leave it trying :)

resource_waste3• 2 years ago

I'm amazed people buy Samsung anything.

I only had 1 poor quality phone that cost $400, 10 years ago, and I was traumatized.

Occasionally I get a work Samsung phone and they really are the Apple of Android.

geraldhh3• 2 years ago

imho the galaxy s4 mini was peak smartphone and thou the specs got better, the devices became increasingly bigger, heavier and less useful

gjm11• 2 years ago

"the Apple of Android" doesn't communicate anything to me other than that you dislike both Samsung and Apple; there are any number of things someone might dislike about Apple and so far as I know there isn't the sort of general consensus that would make such a phrase meaningful.

(I get the impression from your comments in this thread that maybe you're trying to create such a consensus or the illusion thereof, to get people used to seeing Apple casually referred to as an exemplar of some unstated kind of badness, or something like that. That sort of thing never works.)

silversmith• 2 years ago

Could it be that it's a US-specific thing? My last three phones have been EU-sold Samsung S series, and the only things I'd consider "third party bloat" were pre-installed versions of Facebook and MS Office, both easily removable.

The Samsung replacement apps is down to personal preference, I find them easier to use than Google "originals".

Having casually interacted with phones from other brands, I consider Samsung among the best Android options as far as software and UX goes.

morsch5• 2 years ago

This was in Germany, so no. It's probably a midrange vs flagship thing, or it has gotten worse over time. I had an S10 and I don't remember it being so bad.

Flex247A• 2 years ago

I don't think it's US specific. Have faced a similar situation with the last two budget phones I bought in India.

rightbyte6• 2 years ago

It is not an US thing. You got a "Bixby" button right? You can't remap it to something usefull. There should be a gesture to swipe up "Samsung Pay", etc.

numpad03• 2 years ago

I think it's sales channel dependent. Most carrier locked phones run carrier tailored OS that often include bloatware. Unlocked phones and/or phones sold in rights conscious regions would contain less.

I've used couple carrier branded phones, that `pm list` commands I posted in a different comment returns literally more than dozen of com.carrier.carriertrademark packages.

Symbiote4• 2 years ago

My phone is Sony, and came pre installed with the Microsoft SwiftKey keyboard.

First, please note that unless you have opted in to use a Microsoft SwiftKey Account on your Android device, all personal and language data generated by Microsoft SwiftKey is stored locally on your device and is never transferred.

I use it since it seamlessly swaps between enabled languages. I can write something like "meet me at Østerport Station" smoothly.

onli• 2 years ago

Thanks, I was searching a keyboard that supports this properly for a while. Sadly no Foss option out there I know about :/

rapnie• 2 years ago

Bloatware, dark patterns, opted-in privacy invasions, and unavoidable privacy infringement.. I feel that Samsung is somewhere in the top of that spectrum. Which commodity Android device vendor has the least of that out-of-the-box?

bboygravity3• 2 years ago

Unihertz

tilsammans2• 2 years ago

Motorola

smellf• 2 years ago

Don't know how it compares to other manufacturers, but I've been pretty happy with the minimal BS that comes on my last two Sony phones.

as1mov2• 2 years ago

Asus? Though I'm not sure what's it sending in the background, but there was no legal jargon that I had to agree to, to use any of the apps. There were barely any custom apps, it pretty much relies on the stock Android apps.

yard20102• 2 years ago

Welcome to the future. It will be A cyberpunk dystopia just like in Cyberpunk 2077, but much sooner than 2077 IMHO.

theandrewbailey2• 2 years ago

We've been in the cyberpunk dystopia timeline for at least 10 years, maybe since the 90s.

Defletter• 2 years ago

dark patterns designed to extract as much data from you as possible

It's insane how prevalent this is. The other day, I opened my calculator app and was met with a cookie banner (https://imgur.com/a/njJEiqY) - I uninstalled it on the spot out of sheer incredulity. The irony was that I originally installed Simple Calculator because it was simple and open source, so I presumed it would escape being a trojan horse for data collection. I guess not.

Dudhbbh3343• 2 years ago

All the "Simple" apps were recently sold to a company that's apparently filling them with ads.

There's a group that forked the original open source apps:

https://github.com/orgs/FossifyOrg/repositories

osmsucks• 2 years ago

I had a similarly appalling experience with a Samsung smartphone in, I think, 2012? Since then, I swore to never but anything Samsung again.

coolg54321• 2 years ago

For me i've felt Samsung flagships have the best hardware, OneUI is very good compared those TouchWiz days. Then you have these bloatwares, first thing i do after getting any Samsung phone is doing `pm uninstall –k ––user 0 <bloatware.apps>` the linked tool does the same in a more user friendly way. One thing which that still blocks is i see you can't still remove some things like samsung account stuff, knox related stuff..etc, unless you flash a custom rom.

rchaud4• 2 years ago

In Canada, Samsung phones sometimes have the Facebook app pre-installed, but that can be disabled, and won't show up again. Besides that, there's no bloatware on my phone other than the default Google apps (Google Meet, Google Pay etc).

microflash2• 2 years ago

Samsung's SMS and Phone apps also upload user data to some shady data broker. Never buy Samsung. If by any stroke of misfortune you're forced to use it, debloat it as much as possible and use a firewall with internet connection disabled by default.

l33tman• 2 years ago

Weird, I've had Samsungs flagship phones since 10 years back and never had any app on them that would be considered bloatware. There are a bunch of low-key note-taking apps etc that you can just ignore. Like another poster wrote, maybe it's a US-thing?

I actually use the Samsung web browser, because it allows ad-blocking out of the box, which Chrome on Android won't allow...

I've always used gboard as a keyboard (googles keyboard) and disabled the options to get really predictive and smart as I'm sure that makes it learn more closely and potentially send back data to google etc.

xnx• 2 years ago

What are the reasons someone would want to buy any Android device beside a new or used Google Pixel?

morsch5• 2 years ago

Combination of price and length of software support.

as1mov2• 2 years ago

The bloat depends on the manufacturer. I've used a bunch of Android phones over the course of the last 15 years.

Sony Ericsson, Motorola - Pretty much stock Android. Though this was almost a decade ago, so not sure what's their state now.

Xiaomi - Absolutely filled with bloat, but really cheap + flagship specs. Easily fixed by flashing LineageOS.

Pixel 1st gen - No bloat, stock

Asus - My current phone. No bloat, though it has a lightweight skin + QoL stuff that I don't mind. I use it non-rooted + stock OS

throwaway114608• 2 years ago

Don't want to give money to Google. And the hardware is sad compared to any recent Samsung flagship.

npteljes5• 2 years ago

Same experience with Samsung, only several years behind. The build quality is excellent, but the bundleware level is unbelievable. And the Samsung software seemed like a cheap bolted-on thing, on top of the perfectly good Android base.

captn3m02• 2 years ago

I tried one of these lists on a (just factory reset) Xiaomi. Ended up breaking on reboot - immediate crash after login, and it was unusable.

Managed to fix it, but learned to be careful - what might be critical for one model might be bloat for another.

No0op3• 2 years ago

Could you share logs with uninstalled packages led to this, please?

wooptoo• 2 years ago

Probably the Security center or the Mi account app. It will send the phone into a reboot loop.

Here's a writeup about packages which are safe to remove in MIUI: https://wooptoo.com/blog/safe-to-remove-packages-miui/

This is from a few years ago but it should still apply today.

captn3m02• 2 years ago

Probably something on https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OSw05IqGrIJSEi4xcEMiV56xw4t....

I'll try to reproduce if I get time.

userbinator• 2 years ago

IMHO better to root if you can, since then you do get full control as the rightful owner.

Unbiased86782• 2 years ago

You can't easily root your phone these unless the device is popular and has some community support. Immediately after buying I tried to root my realme gt 2 device and it got bricked. Fortunately it was under warrenty, I went to to customer support and told them it isn't booting up after an update. They fixed it with an internal tool. I haven't tried since.

Symbiote4• 2 years ago

Some banking apps detect this, or might detect it in the future, and refuse to work.

In some countries (Scandinavia...) not having the banking app is inconvenient, as it's used for authentication with many other services.

bonki3• 2 years ago

That's a bold understatement, you're pretty much fucked without BankID on your phone.

lysp• 2 years ago

Magisk (the main rooting method) allows you to hide root from such apps.

Most apps I use (ie. banking) are bypassed simply by adding them to a hide-list.

The only apps that require a bit more work / expertise are apps that require integrity checks (ie. google wallet).

nolist_policy2• 2 years ago

IMHO rooting is not worth it nowadays.

npteljes5• 2 years ago

What to do with the root access? I did it once, but never needed it.

feverzsj• 2 years ago

It will either make your phone unstable or do nothing significant.

oliwarner3• 2 years ago

Tell us you've never run this on a Samsung without telling us you've never run this on a Samsung.

VladTheImpalor• 2 years ago

Don’t mind me saying it, but I’ve always found this comeback insufferable. It is smug, especially since it is overused as an argument terminator all over Reddit.

In this case I actually agree with your “side” of the argument, but not the construct.

squarefoot• 2 years ago

+1. ADB, either directly or indirectly is the only choice to debloat Android devices. This was the case of one of my old tablets (a cheap 10'' Mediacom crap) that resisted every rooting attempt, no matter which tool I could try. Removing unneeded services and stuff became a breeze, although the process is quite dangerous and I ended up with something that can't run Google services anymore, but does run Whatsapp for the 7-8 contacts I couldn't convince to use email, and download from F-Droid, which is enough for me.

Unbiased86782• 2 years ago

Yes, I have been using canta with shizuku that enables wireless debugging for this.

https://shizuku.rikka.app/ https://github.com/samolego/Canta

butz2• 2 years ago

Where one can find an up to date list of obscure packages on an Android device with short description what it actually does and the impact if it was disabled/uninstalled? I'm especially interested in possible dependencies between such packages, when uninstalling one seemingly unrelated package might break something else.

thatloststudent• 2 years ago

This [1] is the list that UAD uses.

[1] https://github.com/Universal-Debloater-Alliance/universal-an...

butz2• 2 years ago

Thank you, that's quite a big list.

KingOfLechia• 2 years ago

Thanks, but I'm still sticking with CalyxOS.

protoman3000• 2 years ago

Why is it not possible to compile and install a complete clean Android directly from the sources on your phone? What are the things that prevent that?

kelnos• 2 years ago

In general it is possible to do that (assuming the phone has an unlockable bootloader), but you can't do that for the exact same image from the manufacturer, because they don't provide the source for a lot of it.

You might be able to install a third-party, community-maintained OS, like LineageOS, though, if your hardware is supported. The downside is that I believe apps like Google Pay won't work anymore, since they require Google's SafetyNet attestation system to pass. Sometimes there are ways around that, but they always seemed like unreliable hacks to me.

secGally• 2 years ago

Since when play has been unusable with Lineage? It worked 3 months ago. I cant check that because i got new phone.

One and only problem i see with Lineage is that VoLTE wont work and as we dont have 3G anymore it is must have.

bonki3• 2 years ago

Hardware support.

hughesjj4• 2 years ago

Lazy vendors single handedly keeping windows and android going with their lack of cross platform drivers, so frustrating....

numpad03• 2 years ago

That works on x86 PC platform because boot process and hardware discovery are well standardized, and Kernel is overwritable while the OS is running. Those are not guaranteed on non-PC computers.

nolist_policy2• 2 years ago

AFAIK you can just do that with Google Pixel phones. I'm not saying its easy but the source code is all there.

Almondsetat• 2 years ago

Closed source device drivers. The mobile phone market is like the desktop market in the 90s

rchaud4• 2 years ago

Didn't use to be that way. Android phones with Qualcomm SoCs used to be incredibly easy to modify with alternative versions of Android. That changed around 2014-15, can't remember why.

Now it seems only Google's own Pixel phone is the only one that's hackable enough to run LineageOS or /e/ or other de-Googled distros.

nairboon• 2 years ago

I guess, the ultimate solution is to ditch Android and just use a proper Linux on the phone, once some more devices are properly supported: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices

numpad03• 2 years ago

Related Android equivalent commands used in this project:

  `dpkg --get-selections`: `adb shell pm list packages | sort`
  `dpkg -r <pkg>`: `adb shell pm uninstall -k --user 0 <pkg>`

edit: to hide status bar icons(may be version dependent):

  1) `adb shell dumpsys activity service SystemUIService`
  2) search for "icon slots: " and note down names
  3) `adb shell settings put secure icon_blacklist battery,wifi,clock, ...` (blacklist is overwritten by new list upon running this command)

1oooqooq7• 2 years ago

There's lot of undocumented things you can do with those, which the developers include because of their own itches. For example, i know most of the android and pixel core team at google have toggles for wifi and data. But they shipped a single quick setting tile for both. Yet there is a hidden setting to bring the two tile mode back.

why that happens at google so often?

bonki3• 2 years ago

+1, I've used UAD with great success on a OnePlus.

nsonha• 2 years ago

Would be more willing to be a guinea pig if there is more info on what will be removed. There are bloats in my Samsung phone but there are also useful features unique to it that I wanna keep (eg DEX), or things that if removed may break the phone in some nuanced ways.

TacticalCoder• 2 years ago

If, according to this thread, Samsung is so bad and I don't t want buy a Chinese phone... What are my options for an Android phone?

Is there any Android phone brand/model that is not exploiting its users?

dethos• 2 years ago

Fairphone?

tilsammans2• 2 years ago

I buy Motorola phones and they have been great in recent years. I consider them the new Android One. The OS is stock Android. Facebook and LinkedIn are preinstalled, but easily removed. The moto apps add useful gestures. The launcher is very much like the Pixel one, but also easily changed. It uses Google apps for everything, i.e. Gboard for the keyboard. The camera is great. Typing this on an edge 30.

robin_reala2• 2 years ago

They didn’t want a Chinese phone though.

mFixman3• 2 years ago

Let me disagree with this thread.

I've used flagship Android Samsungs since Google stopped Nexus phones, and they were great. The hardware is fantastic, you can install and change any default app, and their performance doesn't degrade in time.

I can count 4 pre-installed apps that I forgot about. It has much less bloatware than an iPhone, that comes preinstalled with a dozen useless apps that cannot be removed from your home screen.

robin_reala2• 2 years ago

What apps can’t be uninstalled on iOS?

jeroenhd• 2 years ago

I've never seen the bloatware a lot of people on here are talking about. My suspicion is that they bought a phone through a carrier. Carriers push tons of weird bloatware onto their users (which is probably why their models are cheaper). If you just buy a phone, I don't think there will be any obvious bloatware on Samsung phones. There are some duplicate apps, but I'm pretty sure that's limited to Chrome vs Samsung Internet and Google Play vs Samsung Store.

My tablet came with a weird Google Now replacement that I can't remove, but that's the only bloatware I really encountered. The rest was free versions of paid apps like drawing software and the standard Samsung suite. No weird shopping apps, no ads anywhere, just what I wanted for the tablet.

Xiaomi is pretty bad, though. It kind of makes sense, because they need to develop their software for China, where there is no Google cloud, so they've become their own Google. Every app prompts for agreeing with a privacy statement. Some models of phones actually include ads in the system apps (which can be disabled by a setting, but it's still a problem). Their privacy policy is also a blatant lie. I love the bang-for-the-buck nature of Xiaomi phones, but I wouldn't buy them unless there's a good custom ROM available. Other Chinese brands suffer similar problems, but not to the same extend.

snickerer• 2 years ago

fairphone.com

INTPenis• 2 years ago

I've been using Google Android phones since the G1 and I'm very happy with their stock OS. Currently on Pixel 7a.

My parents both each have some Samsung and it's awful whenever I have to help them do something.

switch0072• 2 years ago

I'm no Android expert but Pixel 7a had a price drop recently (plus good deals on contracts), and GrapheneOS supports Pixel phones. Also quite a few are now made in Vietnam I believe

Lyngbakr2• 2 years ago

On Friday, I switched to the Pixel 7a with GrapheneOS and it's costing me CAD$1 per month for the phone on a 24-month contract and I got a better deal on my monthly phone plan. So far, it seems like an awesome phone and the installation of GrapheneOS via the web installer was incredibly easy.

Gunseng• 2 years ago

Buy a Sony Xperia, there is some bloatware, but you get a 3.5mm jack, no bezels and a microSD slot.

npteljes5• 2 years ago

Pixel is quite good. Android, straight from the source, and the support is long. Can be made even better with GrapheneOS if you so choose.

cranx• 2 years ago

Why write this in rust to execute shell commands?

Saris• 2 years ago

Ease of use I suppose, looking up package names and manually pasting them in is really slow.

jkhanlar3• 2 years ago

Kind of related, a few weeks ago I've been thinking to myself what happened to the open source free software operating system developments for mobile devices? Specifically, how are operating system environments such as GrapheneOS and CalyxOS, etctera, only able to be used on a single company's (Alphabet Inc) manufactured phone devices and not any other devices and where are the operating systems that work on as many to practically all of the devices that exist and the general idea of linux-style developments that represent collectively compiling all the hardware variations to have drivers and support for practically everything for everyone to get mostly the same experience regardless of which hardware they use

Is the mobile computer hardware industry that hostagedly cowardly locked down that this is no longer possible as it used to be, where people don't even own their own computer devices and instead have to use devices that are owned by other entities? Or what other explanation is there for no such multi-device operating systems? Or did I just miss something that I am blind to?

jkhanlar3• 2 years ago

For example

https://androidauthority.com/grapheneos-3287030/

"Even if you stomach the Pixel-only requirement"

I have not and will not stomach that at all. Nope!

https://grapheneos.org/faq#supported-devices

Nope! I wasn't paying attention, but if I remember, Alphabet/Google was funded to deploy/release Android operating system, and they also were financed to deploy some hardware phones before disappearing to let other companies continue the things and then reappear somehow taking advantage of all the othre companies to outperform all of their manufacturings and whatnot, and then operating systems exist only for the Google phones and none of the others, and this is normal? What? I say F to that coward hijacking others efforts stuff!

I see https://calyxos.org/#Devices Devices section is showing a little bit more than I remember not too long ago http://web.archive.org/web/20230605161332/https://calyxos.or... but still not comparable to what I remember with the likes of OpenWRT, HyperWRT, DD-WRT, Tomato, etcetera. Therefore I do not and will not trust anything GrapheneOS or CalyxOS. Whatever the efforts were that led to wifi routers having lots of open source firmware developments to be supporting lots of different devices, I'd like to see similarly for mobile phones, and whatever concentration there is to finance only developments for Google made phones only, this is red flag hostage coward impression to me, and I will not submit or acquiesce or capitulate to invest in any of that at all, even if nothing else exists.

edited for grammar

jkhanlar3• 2 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_mobile_operating...

"Base system is open source, but many devices use proprietary drivers for hardware support, and most Android operating systems include Proprietary apps (such as Google Play and other Google apps)."

Okay, so, look at history of AMD GPus and NVIDIA GPUs for proprietary linux drivers and open source/free software alternative drivers that even without the AMD/NVIDIA companies to help at all (regardless of if they did, especially NVIDIA blatantly refusing to help and intentionally making it difficult and whatnot), still there are open source drivers for practically every single AMD and NVIDIA graphics processing unit hardwares to make them work. So, why not the same possibility outcome for mobile computers running Android operating system or other Linux AArch64 or ARM64 architecture o/ses. How is it that barely any signs of strong brave developer programmer humans remain able to dedicate their attention to these efforts that decade ago such skilled programmer developer humans existed but no longer

"Google Pixel 5a... The last Google product before they went full Apple." - resource_waste https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39733518

lol

1oooqooq7• 2 years ago

how are operating system environments such as GrapheneOS and CalyxOS, etctera

There are ZERO open source OS for mobile. ZERO. NONE.

even the ones you list doesn't have access to essential drivers. What do they do? they get the driver as binary blobs from the original image, and just ship them. So all those projects are 1) full of closed source kernel drivers. 2) stuck on a specific kernel version to be able to use those binary drivers.

So the MOST those open source versions can do, is set a different set of "system apps" everything else must be the same as the closed source OS. It's barely more than theming in practice.

compiling all the hardware variations to have drivers and support for practically everything for everyone to get mostly the same experience regardless of which hardware they use

Again, there is ZERO open source on those. All you need to support device X is a root exploit so you can get the binary blobs. Done. Now you can ship to that device.

kaanyalova• 2 years ago

There is Replicant [0] which is completely proprietary blob/firmware free but it has extremely limited hardware support with only support for Samsung devices from 2011-2012.

[0] https://www.replicant.us

fsflover3• 2 years ago

There are ZERO open source OS for mobile. ZERO. NONE.

This is false. Sent from my Librem 5, which runs FSF-endorsed PureOS.

ementally• 2 years ago

Just disable the apps, no need to debloat.

https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/universal-android-debloa...

janandonly• 2 years ago

I think there is room in the Android ecosystem for a producer to make and sell bloatware less phones, a bit like Apple does, and at steep markup too !

Debloat non-rooted Android devices

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