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Great post. This is one of the great enshittifications affecting android. I currently use grapheneos but I'm likely going to move to iOS. More and more apps are no longer allowed to run / have broken features due to the play integrity api.

If I'm forced to live in a walled garden, might as well go with the well maintained one that isnt run by a monopolistic surveillance/advertising company.



Do you have Play Services installed? I, thankfully, have yet to run into an issue with any apps and Play Integrity, but I also export my sdks that are installed on a profile with GPS so I can install them on my main profile. I also hope to be able to use those outdated versions if they ever go to Play Integrity required states.


I do. There's a number of apps that are now broken, and you can't even install them from the playstore anymore e.g. Authy and relay for reddit. Sure you can save APKs and reinstall them (I have for relay), but the last working version is from last year and has multiple bugs including ones that cause app crashes.

Various apps from minor banks in my country don't work (even with compatibility features enabled), although all the major ones do thankfully.

Uber was also doing A/B testing earlier in the year where they would disable a lot of features if you had an untrusted device for some users.


Interesting. Thanks for the reply!


> This is one of the great enshittifications affecting android. I currently use grapheneos but I'm likely going to move to iOS.

Are you saying that iOS is immune to the enshittification? Why not invest in true alternatives (GNU/Linux smartphones)?


Can you name a single Linux (non android) smartphone that has good 3rd party app support, isn't buggy, isnt slow and has acceptable battery life?


It all depends on what "good", "fast", "isn't buggy" mean for you. Librem 5 has one day of battery life (if you don't use it too much) and a possibility to switch the battery on the go. It's slower than Android but sufficiently fast and stable for me to use as a daily driver. You can run Android apps with Waydroid (F-Droid works fine for me). More reviews: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41356567.




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