It is not important that you can “turn it off”, it is important that it is installed. Off doesn’t mean not running in the background, sucking up your personal information.
and critically, most people won’t even know/bother is there.
We need to just start beating the shit out of marketing people. Just any time you meet someone and find out they’re involved in advertising, punch them in the mouth. Doesn’t matter if they’ve personally done anything to you. They’ve gone too far.
there’s a quiz show on TV in my country. a few days ago they chose some marketing manager. they have dropped out at like the 3rd question, winning nothing. this is rare. Normally I’m cheering for players but I was gleeful for his loss.
Excommunicado
Looks at brother
don’t forget, any time you meet him
We desperately need a phone OS the user can modify at will, by design and not by rooting, and on mainstream hardware.
I know, the argument goes that the only reason phones are so reasonably priced is the upside of upsell for manufacturers. But phones are not “reasonably priced,” they are sold at a large profit and the upsell is just greed.
Ubuntu Touch exists and I have it installed on my backup Fairphone 5. In terms of the OS itself, it seems pretty solid and performs well. However it is very spartan in terms of both the interface itself as well as the apps available to interact with the OS in various ways.
It’s a very small team working on it and as far as I can tell they aren’t exactly drowning in funding. I bet if every person that would like to see another OS option donated a cup of coffee amount of money to them every month they would probably have what they want in the next 3-5 years.
I don’t see that happening though.
I think mostYou think most? But that’s a great suggestion, I’ll check out their funding page.
It won’t happen carriers won’t allow it.
they can have the slim modem, they shouldn’t get to know anything about the other parts of the OS
We need more Linux phones
I was really considering a Nothing phone as my next device, based mostly on how much I love my Nothing Ear Open headset.
This has completely robbed me of any desire to give them any more money.
Greedy fucks. Glad it happened before I spent any cash.
Yeah it appealed to me too but now it doesn’t.
At this point I’m just going to get a flip phone and pretend it’s the 00’s.
Have already been since at least two years or so, although maybe on a slightly more limited scale.
The lower mid-range Motorola phone of my gf had a hard-to-disable active wallpaper app that displayed nice pictures, but had a prominent field leading directly to online ads when accidentally pressed (which happened a lot).
Also reactivated itself after each OS update.
Enshitification in progress…Xiaomi pushes their wallpaper “carousel” quite hard, I never activate it because it wants way to intrusive permissions. I wonder if it’s in the same boat…
Might well be.
I had a Xiaomi ~5 years ago, whose preinstalled file manager suddenly started displaying ads after a year or so.
We switched to Motorola because of this, as they then still were known for crap- and bloatware-free system.
Has apparently changed recently.
One of the reasons it was easy to convince my gf to get a Fairphone now.Forgot about that, I installed FX (a super good free file manager, bought the pro version for like 10€ IIRC, or less, mostly to support it). Said to myself no more Xiaomi, but my last is still a xiaomi because it’s, IMO, still so much better and cheaper.
Phone manufacturers know where you touch your screen the most often and put their shittiest apps in that spot so you accidentally engage. It’s the only reason I open up Google’s AI, because I did it by accident.
Phone manufacturers know where you touch your screen the most
Except Apple as it seems. They tend to routinely put essential interactive elements in the top left corner or so, farthest away from my right thumb.
On the other hand, Iphones don’t have sneaky ads hidden in the system, so there’s that…
Unless it’s in the top right for no good reason.
And don’t get me started on the inconsistent ways to go back. Sometimes it’s a button at the top left or right, sometimes swipe from the left, sometimes swipe down, sometimes up. I’ll stick with my android and a dedicated button, thank you.
I’d be curious to know which phone model. I’ve only been using low end Motorola phones for years but I’ve never seen such a thing. I think mine have all been the Moto G series.
l think it has been the G54.
App was preinstalled, not removable and obtrusive like hell.
Lock screen ads are coming to all smartphones. Because you know that, once they get one group to accept it, they’re going to shove it onto everyone.
Dystopia
chuckles in GrapheneOS
You know the project will soon be dead after gpixels will lock their bootloaders? Just the way oneplus did, reel people and then enshittify
They announced that they’re working with an OEM to support new non-pixel phones (perhaps even shipped with GOS).
The Pixel 9 series will be supported for another 6 years, and GOS support for the Pixel 10 is probably coming after Google releases QPR1 source. Hopefully there will be viable replacements by then.
Google is obviously going to keep making this more difficult but the rest of the world isn’t going to just sit still.
I mean they have and well continue to do so. The majority of people don’t care. Other manufactures removed unlocking and people don’t care.
The majority of people will trail behind by 5-10 years, same as always. As long as a small minority at the cutting edge continue to use and develop better things, everyone will have access to them eventually.
They’re making their own phone now. It’s not going to die, at least not in that way.
That’s not what’s happening. GOS has said they are partnering with an OEM, which means a yet-to-be-named manufacturer will ship their devices with GOS preinstalled.
But GOS has said things like this before with no outcome. So we will see what happens.
You do realize you can unlock the bootloader of pretty much every OnePlus device right?
Not anymore for the new ones, they stopped
That’s not true tho? The OnePlus 13(current latest phone) has tons of custom ROM support and can be easily unlocked. Have you looked at xda at all to check your claims?
Https
Perhaps, but they can’t lock the bootloader on my Pixel 9 that’s not running Google’s version of Android.
Oh, fuck off Nothing, you were to be my next phone! Now I need to find a different European brand which does high-end smartphones. Which means only HMD remains unless something changed in the last few months.
Fair phone 6 running /e/OS is honestly amazing
Completely degoogled ROM, using MicroG to emulate google play services
European Fairphone would never do this, I think. Or just install custom ROM
Not to my phone they aren’t, get fucked.
Aaaaand there’s the enshittification, just like I expected.
Remember kids - 99% of the time, if it’s too good to be true…
Hell, even when it’s not too good to be true and you already feel ripped off! The audacity of these mfs!
“Nothing” experiments with lock screen ads
If you haven’t heard of Nothing, I don’t blame you. The Android phone company made waves back in 2022, largely on the back of its founder, OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei, but it only recently started making phones on par with flagship devices like the Google Pixel or Samsung Galaxy. Mostly, the brand has instead become known for its mid-range accessories and budget phones, which pack in a lot of power for their price points, but otherwise stand out through trendy and minimalistic designs. It’s a smaller market, but a loyal one.
That’s why it’s a bit odd to see the company put both its minimalism and fandom at risk by putting ads on its lock screens, via a new “Lock Glimpse” feature.
Added in Nothing OS 4.0 late last week, when turned on, the feature will show you one of a rotating selection of wallpapers, which all feature linked content via text at the bottom of the image. For instance, a wallpaper showing a strawberry sundae might look spiffy, but in practicality, it’s essentially an ad for a page with a strawberry ice cream recipe.
The Samsung A series phone we recently bought in India had lock screen ads. I was gobsmacked. It wasn’t even easy to disable it.
No they fucking aren’t
Do you mean:
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article is incorrect and this is not true
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you don’t want it to be true
Please make your selection.
Probably “never buying anything from a shitty company that does that”.
Yeah that. I can’t think of anyone who would buy a phone that spams you with ads on the lock screen. Gross.
That’s the best part. You didn’t buy it that way. They gave you a free upgrade.
like the nice lady in that Black Mirror episode.
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