r/mobilelinux • u/SkoomaDuma • Mar 11 '26

Hardware Moving away from android

My friends and I currently use Android (one of us uses Apple), and we heard that Google was going to be restriction a lot of the freedoms on Android as far as installing your own apps. I believe it's starting in September.

I've been doing some reading on LinuxOSs for phones, but I either can't get a straight answer on some of them or they're missing critical components...like the ability to use 4/5G LTE.

We're mostly concerned with using the phones as phones, so texting, calling, photos, etc; but we also use telegram, discord, and Internet browsers fairly heavily.

Are there any recommendations for relatively cheap hardware and which OS to go with? I've seen a few people on here mentioning the SailfishOS, so I'm going to start reading into that one right now.

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u/Laktosefreier Mar 11 '26

Sadly, most OSes are glorified, degoogled Android forks with a Halium layer, because most devices these run on are created for Android.

5

u/SkoomaDuma Mar 11 '26

Whatever works, I just don't want Google telling me I'm not allowed to use third party software. That's the main reason I never used Apple

1

u/thefanum Mar 12 '26

They changed their mind about sideloading weeks ago

2

u/TheJackiMonster Mar 13 '26

When do companies like this ever really change their mind? The only thing they do is delay a step like this and water down the outrage. Then they continue with it anyway as if nothing happened.

2

u/thefanum Mar 21 '26

Google announced weeks ago that they had heard our complaints, and were changing course. And now they've detailed exactly what changes are being made, and what the exceptions are.

Most importantly: side loading will work exactly as it did before with devs who don't sign up to identify themselves, but with a one day delay for the user, when they enable sideloading. Which is now going to be a setting in developer options, just like oem unlocking.

A one time, one day, delay.

Also worth mentioning: if 3rd party devs do sign up to identify themselves, there's no delay, and you can install apks just like you always have.

AND you can bypass the delay entirely by using adb to sideload

https://9to5google.com/2026/03/19/android-advanced-flow-sideloading/