Comment by matheusmoreira
4 years ago
> we are asking about what happens when a new phone shows up without it
Nobody buys it.
Do Linux phones have access to WhatsApp? If not, there is no point. It will be a perfectly good mobile computer but it will never actually replace the one in my pocket. And that's coming from a programmer who loves Linux. Imagine the utter disdain normal people would have for a phone that doesn't even run WhatsApp.
Whatsapp used to be openly hostile against efforts for providing native client applications even for platforms they never plan to support themselves. Going as far as effectively attacking open source project developers working the clients - for an example see: https://reviewjolla.blogspot.com/2014/10/got-banned-in-whats...
(Sailfish OS is a Linux based mobile distro.)
That sucks. I hate when companies do this. How would they even know what kind of client is talking to their servers?
Some sort of undefined behavior or possibly some per build random key that triggers imposter warning if the third party app fails to send the correct key ?
In any case totally evil behavior from their side. Its already bad enough they run totally proprietary centralized service with no public API & ignore any non-mainstream mobile platforms. But when they start banning users of third party clients on those platforms and go after third party client developers with presumably legal treats - that's pure evil, no way around it.
A Linux phone could run WhatsApp if the Linux distro was implemented in such a way that it could run Android apps (remember Android is basically just a runtime on top of the Linux kernel) and since AOSP is FOSS this is very doable and legal.
How commercially successful it'd be is still a different story, but it could run WhatsApp.
Only if WhatsApp never activates SafetyNet: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28731431
WhatsApp has no motivation to use SafetyNet. For one thing plenty of their users use cheap Chinese phones that aren't actually Google certified (but come with the Play Store anyway) and they know this full well from their analytics.
For another, SafetyNet is used primarily for DRM on streaming services and for banking or other financial apps. Absolutely no messenger uses it that I am aware of (unless you count Snapchat as a "messenger" but that's literally it).
Every FB owned app runs fine on Android devices that fail SafetyNet. No reason to believe that'll change because where's the benefit for FB?
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