Comment by chasil

6 days ago

Google only directly controls the Pixel line.

OEMs may be forced to do the same, but 3rd party ROMs will not.

I do agree this cuts deeply for F-Droid.

11 comments

chasil

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bpye  6 days ago

> but 3rd party ROMs will not.

Google are also making that harder, at least for the Pixel line by no longer publishing the device tree as part of AOSP.

I know Fairphone do publish a buildable tree - though it's not yet available for their latest device - does anyone else?

  • skrlet13  4 days ago

    Also, you cannot unlock most phone's bootloaders nowadays, so you cannot even try them.

GeekyBear  6 days ago

Google only directly controls the Pixel line because of antitrust action from the EU.

Originally, device makers who used Android themselves were contractually prohibited from manufacturing devices for any company that forked Android, for instance.

numpad0  6 days ago

Google can force OEMs implement non-unlockable secure boot.

  • lucb1e  6 days ago

    And (present tense) forces OEMs to not ship with utilities that let users access their own data

    Fairphone wanted to give users full access on the Fairphone 2, but were contractually disallowed if they wanted to also ship the Android Market, Google Maps, etc., which users can't otherwise install themselves so it was essential to pre-install for a normal user experience. That's why they made two OSes for that phone: a googleful one and a free OS based on AOSP that you can install if you don't want Google (https://code.fairphone.com/projects/fairphone-2/fairphone-op...). Nowadays they let the /e/ Foundation do that work with e/OS. They're supportive of it but apparently don't have the internal manpower to continue making and supporting an extra distribution