Comment by windexh8er
7 months ago
Not to be flippant but who cares? People don't know there's an option. I've run Graphene for years and will gladly pay a premium for it. Beyond the bolstered security the battery life is exponentially better than a default Android device because of all the constant background traffic that Google doesn't allow any control over that you instantly have a choice with on GrapheneOS.
And as soon as you start showing these things to people they do start to care and ask how. So the fact that the mainstream is ignorant and doesn't care enough yet doesn't matter because it's very likely a much larger segment of users will care when the tech evangelists they trust stop using IOS and Google Android. That's how these things started and that's how they could very well play out in this scenario as well.
Yes, I agree in full. Did you think I was taking a position contrary to this one?
My point was irrespective of your position: it doesn't matter. The mainstream won't break the Apple/Google cycle the same way the mainstream didn't break the lock carriers once had on software updates for phones. Apple broke that through its small but influential technologists and prosumers. Motorola can potentially be that for breaking out of the locks Apple and Google have bound through hardware manufacturers. The only reason AOSP can't exist without Google has nothing to do with Google, but more with Qualcomm. Motorola has the opportunity to broker that breakout. And we need this right now. Lawmakers and big tech are locking themselves in further, the longer we don't have another option the harder it will be to move outside of these greedy corporations.