Google will not acknowledge any Petition.
The only real solution is to install an Alternate Android or Linux Phone OS
this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2025
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The number of available unlocked phones is shrinking and even the new ones are running old hardware.
I want something with a recent processor, a good camera, GPS, Tailscale, 18 hours of battery life a good enough browser to get to my bank and edit photos and a watch that gets a few days of run on a charge and i'd like to have enough admin access to code turning on and off radios and services based on location and relatively good security.
Linux is not up for this yet, postmarket is moving quickly, but it's still way behind
Hallium+ubuntu touch is fragile if you change the image.
Graphine and Lineage have security third and a questionable future if android upstream goes to shit.
I think we're watching a major shift happen, similar to when smartphones took over. At the moment, I can't see the market ever opening back up the way it was, because apparently smartphones are produced at a loss. If there's really no way to manufacture them at a reasonable cost, they're never ever gonna let go of the hardware control ever again. The last couple decades were just a long con to grab market share, now we're in the late stage where they lock down and grab as much data as possible, laws be damned.
I just spent too much time writing another comment on this post, but I have the same wants as you:
recent processor, a good camera, GPS, Tailscale, 18 hours of battery life a good enough browser to get to my bank and edit photos
I really think we're watching the smartphone era fade away for tech-minded people, and it's time for us to just ditch the expectations and let go of the all-in-one convenience. Phones for talk/text, dedicated devices for everything else. Most of these specs you mentioned can be exceeded in a compact touchscreen 2-in-1 netbook, for about the same cost as a flagship phone, and be fully compatible with Linux. Currently tablet sized, almost small enough to fit in a purse, but hopefully smaller variants come around in the future.
Only issue is GPS and camera. Phone GPS modules aren't very precise as it is, hopefully we get a compact USB receiver someday. And cameras never really made sense in a phone to me. Loved the convenience, and I will miss them dearly in my future phones, but a cheap digital camera will beat all but the high end flagship phones, both in price and image quality.
The best thing would be to stop using google services but many (most?) banking apps refuse to run on phones without Google’s blessing. It’s fucked up and should be illegal
Don't use banking apps. Use banking websites. And if your bank does not allow you to do everything on the website, change banks. I did.
I am about to check/do this. Problem is the national ID system, based on apps that work the same way.
How do elderly people deal with it because they are less likely to have smart devices or less likely to understand how to use them properly?
Whatever way they deal with it, you can use as well.
I have never heard of anyone not "dealing with it". Most probably they are just asked to go in person to some physical office with a passport or something. In that case, no thank you.
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That would be the best thing, but that's a really tall order.
The only product capable of handling what they're doing is Apple and they're just as locked down, if not more.
The Linux phones aren't really there yet, and the Halium-based models are unpleasantly locked down as well.
The mobile market is really stagnant. We need some fairly recent hardware with open software on it, but even if the market was ready to buy, the software is nowhere near ready to fill the need and the hardware is becoming less available by the day.
Change.org is where action goes to die.
On the one hand I support this wholeheartedly. On the other, this may be the fuel finally needed to push a Linux phone or two more mainstream. I'm conflicted.
Use of non-play store apps is not mainstream enough for Linux phones to get more than a little bump from this.
At this stage, it helps when more devs are motivated to switch over and build/improve stuff to cover the things they want to do with a phone. And there's relatively many devs among those who use F-Droid.
I'm not technically affected by Google doing l this just yet, because I don't use the Play Services, but with that move coming after they encroached on Custom ROMs twice, I can tell that I need an exit plan. And there's nothing quite for motivation than slowly being backed into a corner.
I hope something good comes of it.
Wouldn't it be better to petition a political power.. Such as the EU or the UK parliament?
This is already sorted out by law in the EU. Now they just have to wait for Google to follow up on their intent.
Honestly? even if we succeed in this , Google will simply fuck things up in something else, the only real solution is that it completely looses people acceptnace , and that's the hardest part because the majority don't think about changing things if it's comfortable enough
Like shelving Android completely like so many of their successful products?
Kinda, or any action that pulls the rug enough so that Google makes concessions because it can't use its privileges as a corporation , but it's hard to see this happening now
Remember after widespread public outcry, petitions, and developer pushback google still went ahead with Chrome’s Manifest v3 because it made adblockers worse? This won’t accomplish anything.
why are you upvoting this inane, useless, poser, impotent bullshit? we is petitioning evil corp to be a smidge less evil what the fuck?
exactly. Petitioning those who have already demonstrated that they don't care unless you have leverage is meaningless.
use leverage, in what ways you can. make a habit of it.
The petition us useless. Way too many people just don't care or even understand what it's really about. To me, personally, this is the final nail in the coffin that is android. Welcome Linux phone, and if I can't find any, fuck the phone altogether. I don't need another crapple.
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The only way to apply any pressure is to make them lose marketshare.
You're literally going to need a large consortium of "public interest technologists" (Something like Futo plus Graphene on steroids) to get together and bankroll the manufacture of new hardware that supports something similar to the Google Titan M2, plus unlockable and relockable bootloader. As I understand that will be no small feat because of the engineering required, and because all device vendors are competing for fab and production line space with all the other established device manufacturers.
Then you need robust degoogled OS options, likely based on AOSP, that can pair with that hardware.
I see my next phone being a flipphone. I don't like how locked down mobile platforms are already, and smartphones are so big now.
Netbook 2-in-1's look promising, picked one up off eBay to update my mobile rollout when all this started. ~550ish USD for a better CPU, more RAM, easily replaceable storage and battery, and actually compatible with Linux, all for the price of Google's 9a at launch. It will be slightly more inconvenient to travel with, but I'll try to fully replace the smartphone with a flip when that's ready for an update.
Google seems to be gambling that their monopoly is big enough to start strongarming everyone, but with a slight reimagining, their mobile division can be completely cut out of my life, and the replacement devices are cheaper per specs and more open to modification, so really I should've done this long ago.
Things are changing, but the people who care enough about this will change too. Still sad about it, was hoping the smartphone platform would go the other way and become more open. Mobile processors have more throughput and better energy efficiency now than briefcase laptops from the 2005 - 2010 era. Always dreamed of everything evolving into a single device where my phone could plug into a docker and replace my office desktop for web browsing, but I just don't see it happening in a closed environment like this.
One of my bigger concerns from all this is that reduced access to users to install apps might have chilling effects on app development. It's great being able to get apps from Itch.io, GitHub, and FDroid, but will developers continue releasing there if the user base dries up? I guess apk-mirror will likely still continue, since they're ripping from the Play store anyway.
Didn't even hear about this. Would this impact other OS's, like Graphene or Lineage?
As long as you don't install Google Play services on them, no it would not.
In the short term, perhaps. If someday Google decides to stop publishing open source updates to Android, though..
Eventually all the ROM teams would have to either massively ramp up their development responsibilities to cover every aspect of an aging Android codebase, or shut down as users leave because their project is dangerously outdated. Or probably both, because even if they tried to take over development, what ROM team is going to have the resources for that on a long term basis?
Something makes me think if that happens that LineageOS will become a system in its own right and the community will step up and do the work required to keep it properly up to date.
So then we will have three mobile operating systems, iOS, Android, and LineageOS. iOS will be made by Apple, Android will be made by Google, and LineageOS will be made by the open source community. Don't get me wrong, I assume development will become slower, but I don't think it will stop entirely.
This would be the best outcome. I don't even care if the OS gets "outdated". If it's good enough and runs F-Droid I've got everything I need.
Same.
That would be awesome to see. OEM bootloaders (and their fuses) and dealing with the proprietary drivers/blobs are the things that really need to be tackled with resources to be on as many devices as possible. I doubt those companies will want to play nice depending on whatever Google demands to be allowed Google Play Services. It is so hard to actually break into the OS market for mobile at all, but it is dedication that LineageOS has had that has kept it alive and updating. I hope that all the custom ROMs and the Linux Mobile OSes help each other out to the benefit of everyone on all levels of phone/tablet tiers.
Their next likely move will be to require all apps to pass integrity check, which means, unless developers are specifically crafting non-integ apps for f-droid, there will be less apps available for non-google play services devices.
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