Because if it was easy you wouldn't feel the need to buy a new one every few years.
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purposefully. they dont want you messing with their device. its that simple.
"Their"?
Yes. In the minds of executives, we're paying to use their devices instead of purchasing it. They don't believe that we should have the right to do whatever we want with the device we purchased.
These executives are from the era where it was a quarter for every sms message. Still chasing the gravy train.
ha, you werent under the impression you were buying a device, were ya?
youre buying a software license that happens to come with a piece of hardware.
It used to be easy... When people were actually making custom ROMs for everything and you could literally just plug the device into your PC and run a program to do everything. I don't think there is anything inherently in most phones stopping this; it's the lack of people developing custom stuff for every piece of hardware out there. Some phones do actively try and thwart custom ROMs, such as Samsung with their Knox bullshit, but most don't need to; nobody is hacking them in the first place.
The web-based installer for GrapheneOS is very easy to use. The catch is that it only works for Pixel phones (and only those that are still receiving updates).
If you don't mind me polling your opinion: do you recommend Graphene for someone previously used to Cyanogen / Lineage? I recently upgraded to a Pixel 8 from quite an old handset and I'm not particularly fond of the stock ROM. Much has changed since the last time I had to think about this stuff! I primarily care about privacy, and use my cell for little more than phone calls, messaging, and its camera.
Yes- I'd recommend Graphene to anyone who can live without Google Pay. I've only been using it for a month but everything has worked without issue and with the added benefit of "storage scopes" and Google Play sand-boxing.
Mine works, but some banking apps won't work if they require full SafetyNet compliance. So that could be a deal-breaker for some people too.
I decided to install Graphene before looking up the installation and was blown away by how easy it is. I'd been on stock android for years and was expecting a similar experience as OP describes. My very old custom ROM folder is filled with files with names like 'confirmedsafeblob' and 'bricksafe' that I don't even know what they are anymore but speak to some past misery. Then beep-boop done with the web installer.
I honestly don’t think I’ve ever heard an average user say: ‘I like my phone’s hardware, I just wish it had a different OS.’
Phones by and large are seen as a locked system: you specifically choose to buy Android or iOS and stick with that.
There’s really no incentive for companies to make different OS installs easy. I’d say there’s plenty of reasons not to: do you really want to give the average user that much power to fuck up their phone? I assume there’s also some security implications if they made it too easy to fiddle with.
So yeah, it’s difficult because you’re fiddling with something that wasn’t meant to be an end-user thing in the first place.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d love it if they made phones much more open in terms of hardware and software, but the big guys aren’t going to do it.
That doesn't really make sense. Every paragraph, except the 2nd, also applies to PCs, yet you can install a different OS.
The reason is quite simple: more money from users.
Really? You don't hear users complaining about bloat, duplicate apps, phones that no longer get updates, or laggy UIs? My Redmi phone has good hardware and became so much better when I installed a different ROM on it.
Yeah, xiaomi mi 9t with pixelos. Then Universal Android Debloater, disable all the telemetry (wish I could just use this thing without google, but thats a topic for another day), got a new case and battery. It literally feels like i just bought a new phone even though this thing will be 5 years old!
In summary, the corporate bean counters don't want to give up control over your device. That's really all it boils down to. They're not doing anyone any favors, that's for sure. It's pure greed
I honestly don’t think I’ve ever heard an average user say: ‘I like my phone’s hardware, I just wish it had a different OS.’
I'd say that happens mostly because they don't even know there are alternatives. Also, like machinin said earlier, bloat is a very common problem in Android phones, even high end stuff from big companies, Samsung being one of the worst offenders in that regard.
The average user doesn't know the phone doesn't need half of that shit, so he just shrugs and carries on.
This story only makes sense on its own momentum.
I do remember reading somewhere that smartphones don't have a standardized bootloader like PCs do with BIOS and UEFI, and that it can vary between manufacturers and devices. Could be wrong about it. Also some manufacturers really don't want you to be able to install custom software, like Samdung in North America. If you buy a Samdung device in NA...even if it is carrier unlocked.. the bootloader will be impossible to unlock.
Adding to the "no standard bootloader" point: you can't boot your typical smartphone from a DVD or USB stick like you do for a PC. The procedure to flash a new rom is probably meant only for recovery purposes by tech support, rather than the end user
Unlock bootloader (depending on vendor, you have to do an online verification),
A few years ago, there were huge issues with reseller unlocking the bootloader to inject ads on the phones they sold, which forced many android phone manufacturers to add online verification with long wait time to prevent bulk unlock.
GrapheneOS is a really easy process, hardest part is unlocking the bootloader (which isn't hard at all).
Rest of the process is just clicking 3* buttons on a website and you're done.
*Some buttons you have to click multiple times
Well, I don't have a pixel phone and they're not officially sold in my country :/
can confirm. the hardest part is getting a pixel phone
There are a lot of reasons here which are correct, but one huge Factor when I was working with custom roms was the fact that the actual underlying hardware driver and firmware were a black box. Generally speaking you would need to harvest the binary files that made things like the camera, gps, and/or touchscreen work. Sometimes it wasnt too hard if you were going from one android skin to another that used the same underlining operating system, but if you wanted to make serious changes, and the phone manufacturer wasn't great at sharing, it could take a very long time to figure out what data needed to be passed to the camera to make it turn on and be available to use. What got even worse is if you wanted to upgrade your android version (5 to 6 lets say), where android made serious changes under the hood, you ran the risk of having these blobs not even work with the system. They would expect something that android no longer passed or provided. Or they were using some deprecated API to make their function a accessable. It just became impossible to do without being able to recompile the binary only portions that weren't subject to the gpl. As android has gotten more security conscious it has made things even more complicated.
Because vendors realized they've made a mistake. They've lost control they can't regain. Same thing with game consoles.
So, it's actually a feature for the companies selling you phones.
I can't answer your question, but is quite unfortunate. It really shortens the lifespan of many phones as they stop receiving OS and security updates after awhile (and in many cases, right away).
I don't think most users care about that. I certainly use mine until they get slow and stop holding charge.
People I work with tend to get a new one when their provider pokes them to get a new phone, since way too many people think a phone contract should cost £50 a month and that the phone is somehow "free".
Google should push third parties to a default build of Android that Google maintain, rather than having to update and maintain their own. Imagine if you had to go to Dell or Lenovo or ASUS for your Windows updates? The current Android ecosystem is nonsense.
For many reasonable vendors, this process is very unlikely to brick your phone, and requires minimal effort to unlock the bootloader or load/change the recovery.
However, many phone vendors (Xiaomi was the one example I know) subsidize phone price with data surveillance and ads; so they don't want users to use other OS, as it hurts their revenue.
We all know the reason phone manufacturers don't let you easily switch off their software...This isn't a community for rhetorical venting.
GrapheneOS is a very easy install and can be done simply by plugging your phone in and clicking some buttons on the browser.
Most OEMs make this intentionally difficult. Partly for security and stability reasons but also because that device is likely feeding them data and pestering you with ads, and that makes them money, which is really all that matters at the end of the day.
GrapheneOS is a very easy install and can be done simply by plugging your phone in and clicking some buttons on the browser.
Only if your phone is a Pixel, which isn't available in my country
Xiaomi becomes a pain in the ass with HyperOS. It's sad. The hardware was good and you could install custom roms.
Look up the history of how Android was developed, particularly what happened when Google took control, and you will find your answer. Ofc if you want to help, feel free to be the change that you want to see in the world, I'm only talking here about the past, as you asked about.
TLDR version of that history: greedy corporations surprised everyone, somehow, by ultimately acting in a greedy manner. B-b-but their slogan was "Don't be evil"! - once upon a time. And ofc Apple sure as hell wasn't going to cooperate with that "nonsense" of allowing anyone to take even one step outside of their walled garden. So what then is left to us, besides what you see before you?