It’s not only with Black Friday. The Android tablets market is flooded with absolute expensive stinkers for devices. You will notice this in any physical electronic store.
Not to mention fakes. I bought and Android 12 tablet on Amazon as new not long ago, the version string said 12, but the actual API level was 24 (Android 7) and the UI wasn’t android 12.
If you don’t think that’s a big deal on a cheap tablet then you’re not considering what else could have been done to it that you can’t see. They’re already lying after all.
My sister bought a low-end Samsung tablet (some years ago admittedly), and it NEVER received a software update in the 3 years she owned it. Not a major update, not a security patch, nothing.
I'd hope they've gotten better about that, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
Probably that was before Samsung offered 5 years of updates. And if the tablet was a bit outdated, it would have easily been outside of the software EOL date.
That’s why you should always go for phones/tablets that have been released this year and not take an outdated one. Not for the specs, but for the software support duration.
Over here there is a food discounter that also has a tiny electronics corner, where they have “great” deals. You can often get phones and tablets for less than half of the MSRP. The issue is, that all of them are either out of software support or close to it. A while ago they sold a cheap iPhone that had one month of software support left. And on iPhone, most apps only run on the currently newest iOS version. So a month after buying that iPhone, the user would lose access to most of their apps.
That’s honestly amazing for mobile software development. A stack of devices that can make great testing devices or compact servers if cheap enough. Or Clash of Clans/Pokemon GO alt accounts.
Yeah if I were to buy offbrand, it’d be a Windows tab. At least due to the driver standardization and everything, and near-endless updates, I got a good chance to be able to use that so long as the raw hardware is up to speed.
Honestly, Custom ROMs have been in decline of usage since few years. There are also Other ROMS like Pixel Experience, PixyOS, Havoc, evolutionX, PixelOS, Paranoid, Derpfest, CrDroid and lot more.
The reason for the drop is due to a combination of reasons like better OEM UI, unpublished Kernel code (Chinese OEMs, Mediatek), locked bootloaders and Safetynet issues.
I’m currently rocking CrDroid it has currently ~85K active devices (stats.crdroid.net).
Before i got my Pixel 6 Pro, i’ve been running Custom Roms on everything. The Pixel 6 Pro is probably the first device, i’m actually okay running Stock. It just does what it should. And i’ll be honest, the hassle of getting it to work properly (Banking, Netflix, etc) is just too much for my everyday phone…Google really did a number on that one, both positive and negative. I kind of hate it…
I used to turn to custom roms to extend the life of my phone. My first smartphone didn’t get an official update after I purchased it for example. The custom roms often made the phone snappier too.
These days I’m on a mid range Samsung phone released almost 4 years ago and it’s still getting updates.
I had none over the last 2 years…which is funny, because i fully expected to have them - and put a custom rom on it. There are just two things that irk me…you can’t disable IPv6 and the adaptive charging is still not enough for me personally, i would have liked to have a hard limit…
That isn’t the only factor though. Take OnePlus, for example. You can still unlock their bootloaders, but if you check out XDA you’ll see that their hasn’t been any custom roms for a OnePlus flagship since the 9 pro because they stopped publishing the MSM tool, so the risk of bricking the phone is too great.
Plenty of OEMs allow bootloader unlocking, stop buying Samsung.
Safetynet issues
It’s Google Play Integrity checking now, and as someone who has been using LinageOS on unrooted phones for a while, I’ve never had these issues. Not to say people out there aren’t having them, but it’s not as bleak as people seem to believe it is.
I have one phone that’s rooted, and I have to use magisk to hide it, and that occasionally has issues, but not the non-rooted ones running custom roms.
People used to got to Custom ROMs because OEMs were really doing shit job, that’s not the case now given now.
Yep. I used to use custom (ROMs, kernels, etc) for the extra features and playing with my phone like a shiny new toy. Now I use GrapheneOS because OEMs and Google don’t do security and privacy anywhere near as good as GOS. And I can live with the minor inconvenience of apps that use Play Integrity API, though I do encourage the app devs to switch to hardware backed attestation because: “Android’s hardware attestation API provides a much stronger form of attestation than the Play Integrity API with the ability to whitelist the keys of alternate operating systems. It also avoids an unnecessary dependency on Google Play services and Google’s Play Integrity servers.” grapheneos.org/…/attestation-compatibility-guide
It’s Google Play Integrity checking now, and as someone who has been using LinageOS on unrooted phones for a while, I’ve never had these issues. Not to say people out there aren’t having them, but it’s not as bleak as people seem to believe it is
Maybe a week ago they borked the integrity of custom ROMs. GPay/Wallet doesn’t work anymore with Magisk shenanigans. Happened to every ROM I checked.
Now try to use most of Banking applications (even McDonalds app lol) Most of these application require Google Play Integrity. So practically, you are enforced to use Google Play Services or buy a second device to run android with gapps and then power it off (that’s what I did)
Do custom ROMs still have issues with some apps not allowing them? It’s been an eternity since I tried one and I don’t know if it’s a hard requirement, but at least when I did try it, I had (?) to root my device and my bank apps refused to work after that.
Many applications especially banks require Google Safetynet to be functional, even without root. I am running DivestOS, a hardened version of LineageOS without gapps, and I can’t have access on my bank because I chose freedom. Democracy at its finest…
And some applications still refuse to launch on it, preferring an outdated version of Android because Google does not send its security updates after 3 years.
Daaamn sagit (xiaomi mi 6) number 3. Writing this from a sagit with LOS, such a great phone. This is why it’s great to have community supported roms, this phone hasn’t been updated for many many years and would be close to being unusable if it wasn’t for them.
I have this phone since December 2017 and I’ve had no issue so far to make me change. I’ve thought many times about upgrading, but it’s so smooth, camera with gcam is great and new things like quick charging and 5g are things that I don’t really need, so I haven’t changed yet. I’m afraid of choosing a device that won’t be as good as this one and that it won’t last as long.
It’s sad that community made Roms are less and less popular, I feel like phones are evolving less each year and Roms are a great way to have more control and extend the lives of your phone.
I had a similar experience with the Asus Zenfone Max Pro M1. It was a budget phone but it had tons of custom roms and it lasted a good 4 years for me. I had to change phones because it broke during a motorcycle accident.
I wish I could install lineage on my s10+ snapdragon. I just got this phone and now I just ordered a pixel to get grapheneos. I was willing to pay this guy on telegram to unlock my phone so I could try to get lineage to work or at least a custom rom, but my bootloader is one update off, I have v6 but he only supports up to v5. I hate ordering new devices when my current ones are still functional. I also am getting rid of my fitbit I also just got and replacing it with the amazon band 5 since it can connect to gadgetbridge. Degoogling is expensive, it shouldn’t be this bad just to get privacy. I’m not sure what to do with my devices I am replacing, but I hate that they had to be replaced in the first place. I also switched from google services to proton mail/drive/vpn.
Keep them forever like I do! Just start collecting smartphones because it’s better for the environment. I have like 10 of them never going into a landfill. Maybe find people who actually need phones idk.
Yeah you should probably do that instead. Or be like me and switch phones everyday for some reason. Go insane use an iPhone and then an android phone than a phone from 2016 you have to custom rom to get working again because it’s last update was from 2018 and you have to replace the battery.
It’s a constant cat and mouse game with Google. You can use Magisk with Zygisk enabled, Shamiko, and Play Integrity Fix (there’s also a few other combos that work) to get baking apps to work. I have no issues on my rooted Pixel 8 Pro, but it’s always a gamble if Google updates their end and then you get locked out of Google Wallet for a day once you update your fixes (not banking apps).
Unfortunately GPay / Google Wallet has been borked on most ROMs since the recent Google shenanigans about a week ago. Even those not rooted. I got hit by that, running ArrowOS and not being rooted.
My bank’s app works though so eh, lost some convenience but can get things done.
No. Banking won’t work and you can’t lock bootloader. As far as I know there’s no Recovery password so someone could just adb and pull data. If you want to use banking apps you could use magisk to pass safety net but that will make your phone less secure. Personally I have no banking app so I don’t give a shit
I want to move away from GSF, how is MicroG working nowadays? I used it some years ago but it was buggy with any app related to mapping, and some other quirks.
Works perfectly fine for me. I’ve also used an app that used Google Maps in it and it worked perfectly fine. Instead of Google Maps it displayed the map on OpenStreetMap.
I have faith in Apple, it’ll be difficult but they’ll find a way to do this that still maintains all the toxicity towards green bubbles that they’ve worked so hard to cultivate.
Right, but the features will be mostly on-par with iMessage. The only thing you’d be missing out on are chat effects and the 3D avatar things. The stigma will stay for a little bit, but probably die out over time because the stigma developed in the first place not due to the color of the bubble, but because the color of the bubble meant worse features.
Exactly, some of my iPhone-using friends don’t care about the color itself, just that sending a video via MMS results in a 240p mess. Being able to properly RCS videos, and multiple photos, will alleviate all actual concerns. They don’t care about message reactions, and I don’t know a single person who uses the avatar things (I’m in my early 30s in NY)
I’m obstinate as fuck, and I have a downright unhealthy resentment of having software capabilities taken away. As long as there’s a single setting or feature that I can get from a custom ROM that I can’t get on stock, I will use them.
Many versions ago, Google removed the “hold back button to kill foreground app” functionality, and I’ll use LineageOS soley to keep that (but there’s plenty of other reasons). The ability to restore useful features that Google and OEMs take away is an absolute necessity for me.
It’s almost enjoyable; I get a kick out of telling Google to fuck itself and restoring my device’s capabilities.
I feel the same way, though on LineageOS, I wasn’t able to get the double-click-power-for-camera to ever work properly. Do you happen to have/use that feature?
My GF bought Samsung phone couple of weeks ago and all the apps were removable (as in you could uninstall, not just hide). They have different version of the OS for different markets, right?
It’s had this for a few years. Microsoft has its Office Lens both as a freestanding app, and built in to the combined Office Android app. Adobe has a pretty good scanning app too, though I’ve moved away from Adobe anything. All of these companies are chasing after corporate clients who might already have the app installed as part of their enterprise subscription. Probably helps with locking in if employees are used to opening the Drive app for their scanning, as opposed to a freestanding app.
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