Google has quietly deprecated the Messages and Dialer apps in AOSP, and it could have ramifications for upstart brands and custom ROM fans.

  • kbity@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    At this point it’s just a countdown until Google winds down AOSP altogether and takes its whole mobile OS proprietary.

    • Neon@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      oh god, please no, mobile Linux is not yet ready 😩
      and i say that as a hardcore NixOS-User

      • kbity@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Yeah, I’ve been watching the mobile Linux space with interest but it’s definitely not in a place yet where I would consider using it as anything more than a novelty. The PinePhone is a neat little piece of hardware but no way it can replace my LineageOS phone right now.

        • tal@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          I was vaguely wondering how hard it would be to use a GNU/Linux laptop as a phone. If you always carry a laptop, that’s more-reasonable than it might seem, and that opens things up hardware-wise a lot. There are at least three obstacles:

          • The touch-oriented app infrastructure is stronger on smartphone OSes.

          • Laptops aren’t as good at idling power-wise as phones. You want to be able to listen for calls without consuming a lot of power.

          • Apparently, while you can get 5G modems for laptops, getting one for a computer that can do voice service is not an option today. You can do VoIP or something, but I suspect that you’re looking at a latency hit then.

          • kbity@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            Can they at least handle texting? A lot of services require SMS-based 2FA (insecure as it is) these days, so a phone that can’t receive texts is a complete non-starter.

            • tal@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              I don’t know that off-the-top-of-my-head, but I would guess that with normal voice service the modem may well also handle texts, as at least historically, I believe the SMSes went over space in some sort of command channel separate from the per-active-phone timeslice reserved for voice.

              However, you could hypothetically get SMS service and relay that to a your laptop-phone over IP from some service that provides VoIP service. With SMSes, unlike with voice, the latency shouldn’t really matter.

        • sado1@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Looks like the ecosystem still needs another year or two, but it’s going forward steadily.

      • Johanno@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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        1 year ago

        How hard is it to transform the steam deck into a phone? I mean the Software is still missing, but with enough Power you can emulate apps.

        • tal@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Well, for starters, it doesn’t have a 5G modem, which is probably kind of going to be a basic want for a phone.

    • sadreality@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I am sure they are watching RedHat playbook closely.

      These clowns need to be broken up. Enough is enough.

    • anselmschueler@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      It seems to me that that might seriously deter third-party Android distributors—AFAIK most do not ship stock Google apps for all the basic utilities, they only ship the auxiliary ones like Gmail or Docs.