Buying Android phone is increasingly just the entry fee for Google’s AI ecosystem.
The direction of travel is clear: Google is pushing AI harder and harder to redefine its ecosystem and bring new, powerful features to users. Android’s core OS remains free, but Google increasingly appears to view it less as a product and more as a delivery mechanism for its AI services. As those services become more central to the modern smartphone experience, many of the platform’s most ambitious features are also becoming subscription products.
Unlike everyone here that seems to have a plan, I am pretty stuck on what my next steps will be. I do not want to support this or anything that they have been pushing lately, but at the same time im not sure where to go either. I hate iphone so thats not a question, nor are they any better either. So what else can i go to thats also going to support everything i currently do on my phone plus the apps that may no longer be available wherever I end up going to.
Jolla Community phone for me. Pain, and suffering and probably a substandard experience so that in a year or two folks like you will have something capable to run too! Wish me luck!
Thank you for your sacrifice o7
Thanks for the info! I looked into it and I love the idea of it, but sadly your right it will take years before it ever becomes a rival or replacement. I really hope the phone is a success, otherwise progress will be slow or even ended if not. It does sound like the perfect time to drop something like this though and good job taking an already successful name so its more recognizable. Im curious to see how they handle apps, it took me a min to find but it does look like they have a compatibility layer which im not sure if its straight up emulation or not and is still not perfect either. If everything works out maybe this will be my next phone after my next phone lol.
I am waiting for motorola and grapheneOS to release something.
I think many of us feel stuck, because the choices for smartphone operating systems are indeed limited.
As for me, it’s clear that Google is making it harder for people to develop and install Android apps. Google wants to ensure that it remains in control and that no one can escape from GApps and Gemini.
The only way to stop this is to break up Google. Or to fund smartphone OS project other than Android, however, that would take years.