Technology

The new requirements will "only" apply for "certified" Android devices. I'm pretty sure, devices running a custom ROM aren't certified, especially if you don't even have Google Services installed. Nevertheless, I'm looking forward to a bright future for Linux phones.

Fwiw, just because a dumb phone doesn't give you access to "smart" features doesn't mean the capabilities aren't present on the phone. It's just a matter of what could be hidden on the circuit board (lots can be hidden in chips), and what can be hidden in usual expected traffic (if bandwidth requirements are low, even timing of packets could be used to encode hidden data that would never show up in any logs).

Plus the simple tracking of cellphones is necessary for them to function at all.

Google has their own store, that's how they verify.

That’s how it works on Windows already. You buy a cert from a third party vendor so your setup file can pass Windows security checks and doesn’t show a big warning to the user when they open the setup file.

Hoping that phones running e/OS wouldn't count as certified android devices anymore. Especially if they don't have Google Play Services on them.

"Starting in September 2026, Android will require all apps to be registered by verified developers in order to be installed on certified Android devices"

EDIT: Found this from last August:

https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/26/android_developer_verification_sideloading/

The restrictions will apply to certified Android devices, meaning Google-approved and including the core Google apps and services. Most Android devices fall into this category, though niche options exist, such as mobiles running /e/OS, a de-Googled version of Android, or the open source LineageOS. The downside of using non-Google Android from a consumer perspective is that some apps might not install, such as those that use the Play Integrity API to verify that the app is "installed by Google Play, running on a genuine Android device."

Couldn’t agree more Especially when the Pine Phone Pro is improving every year since its has came out and with Posh shell and Waydroid nothing will stop Linux from succeeding in the modern era

How about phone as terminal for home pc.

There need to be enforced of competition law here. Companies aren't going to voluntarily support a platform with few users. Users aren't going to move to a platform without critical apps.

We live in a dystopia were you have to have the banks app to do online banking even on your desktop. You can't charge your car without an app. You can't navigate your car without a map app that has traffic information. Etc etc. I want FOSS alternatives to all these, but there isn't and Google could take even having a FOSS platform at all.

This something we need regulators to fix. It is a politically problem, not a technical one.

America screwing up trust should wake up Europe to dealing with American tech monopolies. Now it's not something just nerds and economists complain about, it is a geopolitical problem.

Android is not Linux (the OS), it just uses the Linux kernel. That means almost nothing is transferable from one OS to the other unfortunately. 

In theory Canonical could lock down Ubuntu like that, but it would be the end of Ubuntu. Switching over to Mint or Debian is not a big deal for majority of the linux-users and also Ubuntu would lose all the advantages they can currently pull off from Debian package maintainers. Also I suppose it would bring a ton of headaches with licenses, but IANAL, so don't quote me on that. And, obviously, that would kill snapcraft too as I don't see any incentives for developers to support walled gardens for free, so it wouldn't be all bad.

Never could. Power of thousands of paid developers against a few. That's like finding all needles in a haystack, and power determines the size of that haystack and the amount of needles.

You can't use something that cost that much to make and expect to divert from what the producers intended.

Privacy isn't really in their interest. They feed off our data.