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Comment by ggm | Hacker News Reader

I don't see WHS the the big issue is. Yes my phone went to red battery low power mode. So what? What aspects of this alter contract between me and Google over automatically applied updstes? I gave can implicitly ages ago.

If they involuntarily disabled battery saving and caused me to loose service or drain and reduce battery life i could see an issue.

Truly, bemused at the hate. What did you think the t&c said when you enabled updates?

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You've put into words exactly what I was thinking.

From the thread: "Ok, but how is it that you have the power to control our phones this way? "

Christ buddy. You have a phone thats made by Google. Google, the company that tracks you everywhere and rolls greenfield updates on all their other software. And then this person says they're going to turn 'allow modify system settings' off... What do these people seriously think Google is going to do?

I think people with a Google phone should just implant a chip in their arm, reporting to Google. It's basically the same thing, and you can view your body information on a Google dashboard and get Google advice on health care, along with a Google map to get there.

Many would and will when it's available.

Except for the 20% of users who feel that Google is not to be trusted and implant an Apple iChip for the premium experience.

In all seriousness, the percentage of people willing to forego using an Apple or Google smartphone (or any smartphone) to uphold at least some semblance of (digital) control over their life sometimes feels so low that it should be called a permillage.

Thank you for the vocabulary.

I think the hate is directed more at the general concept here rather than the specifics. What if they'd pushed out an update that silently broke SSL, made all your Google Photos public or started calling people at random, for example? This particular bug is pretty innocuous but the fact that it's possible to push out very obviously broken updates like this (and only admit to it when they're publicly called out on it) could lead to all sorts of issues. It's not like these users were opted in to some kind of "insider" or "testing" builds, after all.

This should be the point where I point out that I installed LineageOS for this very reason but even they do stupid stuff, their "April Fools" update this year, for example: https://www.androidpolice.com/2018/04/05/dont-freak-lineageo...

I guess it depends on how you view your phone. Is it your phone or is it Googles phone that they can update with whatever software and settings they want to.

The same debate is around Windows 10. Some people are fine with Microsoft getting a stream of privacy data from them. Others feel it's their device, not Microsofts.

It's your phone, and you voluntarily allowed Google to control it.

I didn't want Google to control my phone, so I installed LineageOS.

I'm also a happy LineageOS user, but it's not like they don't have a track record of this kind of thing either: https://www.androidpolice.com/2018/04/05/dont-freak-lineageo...

1. Wasn't remotely initiated.

2. Was announced beforehand, not snuck in.

3. Is open-source.

That wasn't initiated remotely, so I don't understand how it's "this kind of thing".

But you are one of the few tech-savvy enough to have alternatives. What about everyone else?

Without GApps?

Without gapps the phone is faster, and drains less battery.

If you mainly use a browser (Firefox, hopefully) and some messaging & mapping apps, works great.

If you want to use other apps, you'll have to do more testing.

Right. I know, and I run my device this way. But my point was just installing Lineage by itself doesn't free you from Google's clutches if you install GApps anyway.

https://microg.org/

microG is indeed very cool. (though some apps stopped working with it in the past couple of months).

Without GApps.

Same here. No issues, works great.

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