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Comment by PragmaticPulp | Hacker News Reader

I can almost guarantee this is due to licensing issues with the camera firmware. Modern cameras aren't just hardware any more. They're a mix of hardware and advanced processing algorithms that really do make a huge difference in the final output. Those algorithms are often licensed from 3rd parties with specific licensing requirements.

Sony has been reasonably good about enabling open-source and fixing these things in the past, so I'd give them the benefit of the doubt that they'll try to find a way to enable the cameras on unlocked phones in the future.

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> they'll try to find a way to enable the cameras on unlocked phones in the future.

In the meantime, I will only buy what ACTUALLY gives me control RIGHT NOW, namely, what is supported by LineageOS:

https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/

The average consumer only wants to purchase the cross-section between what is the cheapest and works the best. For most consumers Open Source is not a feature.

With various right-to-repair legislation popping up everywhere, I am not so sure.

Software restrictions are one way to ensure planned obsolescence.

Actually, there is a specific set of features that guarantees planned obsolescence:

* Irreplaceable battery (or one that is difficult to remove by the user).

* on the iPhone, the Lightning socket and the Home button. The former starts to wear out after ca. 5 years; the Home button lasts a bit longer. Apple will repair both these for you but at this point you will be tempted to buy a new device instead because of the costs involved.

* the support for older devices is being dropped from SDKs. With time, it becomes more and more difficult to develop apps for your device. For many developers this is something completely natural and reasonable. For me it's not. I'm not asking Apple to support iPhone 4s (would be nice, but it's unrealistic), but just to let me still run and provision apps on my old MacBook with a previous version of Xcode. It used to work well in 2012, why can't I do it now? Upgrade, upgrade, upgrade, produce tons of electric waste, buy more, buy more. OK, I am buying new devices, but I care about the old ones. I won't throw away a perfectly working phone that will serve me another 10 years just because it is not considered modern enough.

EOL-ed smartphones are powerful computers, they have tons of different uses, I wish manufacturers recognized it and collaborate with their customers to reduce the amount of electrowaste.

For most people, EOL phones have 0 use.

I think this will change as devices become more long-lived (I still use an Android 5.x device today) and more repairable.

For many it won't matter, but for many it will.

You can see a similar thing today with automobiles. Some people only buy for features and let it go after a couple years, but many others also consider longevity and repair and parts costs.

I feel LineageOS + F-Droid is often underrated when it comes to these discussions about alternate ecosystems. If we're ready to let go of name brands, then F-Droid has some very high quality apps[1] built with passion over profit.

But I agree that the initial friction to setup LineageOS on the device is far too high for a non-technical customer, Something which could be only resolved if a devices ships with LineageOS(I think even F(x)tec, Fairphone requires the user to flash LineageOS) but then again memories of that fateful tie-up with device manufacturer which ended CyanogenMod would be fresh within LineageOS team.

Now that's the catch-22, Alternate exists but not for everyone.

[1] https://github.com/SimpleMobileTools

I had run LineageOS for some time. It works, but FDroid is missing too many apps, even opensource like Signal. I have to update apks manually every few months.

Signal team fought a long war against any forks or unauthorised builds of Signal. There are (or were) FDroid repositories with Signal compatible builds, but Moxie stated that any such build will be considered malware. Signal team was making such builds increasingly difficult to produce.

Official F-Droid repo doesn't allow proprietary dependencies on which Signal depends for some messages (push?)

> Signal team fought a long war against any forks or unauthorised builds of Signal.

Yeah, this is main reason why I avoid Signal together with Google Services usage.

Why doesn't Signal maintain an F-Droid compatible build? (if there's a dependency problem, then they should considering dropping it, release a Signal lite perhaps)

Probably the same reason they don't maintain a Flatpak, Snap, or any other package other than for Debian/Ubuntu for Signal-Desktop.

Which according to the GitHub discussion, the answer is: ????

Making your own F-Droid repository was harder a few years back, and UX client-side was bad. Nowadays setting up a 3rd-party repo is as easy as scanning/approving a QRCode (for example for Newpipe repo).

Not that i approve Signal's attitude on this topic at all, but there are (were?) technical reasons for which they would do something else. Of course, F-Droid maintaining proper LibreSignal builds in their place alleviates the concern, and that's what Signal team famously opposed. For the uninformed, F-Droid has very serious review/build process for apps and i don't think malware was ever distributed on there (and antipatterns are listed in the UI client-side).

Signal is open-source in the "look at it, but don't even try to tun it" way. I'd rather support a protocol that supports federation and encourages alternative clients.

You mean something like XMPP protocol, which is a widely-deployed IETF standard with robust free-software implementations?

https://matrix.org is a good one

Not upvoting or downvoting, but Matrix is an experimental choice at this point. I have some hope for the near future, but so far Matrix protocol is far from an established standard.

> supports federation and encourages alternative clients

Currently, the only featureful matrix server (synapse) uses gigabytes of RAM just for a handful of users (see also progress on dendrite and conduit). As for supporting alternative clients, Matrix ecosystem has an overdependence on 3rd party web widgets (eg. Jitsi) for client features because they are not supported by the protocol itself yet, making it harder to implement a native client with good performance and all Element features.

As i'm writing this, i realize nheko client now supports WebRTC audio-video calls when a recent GStreamer is available, congratulations on that, and good luck for the multi-platform implementation!

> overdependence on 3rd party web widgets (eg. Jitsi)

Is there any other example than Jitsi? I thought that was the only third party integrated in the core, and even that can be self-hosted.

Actually, Jitsi is the only one, but it used only in case of group calls, so I can't complain. 1:1 calls handled without any 3rdParty

It may be the only one. I was simply aware of this example. My point is not that Jitsi cannot be selfhosted but that using it in your client means your client requires a full web rendering engine to provide that feature, making clients more resource-hungry. To be clear, i'm great it exists at all. It has provided useful services for tech conferences like FOSDEM. I'm just concerned with interoperability and the webification of everything.

Using HTTPS for transport as part of the matrix protocol is great for punching through firewalls, i'm just not convinced the rest of the web stack is well-suited to social networking usecases with a lot of information pouring in. Web engines and the DOM model were designed for static data, not for highly-dynamic information, although there's ongoing R&D around virtual DOMs to optimize those usecases.

This exact issue years ago made me think less of (and stop using) Signal rather than F-Droid. You're better off with XMPP or Matrix, plus an ordinary SMS app.

One has to already bend heaven and earth to bring people who don't care about Privacy from WhatsApp, Messenger to Signal.

Only reason someone is able to do that now is because WhatsApp, Messenger gets into some legal trouble and the media advertises Signal.

Preaching about significance of interoperable protocol and suggesting apps which use them is beyond the capacity of even those media.

The solution is always the same, focus on a stellar UX.

Stellar UX are always welcomed, But the network effects of a chat application are too high of a variable for to just rely on stellar UX to be successful.

Case in point: There was a chat app called Hike[1] in India run by the son of the leading Telecom Billionaire. It had more features(free SMS, Stickers) and arguably better UX than WhatsApp according to its users(100M). But it could never gain over WhatsApp's initial market size in India(Why change what works?).

Final nail on the coffin for Hike was when WhatsApp was made available on the 4G feature phone released by a competing Telecom operator and loads of people got to experience WhatsApp on their first ever Internet enabled compute device.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hike_Messenger

That's a very good example of why net-neutrality and anti-monopoly principles are important. Thanks for bringing it up

Thanks, It's indeed a good example for how oligopoly in telecom stifle innovation and how not even well-funded startups can survive in it.

Monopoly or Duopoly is a straight death sentence to innovation.

> Monopoly or Duopoly

Yeah or any kind of cartel, really. It's hard enough for a small coop to fight economies of scale, but in many areas you're facing an actual mafia.

Somewhat off-topic, but what's the situation with DIY non-profit ISPs in India? If you're not familiar with the topic, you can look up NYCMesh (New York), Guifi (Spain), Freifunk (Germany), FFDN Federation (France) or Rhizomatica (Mexico). Another interesting development in the telecoms field is https://jmp.chat/ promoting and developing free-software for cellphone<->XMPP/SIP interoperability.

ISPs by itself are heavily scrutinized entities in India, Even Starlink hasn't able to get its license yet AFAIK. I've seen couple of small for-profit ISPs come up and disappear in the form of both non-innovative distributors of bigger ISP and innovative original technology ISPs like WiFi Dabba(YC)[1](Not disappeared, but changed USP from mobile Internet to home broadband & moved the HQ from B'lore to Delaware).

As for non-profit ISP, even if possible it definitely cannot be open i.e. without oversight as in the examples from other countries you've sighted. Closest I've come to community run networks I've seen are LoRA networks.

jmp looks great, Google Voice has been shutdown in India can I use jmp as a replacement?

Edit: I've submitted jmp to HN as I didn't see any large discussions on it.

[1] https://www.wifidabba.com/

> non-profit ISP (...) cannot be open i.e. without oversight

That's also the case here. In France you need to declare your ISP activity to the telecoms regulator and follow some regulations. In Germany too there are regulations, but Freifunk as an activist collective ignored them in order to protect their users' privacy, and went up to the supreme court and won their right to operate a privacy-friendly ISP.

> jmp looks great, Google Voice has been shutdown in India can I use jmp as a replacement?

JMP is great from what i heard. It may not be as featureful as Google Voice yet, but there's active development and the user support (i hang out in their channel despite not being a client) is the best i've seen across the entire telecoms industry, and by far. The maintainers are very happy to work on new features and open to suggestions, but due to being a very small organization they're prioritizing obviously new features requests on a "who would pay for that?" basis.

You may be interested to learn that stellar UX is an important point for the snikket.org family of XMPP clients, despite not being there yet. There's an upcoming UX study if you'd like to take part: https://snikket.org/blog/simply-secure-collaboration/

I definitively like that they care

Yes it's a shame that Signal is not on F-Droid, but there's a self updating apk available[1] for side-loading which doesn't use Google Push Notifications if not available and as for why it's not there on F-Droid here's their official response[1], Which IMO makes some reasonable (against forks using their servers) and unreasonable (against normalizing side-loading) justifications.

[1] https://community.signalusers.org/t/wiki-signal-android-app-...

> some reasonable (against forks using their servers) (...) justifications

How is that reasonable in a centralized client-server model? That's precisely what we find unreasonable with Twitter and others shutting down or making life hard for 3rd party clients. Why would it be more acceptable from a free-software service?

The network effect says a centralized protocol like Signal has "zero" value without reusing the same servers. All this because Signal maintainers have an ideological argument against decentralization, which received many great responses including this one from a Jabber/XMPP client developer: https://gultsch.de/objection.html

In all cases, Signal servers control who has an account, what permissions and what can be posted. You can't just extend the protocol to enrich your client by abusing Signal's servers, but you can make your client compatible with Signal protocol (interoperability). Preventing that is rather user-hostile.

You are asking some very pertinent questions.

The reason why I felt there's some reason to Signal's stand on forks was because forks not standing up Them having their own F-Droid repository is to the quality standards, not adhering to feature parity while consuming their resources might not go well with their funders.

Signal having its own repo on F-Droid is the viable solution for them but they don't seem have any intention of doing it.

I don't agree with Moxie's reasoning against federated technologies, TBH I prefer email over any real-time communication due to its federated nature.

> the quality standards (...) feature parity

F-Droid community was interested to package Signal but at the time upstream had a hard dependency on Google Play Services (which according to my/F-Droid quality standards is pretty bad), and made it clear they didn't want any unapproved builds using their servers. This would include reproducible builds from the same source code as is standard in F-Droid official repo. Still, such builds would hypothetically have the same quality standards and feature parity with upstream.

I agree, Even the standalone apk which can use web sockets for notifications still has Google Play Services and so the F-Droid repo should be a separate code base without GPS.

Btw it seems I had a brain fart when typing this -

>The reason why I felt there's some reason to Signal's stand on forks was because forks not standing up Them having their own F-Droid repository is to the quality standards...

The reason why I felt there's some reason to Signal's stand on forks was because forks not standing up to their quality standards...

> still has Google Play Services and so the F-Droid repo should be a separate code base without GPS

A simple/single F-Droid patch could be enough.. Such a simple change doesn't have to be a huge maintenance burden.

If you install signal from the apk they(moxie, signal) provide it works without google play services and it will update itself automatically, just requiring you to click a confirmation every few weeks.

Calyxos ships with Signal installed. I think it's an install time option? And it updates in an identical fashion.

> it will update itself automatically

is it possible to disable the auto-update? i'd rather see signal stop working than auto-update behind my back.

I use lineage, and the signal apk from the website, and signal nags me to upgrade -- that doesn't happen automatically as far as I can tell. I've disabled the "install unknown apps" permission, but I don't know precisely what "unknown" means in this context.

By auto-update I mean it opens a prompt asking you to update. If you choose not to update it eventually stops working because they change the protocol periodically.

You need to manually update apps from Fdroid due to artificial limitations introduced by Google for third party app stores - only Google Play and possibly device vendor apps stores can update apps automatically on non-rooted device.

FDroid has Silence and Jami which is what I switched to after signal started collecting and permanently storing user data in the cloud.

Silence is great but needs more contributors. Advertise it to your privacy-friendly friends and Android devs you know :)

Anecdote i learned recently about Silence: it's maintained by a jurist who works for a pro-privacy non-profit in France (La Quadrature Du Net)

https://e.foundation sells devices with /e/ preinstalled

True I limited my comment to LineageOS as I've personally tried /e/OS only for a small period. Having it pre-burned on a device does alleviate a major problem, but is there any other reason to choose /e/ over LineageOS?

if you are "non-technical" user - yes. but if you can install LineageOS (or any other custom rom you prefer) - no.

/e/ is actually LineageOS under the hood. Chose it cause i found one of the models they sell new for cheap, thought support for it might be better than a phone having one maintainer. The alternative of buying a two year old phone used, even if it has three maintainers for LineageOS did not look that appealing. /e/ offers a free account with email and stuff, based on NextCloud IIRC. You can get a paid account with more storage space to support them financially.

Personally I refuse to buy any device that requires me to go crying to the manufacturer for an unlock key.

Google and OnePlus devices can be unlocked locally with no need to contact anyone and beg, so no one can refuse your unlock on a device you already paid for.

T-Mobile US's LG devices came with unlockable bootloaders as well, but that only helps if someone develops a ROM for it. Even then, more and more important functionality is getting locked behind closed doors. On my Stylo 5, it's not the camera, it's VoLTE. What good is it to run a custom ROM if I can't make and receive phone calls?

For me, personally, a major reason to unlock the bootloader is to install Magisk. Running an entire ROM is nice if you can find a trusted and supported one, but failing that, root access is the next best thing.

I've got background clipboard sync back in KDE Connect through a Magisk module. No need for an entire LineageOS ROM (would be nice if it were officially supported) if everything I want can be done another way.

VoLTE is incredibly fragile. You can often force enable it and it'll just work, but there's so much that can go wrong that I wouldn't risk it.

Just curious, is there any "trusted" custom ROMs? It seems that LineageOS is most reputed, but are they doing some good work about trustworthy like reproducible build, or just a reputation?. I was using random custom roms from xda until Jerry Bean era, but I'm now afraid to install entire OS.

Maybe GrapheneOS?

Looks great, thanks. It's good that it also support with Google Play Services for who needs, despite it's privacy oriented ROM.

Just nitpicking, but it's technically possible to install Google Play Services on any ROM, to my knowledge. What makes GrapheneOS apart is they apparently found a safe way to prevent it from gaining control of your entire phone.

I have an LG G8 from T-Mobile. It hasn't been updated since February. Rumor is they're rolling out android 11 in Q4 which is more than a year after 11 was released.

Contrast that with my wife's S10 that's got 11 around February.

At this point I have very little faith LG will follow through with updates for even the original two years let alone android 12.

Yikes. My Stylo 5 recently got an update, bringing its patch level to June 1, 2021 (still Android 10). I guess I should consider myself lucky. Considering that LG decided to quit the market, I'm not too hopeful, either.

I'm honestly considering going back to a flip phone once the Stylo becomes unusable. Sure, I'd end up losing some neat things, but the bargain we're being offered with smartphones is looking more Faustian every day.

LG has exited the phone business.

https://www.lg.com/us/notice

Yes but they promised they would keep premium phones updated for three years.

"The three OS update guarantee applies to LG premium phones released in 2019 and later (G series, V series, VELVET, Wing) while certain 2020 models such as LG Stylo and K series will receive two OS updates.*"

http://www.lgnewsroom.com/2021/04/lg-announces-three-year-pl...

Who makes voice calls anymore?

Also, did TMUS just drop 3G voice / CSFB already?! o_0

Google devices cannot be unlocked locally. My USA spec Pixel 5, purchased unlocked from Best Buy, had to be connected to the internet - and I don't remember, but I may have also had to put a SIM card in - before it could be unlocked. Apparently a background service automatically checks with Google's servers whether the device is eligible for unlock (is it paid off or still under financing, and which carrier is it from?) and then automatically fetches the unlock code if Google decides to allow it. But the default state until that happens is locked with no possibility of unlocking.

So it's very unlikely that you'll be refused the unlock on a device you just purchased, and if you are then you can just return the device, but I don't like the internet requirement since that means Google's unlock code service and all the other Google applications on the phone sent out a bunch of information about my device to Google.

When I tried initially unlocking the option was grayed out and unusable. I had to find information about the internet connection requirement online.

I don't know whether OnePlus does something like that - my OnePlus 7 Pro was connected to the internet before I attempted to unlock it, but I'm receiving a OP 9 Pro today and would like to unlock it as soon as I get it without connecting to the internet or putting in a SIM card. Will see how that goes.

This discussion is not about carrier unlock! This is about `fastboot oem unlock`.

Yes. That's what I'm talking about. Not carrier unlock. Bootloader unlock is blocked until the phone is fully paid off (if purchased under loan), and I believe T-Mobile requires a 40 day wait before bootloader unlock is allowed even if you pay in full upfront, and I think Verizon prohibits it completely. Google enforces these rules on their devices and requires the phone to connect to Google to authorize bootloader unlocking. It's an automated version of the manual bootloader unlock codes that some manufacturers do.

The OnePlus 9 Pro also required an internet connection, and I had to enable Google Play Services for the OEM unlock option to be enabled. I bought this phone unlocked directly from OnePlus.

Interesting, I can't find any such requirement online about OnePlus devices, but I did come across this mentioning that a law passed in California forced Google to do this on some devices:

https://android.gadgethacks.com/news/psa-enable-hidden-setti...

Pretty sad if true.

If you want to free yourself from the clutches of Google, I recommend the LineageOS microG fork: https://lineage.microg.org/

You'll have the control to...not even lock your bootloader.

Use GrapheneOS, if you want something resembling security.

The GrapheneOS developers like to talk as if relocking the bootloader is unique to Google Pixels and providing a custom key is unique to them.

But that's not true. Every OnePlus device in the last few years allows avb_custom_key as well, Xiaomi Mi A2 does too, probably many others. And ROMs like Pixel Experience publish their custom keys too.

Relocking the bootloader doesn't imply that verified boot is enabled or that that it's not broken for alternate OSes, as is the case for the devices you mentioned.

https://twitter.com/GrapheneOS/status/1423665850725408771

But then they don't allow me to have root at the same time. They claim it is for security reasons but fail to explain why and get really unfriendly. Maybe some power-trip? So now I can choose between vendor lock-in and random-programmer-lock-in.

Buying a LineageOS-supported device doesn't necessarily help. I bought a Pixel 2 from the Google store, and later replaced it under warranty due to a bad microphone. Now the bootloader is permanently locked, and security updates ended in 2020. This is a widespread issue with no known solution:

https://support.google.com/pixelphone/thread/14920605/google...

It doesn't matter whether it's the tyranny of Samsung being dicks or the tyranny of the copyright cartel jamming the fiction that is intellectual property down our throats (and thereby being dicks) that is fucking up one's phone.

Perhaps the law needs to recognize that buying hardware should come with rights to the firmware. If all hardware is useless without firmware, then all hardware is useless without additional and separate rights, and that is a stupid and inefficient world in which to reside.

I think we should have a clear separation between hardware and software companies. This is how it worked in the old days when the internet was built. Hardware companies are getting too much power over our data, and we need more freedom of choice in how our data is treated and by whom, regardless of the hardware that we own. A company can be "good" one day and "bad" the next day. We shouldn't be forced to throw away any hardware when that happens.

Does that mean concessions on how well everything is integrated (in the view of the company and some people)? Probably, but that is of minor concern imho.

IMHO mainstream consumers are clearly voting with their wallets that the benefits of hw/sw integration are more important to them than the drawbacks of hw/sw integration.

That's because consumers are greedy and shortsighted actors which need help from an external entity to prevent them from getting trapped in a local optimum.

> I think we should have a clear separation between hardware and software companies. This is how it worked in the old days when the internet was built.

I think that's an exaggeration, isn't it? Aside from the old PC industry (still surviving today), most computers were produced as a whole: whether it was Sun microcomputers and SunOS or Atari STs and GEM or Apples and MacOS, they were paired.

The development of separate and competing operating systems and computers, with interchangeable parts and well understood standards, was an innovation but a temporary one.

> and we need more freedom of choice in how our data is treated and by whom, regardless of the hardware that we own

To that end, we need operating system developers to design data-first systems, where the user is in control of their data. Moreover, the liability for data loss and leaks in service-provided cloud storage should be so high that companies will be nervous about storing your data. It's so frustrating to me the number of apps where you install them, and you can't do anything with them without having a user account - even though there's no legitimate reason for them to have a user account for me!

All modern investment in this space is explicitly trying to push for better hardware software co-design. This is seen as the path forward in light of Moore's law dying. There has always been a boundary where your ownership of software truly begins. In PCs it was at the firmware, and with smart phones it has been at some arbitrary location the os vendor has seen fit. The web had been the most crippling place for user control of software, and they own no part of the devices software or hardware.

> All modern investment in this space is explicitly trying to push for better hardware software co-design.

I'm ok with hardware vendors writing their own firmware. The problem I have is when they push updates, and take over control of my hardware.

So hw/sw codesign is fine, as long as it is sold as a hardware unit that I control.

> This is seen as the path forward in light of Moore's law dying.

At this point I care more about having control over my data and devices than about Moore's law.

The thing was that with computers we had the BIOS, that defined an open (well, in the first days it was proprietary but became a de facto open specification) that allowed interoperability between hardware and software, to the point that it provided the most basic functions to be able to boot whatever operating system you liked.

We should have done the same on the mobile, there is no reason why this works on computer and not on smartphones, if not commercial reasons. Why on a macbook I can install Linux but on an iPhone I can't boot whatever operating system I want? It's not a matter of security, because it's the user that chooses to change the operating system.

> I can almost guarantee this is due to licensing issues with the camera firmware.

I think that a good pro-market regulation would be to require that all hardware be sold with the firmware required to operate it under some sort of open source license.

Once one has bought a device, one should be able to continue operating it.

I don’t care that the evil company A has an obligation to evil company B to screw me. I just despise being screwed.

Never buy devices with non-free firmware. They're always full of garbage like this.

Doesn't that rule out any phone?

Not, reportedly, the Librem 5 phone.

A phone, sure, a smartphone, not a chance

The Librem 5 is absolutely a smartphone: https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/

Your linked page calls it a "phone" not a "smartphone", so you're proving GP's point.

What. By that definition, the Google Pixel 5a is not a “smartphone” either, since its product page does not use that term, either: https://store.google.com/us/product/pixel_5a_5g?hl=en-US

Your leg is being pulled.

*plonk*

By what metric is it somehow not a smartphone?

But it still contains a cellular modem and a wifi module, both of which run proprietary firmwares.

But, crucially, they both run externally to the CPU and main system, and can not affect it in any way. It’s just as if they had put the firmware on a ROM chip beside the modem and wifi chip.

my needs are more utilitarian - I need a smart phone that's waterproof. Not a single one of the libre* phones are waterproof, let alone reasonably water resistant, so they're a nonstarter for me. I'm a nerd but I'm also outdoorsy. My phones have gone for swims in the Gulf of Mexico and been caught in squals more times than I can count.

My experience is that water proof phones ironically are more prone to water damage since they don't drain. Simple moist in a tent can kill it.

Can you give examples from your experience?

My current phone, Samsung S9, got ruined in a moist tent. It said "water in charging port" and refused to charge since that point. Samsung fixed on warranty.

My wifes prior phone got cracks on it and it seemed to let in moist and then not drain or get dry. Something fried in it.

I had an S7 for years, and then upgraded to an S10e. I was just in a pool yesterday with the S10e taking video. The charging port message is to prevent damage. If the message never goes away or you have intrusion, that's a valid warranty claim.

Even if that is the case, what is the reason to forbid the access to the camera completely? Just remove the stock camera app with the proprietary algorithms in them. And let other applications access the camera trough the stock Android camera API.

A camera is in the end a sensor that captures some video, why locking down that video stream? I get the algorithms, but leave the raw video stream to be used by other applications.

It's not just a raw video stream, but more complex work is needed to manage sensors.

But why should customers care? They bought a device for good money and it stops working due to the user installing a different OS ? Good thing in the EU custom OS installs dont break warranty (even if vendors try to make you think otherwise).

Then put that junk in a secure enclave (that unlocking doesn't touch), or in a separate chip. Don't screw over your users who want to have some control over the device.

Then they shouldn't use such camera. Simple. This should be illegal!

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