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Comment by causality0 | Hacker News Reader

I wish I could just mail Google a hundred dollar check and a note that says "please don't treat me like a goddamn mouth-breather" and get a permanent "I'm a big boy who wipes my own ass and everything" code for unlocking bootloader and giving root.

Sometimes I think it would hurt less to tear the bandage off quick and switch to iOS rather than watching Android slowly get beaten into the Apple mould.

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You're mad that you have to jump through a hoop to do something dangerous. So mad, that you're going to just... wrap yourself in bubble wrap & give up all control?

Switching to iOS is sending the literal opposite message that you want. It's telling the industry "I can't be trusted & I want no control over my devices."

This exists, just use Pixel?

I don't think Pixels let you keep all the functionality when you unlock the bootloader. Am I wrong?

You might be thinking of SafetyNet. I'm not sure if there are any reliable ways to get root without tripping SafetyNet, but last I knew you could - on a Pixel - flash a different ROM and then relock the bootloader, and you'd be fine. Things may have changed in the last few years though.

You still fail SafetyNet if you do that.

What apps are actually enforcing SafetyNet?

I wonder if would it be possible for something like εxodus to detect this when they scan an app. I'd love to see a SafetyNet flag in their scan reports.

Snapchat, Netflix, Pokemon Go, Super Mario Run, Android Pay, McDonald's, and most bank apps immediately come to mind.

Most of those make sense but why McDonalds?

None of them make sense. Remember that if it were really about security, then phones vulnerable to Dirty Pipe wouldn't pass, but they do. It's just about control.

"Coupon fraud"

It was always my banking apps that caused me problems.

You retain whatever functionality you want when you unlock the bootloader, or relock it after flashing.

Apps can choose to not service you if they detect modifications though.

You're being obtuse. An application choosing not to service you definitely counts as losing functionality.

When the hardware was painstakingly designed so that I can't tell those applications "no modifications here", that's very much a manufacturer and OS problem.

You're not wrong. Android Pay will stop working, and so will a bunch of third-party apps.

You can use Magisk + Zygisk/DenyList to get these apps working on a rooted device.

The trick Magisk modules can use to hide the unlocked bootloader only works as long as Google still supports legacy devices that didn't do hardware attestation of the bootloader being locked. As soon as enough time passes that they flip that switch on their end, that will totally break forever.

Also, even today, a few apps aren't fooled by that solution. Try the McDonald's app for example.

If Google decides to corner everyone it will only empower them to put energy into non-google ecosystems. It would be a big mistake IMHO for google to cut this off.

Pixels have their own issues. For example, Google at some point decided giving users HDMI-out was cannibalizing their Chromecast sales and haven't offered it on their phones since. They tend not to play nice with combo 3.5mm/charging adapters, and often have bizarre hardware and software issues that only crop up a few months after launch. Their new SoC is essentially a rebadged Exynos, and as a consequence it has trash GPU drivers that gimp gaming console emulation to an astonishing degree. Pixel users can't crop the screen to hide the camera cutout so I hope you enjoy watching videos with the world's biggest dead pixel on one side of the screen.

FWIW, I'm tearing the bandage right off for my next phone. If my phone won't treat me like a big boy, I might as well switch to iOS and get a marginally better user experience.

But at least with Android, the freedom is still there and is just quite hidden and inconvenient. With Apple you don't have it at all.

What about the user experience is better?

I'm weighing this option myself now, but honestly between an iOS device and a mid-tier Android phone, it's hard to tell the difference. Email / chat apps / web browsing is more or less the same.

Certainly the amount of telemetry collected by Android is markedly higher [0], but that's not so much of a UX difference.

[0] https://www.scss.tcd.ie/doug.leith/apple_google.pdf

I don't know how much of a difference there really is, but it surely cannot be worse than my current phone. It's budget (low-mid tier, and it shows), the camera is far from good, and my OEM's variant of Android has annoying additions that aren't allowed to be disabled. I'm hoping that iOS will be at least a slightly calmer experience, and that the better hardware will do its part to annoy me less even if I'm buying used.

This is an interesting take. I'd assume iOS could just be considered an OEM variant of a mobile OS. I switched to samsung, and its UX is pretty consistent.

> my OEM's variant of Android has annoying additions that aren't allowed to be disabled. I'm hoping that iOS will be at least a slightly calmer experience

Would android's additions still seem like annoyance if stock (and every variant) included those additions?

tbf, I think iOS is a pretty good OS (like most modern OSes).

> Would android's [OEM's] additions still seem like annoyance if stock (and every variant) included those additions?

100%. By additions I mean to say things like notifications that cannot be dismissed or hidden, or other aspects of this firmware that to my knowledge don't occur on any other ROM, but seemingly exist to annoy without providing a benefit.

There’s a night and day difference between iOS and even high end Android, starting with performance and consistency of the platform.

> Certainly the amount of telemetry collected by Android is markedly higher [0], but that's not so much of a UX difference.

Note that, per your linked source, the payload size is larger on Android, but iOS actually collects more types of data by default (like location, which iOS collects by default but Android doesn't)

Or you could use LineageOS or other roms that are unfettered by Google.

If you read the other comments in this thread, you'll notice that I mention lack of SafetyNet support as a huge problem.

For which apps? Like, very specifically?

I didn't think devs were dumb enough to still use this.

Banking apps, Google Pay, hell, even McDonald's. Anything which has payment integrated in it is fair game to have SafetyNet running. And it very much most likely not a dev-lead decision, but a manager-forced thing.

In addition to what the other comment mentioned, there's also at least Snapchat, Netflix, Super Mario Run, and Pokemon Go.

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