Google Keeps Making Smartphones Worse(jacobin.com)
jacobin.com
Google Keeps Making Smartphones Worse
https://jacobin.com/2025/07/google-android-smartphones-open-source/
2 comments
The largest handset maker in the world, Samsung, created their own mobile OS, Tizen, which failed to gain traction on smartphones. If I were to consider making an open-source mobile OS, I'd start there in looking at why Tizen failed.
"Samsung’s Tizen is riddled with security flaws, amateurishly written" - https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/04/samsungs-tizen-is-ri...
History is littered with dead mobile OSes. Turns out making any kind of OS is rather hard.
History is littered with dead mobile OSes. Turns out making any kind of OS is rather hard.
What a weird article. This is an article about Android OS, but the headline makes it seem like Google is affecting the whole smartphone (including iPhones).
> What was once a useful tool has now become an instrument of torture, designed to extract as much money from consumers as possible.
What? "instrument of torture", for charging money? Lets read on to see how the author supports this statement
> And to keep it that way, Google is quietly locking away its phones’ source code to make it as hard as possible for people to build better alternatives.
I'm sorry what? Author claims Android is becoming closed source (incorrect) and that is to keep competitors away?
I dont know what sort of person lives in these kind of bubbles, let alone write an article like this.
> What was once a useful tool has now become an instrument of torture, designed to extract as much money from consumers as possible.
What? "instrument of torture", for charging money? Lets read on to see how the author supports this statement
> And to keep it that way, Google is quietly locking away its phones’ source code to make it as hard as possible for people to build better alternatives.
I'm sorry what? Author claims Android is becoming closed source (incorrect) and that is to keep competitors away?
I dont know what sort of person lives in these kind of bubbles, let alone write an article like this.
(replying to self).
I looked up the author to understand their positions a little better, and this is an actual article author wrote
"Government has failed to keep our planes safe; let’s try open source instead"
https://jairajdevadiga.com/2024/05/17/government-has-failed-...
I looked up the author to understand their positions a little better, and this is an actual article author wrote
"Government has failed to keep our planes safe; let’s try open source instead"
https://jairajdevadiga.com/2024/05/17/government-has-failed-...
Please read the article again, he does explain the torture:
> our phones make us feel powerless; as if we must fight our devices to get anything done. There’s a constant barrage of notifications, and by the time you have dealt with them, chances are you have forgotten what you wanted to do in the first place. Then there is Gemini, Google’s artificial intelligence bot, which won’t leave you alone. Press the home (middle) button for half a second too long, and it pops up, offering to “assist” you.
The closed-source part has been explained too, as it links another article: https://www.osnews.com/story/142553/rumour-google-intends-to...
"The Android Open Source Project has been gutted over the years, with Google leaving more and more parts of it to languish, while moving a lot of code and functionality into proprietary components like Google Mobile Services and Google Play Services. Taking “Pixel Android” closed source almost feels like the natural next step in the process of gutting AOSP that’s been ongoing for well over a decade."
> our phones make us feel powerless; as if we must fight our devices to get anything done. There’s a constant barrage of notifications, and by the time you have dealt with them, chances are you have forgotten what you wanted to do in the first place. Then there is Gemini, Google’s artificial intelligence bot, which won’t leave you alone. Press the home (middle) button for half a second too long, and it pops up, offering to “assist” you.
The closed-source part has been explained too, as it links another article: https://www.osnews.com/story/142553/rumour-google-intends-to...
"The Android Open Source Project has been gutted over the years, with Google leaving more and more parts of it to languish, while moving a lot of code and functionality into proprietary components like Google Mobile Services and Google Play Services. Taking “Pixel Android” closed source almost feels like the natural next step in the process of gutting AOSP that’s been ongoing for well over a decade."