Not surprising for Samsung to do this. Hacking on their devices (which are second to Apple at a hardware level) went downhill fast after they implemented eFuse-secured bootloaders.

What's interesting is that they tried hard to cater to the tinkerers before going in this direction. They "bought" (acqui-hired) CyanogenMod, contributed to open-source and had developer builds of their ROMs. I think they even had clean AOSP builds with the HAL and ABIs for their hardware baked in at some point. SafetyNet made it realistically impossible to daily a rooted phone in 2026 if you want to use banking, healthcare or most music apps, so it's safer for OEMs to tighten the screws on access to their hardware in kind.

My take is that they saw all of this as a risk to profits they could make from catering to regulated industries who would deploy their hardware en masse. It also didn't make sense to continue this investment after banks and healthcare put pressure on Google to step up privacy in Android, especially after Apple implemented Secure Enclave.

It's a pyrrhic victory regardless, in my opinion. If you're going to run a super-locked down Android device, you might as well go all-in with Apple. Their hardware ecosystem is better, their cloud services are better, they get first-priority for mobile apps, you get Blue Bubble Benefits, and their support (in-store and online) is on another level. Even MDM is better with Apple devices (through iOS Profiles). Shoot, even privacy-minded folks are better off on iOS with Lockdown mode.

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kelvinjps10 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Android is still more open, you can side load apps. For example I like newtube and revanced, it's easier to sync local files like when using syncthing. AnkiDroid is a fantastic app. I can use extensions in Firefox, and real alternatives browsers. If android gets so locked down so it's almost as using an Apple phone, I'll use graphene or just stop using a smartphone altogether.

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n8cpdx 24 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

I tried switching to graphene after frustration with the latest direction of iOS.

Yes I could use Firefox and ublock to get around YouTube ads, but it actually worked worse than using Orion browser on iOS to do the equivalent. The Pixel 10 Pro couldn’t manage 2x without audio stuttering even at 360p. My iPhone can do it with 4K YouTube video, not that I need that.

iOS natively supports self-hosted contacts and calendars. No hoops. Android needs a separate app that may or may not work (my experience: it doesn’t work and doesn’t give useful feedback when it doesn’t work).

The app quality is so much worse on Android I had to go back. No forward gesture in apps and browsers - insane omission. There are literally only two calendar apps on Android that allow touch-based event editing - Business Calendar 2 Pro (paid subscription) and the Samsung exclusive calendar.

How does a modern smartphone not ship with a decent calendar?? Or touch friendly web navigation?

The rendering engine of the browser is far down the list of priorities compared to supporting basic daily workflows.

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cromka an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What's annoying to me is that I have to use DavX for calendar synchronization and some apps still add events to the (apparently default) Google calendar even after I disabled Google Calendar app.

You get a general feeling that Android is half assed if you don't use a Google account. Adding tasks using Gemini voice assistant? Sure, but only if you use Google Tasks. And so on.

I moved to Android from iPhone and am actually considering going back for those very reasons. Super annoying to see these limitations, iOS was much more provider-agnostic.

	▲	n8cpdx 32 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I just tried to move to Android because it's more open. Was not prepared for the "open" OS to not have basic support for self-hosted calendars. Yes, contacts and calendar are a core OS level feature in 2026. Yes DAVx5 exists, but Google Calendar was buggy with local calendars and DAVx5 actually didn't work reliably afaict. Calendar.app is totally seamless with synology on iOS. Same with contacts. Android was working overtime to make sure I use Google for everything. iOS isn't perfect but I don't have to jump through crazy hoops to be in control of my data.

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charcircuit an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

I recently switched to iOS and found alternative for those. For YouTube without ads and background playback you can use Brave. For syncing files between devices AirDrop is easy and doesn't require internet. There is an official Anki app for iOS where AnkiDroid is a third party app. In regards to extensions Safari does support them, along with Orion, but I decided to forgo using them.

>real alternatives browsers

Using webkit as the underlying engine within the different browsers on the platform has provided enough customization. The parts I actually care about in regards to the browser are the parts actually handling the user experience and not the engine itself. Webkit has evolved enough that it is good enough for my needs at least.

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cromka an hour ago | parent | next [-]

There's also very good SyncTrain app for SyncThing.

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fsflover an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

How do you restrict the Internet access for a chosen app? Also Brave relies on Chromium, so it's a sand castle, reliable while Google allows that.

	▲	wiseowise 44 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		How does Brave rely on Chromium when you can’t use it on iOS? There’s only WebKit.