I thought this was the case already.

I hope they are able to get 25K pre-orders and expand their geographic sales coverage after that.

The staffing and funding is the real difficult part.

Agreed. I will also add that a lack of leadership and gumption is also a challenge. You need commitment and inspiration to successfully execute such a project in a democracy.

I am not technical enough to evaluate whether what I am saying is correct, but my concern with using AOSP is that such a decision will result in 2nd tier clone apps.

It seems to me it would make much more sense to leverage industry policy (technical requirements, grants for developers) to develop a “clean slate” solution.

I had a Nokia N900, it worked pretty well for 2010 (apps weren’t as big then and mobile web worked surprising well). I am done with Android and American corruption. I am not buying another Android phone; looking forward to getting a Jolla device once they add support for Ukraine (even with no official support).

You are likely correct that forking Android would be a better (cheaper and more efficient) option. But I can’t get rid of the feeling that it’s best to do a clean break with American oligarchy and make design choices that reflect regional priorities.

Agreed. Hardware supply chains and ecosystem externalities are an extremely challenging area and it will take both industrial policy and de facto tariffs to raise the cost of devices with non-local components.

I was refering to the software/OS. An operating system and platform that has nothing to do with Android, iOS or HarmonyOS. I think in theory, software can have faster market adoption.

How it does very well and it even gets up to 10K+.

I just realized that I can’t pre-order even if I wanted to since I am not in EU/UK/Norway/Switzerland.

We really need an Android alternative with no involvement from American or Chinese companies.

Excactly, I meant that I can’t continue with Android anymore (let alone iOS).

Can’t buy in at this point, but I will most probably buy it early next year, hopefully the crowd-buy goes through.

I can’t participate in ecosystems run by corrupt Americans (such as Android or iOS). They’ve been posturing about “freedoms” for so long that they’ve totally lost understanding of the true meaning of freedom.

I am done with their bullshit.

It’s not really like Graphene. Its roots stem from the Nokia N900; a full linux device.

I actually owned the N900 for a year in 2010 (lost it, I was pretty young), it was a literal Linux phone. Apps weren’t as important back then and it was in many ways easier to use mobile web apps.

They will give up on “Aluminium OS” in 12 to 18 months.

This what I was trying to setup when I first started (with Nginx, domain and free tier version of Google Cloud). I wasn’t able to get it all running with Nginx and HTTPS.

I am relatively sophisticated on LAN/local services (been running Raspberry Pi since 2018 or so), I was never able to setup a reverse proxy to get a true self-hosted system (i.e. remote access); got roadblocked by nginx and setting up letsencrypt with reverse proxy support.

In general, true remote access is IMO exponentially more difficult and demanding than getting things running on your local network.

For anyone starting out with self-hosting, I would strongly recommend LAN/local services where you can relatively easily deploy multiple very useful and powerful services (SMB/NAS, Jellyfin, Pi-hole, Qbittorrent-Nox).

I would suggest looking into DietPi, it’s IMO the best RaspberryPi/SBC distribution there is if you want things to just work and not bug you. Very helpful developers and community too. Excellent, user friendly CLI management tools for headless operation.

For that kind of money, I would expect the SSD drive to be able to provide some other qualities beyond technical things like capacity/bandwidth/latency.

Some very good qualities.

I will have to consider joining this.

Google cannot be trusted.

The Xiaomi Mi A1 from late 2017 had very good ROM/rooting capabilities when I last used it 4-5 years ago. It didn’t have a removable battery though. The second sim slot can function as a microSD card and it has a 3.5 mm audio port.

Checking the LOS website, they say it has support for LOS 20 / Android 13, which is pretty impressive considering the official ROM only went up to Android 9.0. I stopped using the device on LOS 17.1 / Android 10.

2 years is pretty rough by modern standard.

I don’t think open Android is viable.

It’s technically open, but it’s structured in a way that it’s de facto not open.

I am personally planning to move over to a Linux phone of some sort. Going to keep my A73 for critical apps/use cases and slowly move over to a Linux phone.

In a way, it’s good that Google is killing sideloading (in the real sense, where I decide what gets installed, not some hoodlums in Mount View or wherever).

I’ve seen Carl Pei described as the biggest edgelord in the smartphone industry. I think it’s a very apt description.

It only makes ad spam by Nothing so much funnier.

Check out the forum post by Nothing about this spam initiative:

https://nothing.community/d/45348-nothing-os-40-beta-on-phone-3a-series-lock-glimpse-future-plans/

It’s rather funny corporate world salad. Fanboy comments are great too! :) Here is one example:

For me, Nothing doesn’t really have a choice. When you’re a young brand, you absolutely have to bring in cash to keep the business running. Sometimes you have to make decisions you’d never have considered at the start, simply because over time, you realize it’s essential to evolve, to develop, and to keep growing. Even if customers aren’t always happy, we have to remember that some constraints are unavoidable to survive in this sector, especially when competing with the giants.

I think the message shared by Nothing is helpful; it will definitely allow them to get feedback from the community. All in all, Nothing is still a very small company in the smartphone world — even if, for us enthusiasts or users, they already play an important role. It takes courage to communicate transparently about your choices, and I hope this will help them move forward in the right direction.

To me this almost reads like a parody of a fanboy.

If the spam/bloatware is great (“enhances the user experience”), why do the claim it’s only for low end devices? Surely they’d want to enhance the experience for all Nothing devices.

Damn commie!

AV1 content is rather rare and encoding even 1080p content (from BD) is pretty slow unless you have a 9985WX Threadripper Pro (which costs over $11 K retail where I live).

And AV1 client support (HW decode) is lacking compared to HEVC/x265.