this post was submitted on 26 Feb 2026
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With the upcoming changes to how Google handle's app verification, the future of the android ecosystem looks pretty grim.

While there are calls to petition and protest, it is long past time to take our phones out of the hands of google and into the community.

With the mass tech layoffs, the ai storm taking jobs,etc, there are more than enough skilled devs with free time to make this happen. We as the community need to support them financially.

Please help spread the message in your various channels. If you're technically capable enough, start the process!

https://keepandroidopen.org/open-letter/

https://f-droid.org/en/2026/02/24/open-letter-opposing-developer-verification.html

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[โ€“] NotANumber@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Believe it or not but the Pixel phones are some of the easiest to unlock and flash. You install graphene OS just through a web browser it's that easy. It is somewhat ironic given this move.

[โ€“] AnnaFrankfurter@lemmy.ml 2 points 14 hours ago

There was a reason for this. Google always branded pixel and nexus devices as a dev kit for Android OS. So all different brands of Android phones started their OS development with pixel. But last year Google announced they are no longer recommending pixel devices as the backbone of Android OS development and that companies and users should target cuttlefish their emulator for AOSP. With that they also stopped sharing device trees and vendor blobs. That is nothing new for custom ROM community but Google always provided that and that made custom ROM development really easy with very fast update cycles. I'm just hoping they don't lock down Bootloader like others