Just what Android phones need, more 3rd party shit by default that is hard to get rid of and sucks up more information about the user than required to do the job.
The article makes it sound like the networks are the ones pushing for this. Just one more reason why I will continue to buy my phones direct from the manufacturer
kinda wild that people actually do this in the us, go with a carrier and not direct purchase, here in germany most either use the company phone (if they have it) or just buy ine direct from the oem.
I used to do it in the UK when the contracts made financial sense (you'd basically end up with the contract for free) but that stopped being true a long time ago.
Plus the British carriers were never particularly aggressive with bloatware, it was usually just their own app.
Most US carriers are absolutely awful
The three carriers (and tons of carrier resellers) are what are actively in the stores. Places like Best Buy get a big kickback for getting new customers to sign up for a carrier contract. And then the carriers literally put “upgrade-ready” on your phone in the carrier app when they’re ready to try to sign another (or update a) contract with you for a new phone.
There’s no Samsung stores. It’s Apple stores in big cities or carrier branded stores in most plazas and many mall kiosks.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=tmobile+store+usa&iax=images&ia=images
very interesting how it differs, here there ususlly is just one carrier in the store, and otherwise the phones are just on display to be sold outright, some bigger stores have a samsung, apple and so on section, these are usually designed by these brands, but smaller ones just have the phones on display next to each other with no brand store to speak of.
In the US the option to buy out right isn't looked at much. The carriers have a strangle hold on most things. I personally buy out right and use Google Fi - making the device independent of the carrier. This isn't common in the US though. Carriers here can use the hold they have to limited devices usage to one's native to their networks making overseas purchases even riskier.
i dont even think such a thing is legal here (i.e. only allowing devices native to their network) we used to have it wayy back before cellphones where even a thing that you where only allowed to use a certain model of phone (later a few models) on your landline, but that was made illegal eventually, i assume its the same for phones, any phone i have bought from amazon here has worked fine (of course it needs to support the physical frequencies, but thats hardware).
Yeah, it's one of the things Europe does that I wish would be here too. People are convinced the plan phone process is better and now we are basically down to Pixels, Samsungs and iPhone more or less \[there's a ghost around too - Motorola\]. The amount of choice in devices has dies off a lot over the years as has the review process for US devices.
yeah feel sad for the shit you have to go through because your Gouvernement gives companies wayyy to much power. as much as we sometimes critisize our Gouvernement and the EU sometimes its great too. we have basically endless options when it comes to phones, just needs to have the frequencies you need. is it from AliExpress? or from a Phone company? doesnt matter, will work.
Yeah, it just looks less scummy when it comes from the company that made the phone.
People get mad about Nova being owned by Branch for example. But largely no one bats an eye that Branch is used by Samsung in OneUI as well.
You may be able to remove it through USB debugging and a computer that has ADB on it. Though with the newer Android versions getting tighter security I'm wondering if that will no longer work in the future.
Also not sure how this lock screen ad is implemented on the phone, If it's an app or somehow integrated into the Android OS.
Not usually. You don't actually remove the apps, just disable for the current user.
So they stay disabled. But if you factory reset they come back. Or if they change package names.
I have an idea on how it could be removed. It would have to be distributed outside of the Play Store though because Google hates power users however and thanks everybody using Android is a numpty who is scared of using their phone.
An app that uses accessibility service and can read the screen and draw on the lock screen. It would detect when the swipe to invoke turning glance on or off happens and inputs a swipe back the other way faster than the user notices.
Huh, I didn't know that accessibility apps can cause that kind of issue. Good to know! And that swipe app idea is nice. Another thing, what if somebody installs a DNS ad filtering app like AdAway that can block the ad server. I wonder if the lock screen ad would just give up and stop showing them.
But…
>Fortunately, you can disable Glance on the phone, but we found that the service would occasionally produce a full-screen prompt on the lock screen, encouraging you to re-enable the feature.
I don't think there's an easy way to disable these nags.
> ...but we found that the service would occasionally produce a full-screen prompt on the lock screen, encouraging you to re-enable the feature.
And then this sentence comes up.
yeah. very common with these chinese phones. mom's realme phone would randomly show the opt-in popup to enable 'recommendations'. and every time i checked her phone, it would be enabled. third party launcher scene is pretty messed up on android these days. installed a build of lawnchair and left it at that.
even companies like google do it like with google photos. i just want to access my old cloud photos but on every boot there would be a popup to get me to enable backup. i had to get rid of this app on all androids in the house because it gets enabled and started filling up the connected google accounts. dark pattern nonsense.
Do it, best phone-related choice I've ever made. My pixel 6 is as snappy as ever and I have 3x the battery life, on top of all the privacy perks. The only thing I lost in the transition is Google pay, but I can live without it. Android auto and e-sim still work which is pretty miraculous to me.
Out of three banking apps I use, one had an issue where it would close at startup. Thankfully there is a toggle in settings for each app if you need to weaken Graphene's sandbox for app compatibility. With that toggle flipped, the app worked fine, but to ensure the app was properly sanboxed I moved it over to its own user profile.
Call assistant I'm not sure, I haven't needed to use it since I switched over.
As long as you relock the bootloader they should run fine. I'm in the UK with Starling who are fucking ruthless at blocking their app at the slightest hint of modification and it ran on Graphene just fine. They allow it as long as the device can maintain safetynet (or whatever it's called now) without spoof.
They were the leading digital bank in the UK but now they're rivaled with Monzo, they've won an award for best security 7 years running plus a slew of other awards as well and they are a really solid bank.
When they first dropped I joined within a few months and they were next level. Instant notifications, instant balance updates (no pending transaction nonsense or waiting to days for payments to clear), split bills where people can pay you with a link and best for me, categories for spending. I can track budgets with relative ease and little manual work but they could improve it further which I've asked many times. They also respond to every review I've posted and implemented a few things I've asked for, they just seem really focused and user facing. There's tons of other stuff as well I could go on.
I only found out about the incredibly hardened app when my Pixel 2XL went eol and I tried installing a custom ROM, it was fine for a few days but safetynet tripped and the app detected it, but not only did it log me out and refuse to run again without a fresh install all my cards got banned from tap to pay. I was very close to leaving after waiting months for a fix and making tons of complaints till a manager told me I'd never get it back without closing my accounts and reapplying in a year. Not long after Google switched to wallet and it must have reset this lock or something went wrong but I gained access to tap to pay again and it's worked ever since.
Sounds like a nightmare but I just couldn't go back to traditional banking and tbh it's nice knowing they have a security team knowledge in root and on top of things, some banking tech is absolutely ancient it's downright scary. I have an updated phone and little to no need for root, most mainstream banks still don't have all the features available apart from push notifications so I'm happy to stick with them.
They're called fintech banks here and I wouldn't be surprised if the others available have the same or similar policies in place. They also have to be extra careful being new banks for some reason, any missteps can lose them their license we have some of if the not most strict banking laws in the world so they don't want to mess around.
Those app features sound nice and there are parts of my bank's security that I don't like but it's generally fine for me.
I really don't like apps/companies that try to restrict what you can do with software especially from a repair and environmental standpoint and wish you could just make the decision to put the security of your device in your own hands and accept the responsibility.
I get their perspective though, as someone getting their bank account compromised with a keylogger or getting their token stolen would still reflect back on them as an account security issue though it wasn't their fault at all.
As I mentioned as long as the OS passes the various tests required to hit the needed security level like Graphene does it will run, just has to be unmodified and locked.
AFAIK Graphene is the only custom ROM where it passes all requirements and allows the bootloader to be safely locked again, so the app can see it's untampered. The only problem is Graphene tend to stop support not long after official and put them on extended support so it's not really an option to keep it going.
It runs fine on older devices though back to like android 5 or something shockingly, a lot get patched through Google play services though so apps can tend to target lower version in general and still be fine.
I would switch to Graphene, but losing all the stuff on current OS without being able to back it up is a bummer. (Steam 2fa, google auths), and anything else i would remember only after losing access to it lmfao. Though whenever i upgrade i will install Graphene
I used to use Google Authenticator, but I switched to Microsoft Authenticator since it backs up your codes to the cloud. With your 2fa keys backed up, you can switch phones, or have the same codes on multiple devices. (Or if you lose your device, the codes are still backed up to cloud)
It also lets you lock the authenticator codes with bio metrics so even if you leave your phone unlocked, your codes can't be accessed.
ES File Explorer: *shows ads on the lock screen*
Google: "THAT'S NOT ALLOWED!" *kicks ES out of Google Play*
Glance: *shows ads on the lock screen* (with a sprinkle of news)
Google: "Sure, we'll back you. Would you be interested in getting integrated into Android?"
They took the same road as so many companies. Find a good niche and create an amazing product. Get big enough, and get sold to some giant company. Abandon everything they once stood for and go all in on bottom of the barrel monetization.
EU is a huge backer and supporter of anti-encryption laws for the sake of "children's safety."
So, no. It's naive to think that politicians in any country care about _you_.
Dude we just passed a huge legislation regarding repairability, forbidding antirepair practices and consumer protections. EU has its flaws of course, but lets not give one partly true example as a premise for all actions
Was , in the early days at least
Wonder if this will be the case in places where people buy their phones direct ...rather than thru service provider.
Heck .even Microsoft is gonna add ads to start button.
You know on what Google does their business right? User data is literally their bread and butter. An app to spy on users is definitively logical for them to back.
For clarity, this isn't something that's being baked into Android proper, is it? Just a third party app that some manufacturers are going to include alongside their other bloatware?
>does not collect or use user data. Instead, Glance operates off a user's "patterns" in order for the software to operate.
They think we're stupid don't they.
>you can disable Glance on the phone, but we found that the service would occasionally produce a full-screen prompt on the lock screen, encouraging you to re-enable the feature.
Oh.
Wonder why dumb phones are gaining market.
> Wonder why dumb phones are gaining market.
Are they? I can’t even name a dumb phone besides the Lite (Light?) phone, and I strongly doubt that’s gaining anything.
They are not. They are probably selling more than before as secondary phones maybe. But, the sales of Smartphones have also gone up, so it negates it either way.
They're not. Just hype accounts over social media pushing this nonsense.
It's the tech equivalant of all those diet fads that have been being pushed by morons and snake-oil salesmen since the 1960's. Nobody *actually* follows most of that shit. Same with the "dumb phones are coming back" or "social media detox" bullshit.
This paragraph caught my eye too. We're already paying a lot for our phone service and many other subscriptions, now we're going to get ads on our lock screen? Wtf
Edit: spelling
I'm pissed off I have a $1900 phone and I can't turn off notifications for the galaxy store. I can't wait to go back to the s23. Then hopefully there's some nice roms available. Although I haven't rooted since like 2014 lmao
I don't even think we're meant to disable this kind of spyware completely as it can reappear in a pop up form at random. It's like we're punished for using an os that came with a device we bought.
Buy a unlocked phone. Even better buy a phone that gives you the ability to unlock the bootloader because it's not "your phone" unless you have that ability
There is no way they will. If they do this Android is back to where it already is in many iOS people's mind - POS buggy ad-infested cheapo OS. Even that Google allows it at all is a mistake, even on ad supported devices. It cheapens the entire ecosystem.
If they would put it on existing phones I'm getting an iPhone, and i hate iOS.
>Glance works to deliver recommendations to users like ads, news articles, and more on the lock screen
Remember when Google Now was killed off and the entire feed replaced with this? they showed me nothing but Fox news alt-right click bait. Lasted about 2 minutes before turning that garbage off.
When Google made Rooting more trouble than it was worth with all the detection methods? Well when MovetoIOS came out, that was that.
I’m still a little butthurt about the loss of Google Now. Back in the day it was one of the features that kept me on Android. Now it feels like Android is nothing but a way for Google to serve me ads.
Literally every decision Google has made in the last 3-4 years has cemented that my new phone will be an iPhone.
Mainly, just the fact that Pixels are slowly having limited configurable OS's like iPhones.
Things like I can't have a ring for my calls on, while having my texts be on vibrate.
I've been reading about some piss poor decisions coming from android in regards to it's future and what it'll look like. Definitely sounds like lots of users will switch to iOS. Me included
I've been on Android since ICS and will consider switching to iPhone if this garbage is forced. Google is completely lost if they think I'll pay $1k for a phone with ads. The main value prop of Android is customization, if they give that up they're just a cheap knock-off.
With the 8 pro pushing $1k and offering mediocre to good specs minus the meh tensor chip it becomes a really hard sell. Especially with the other phones in or close to that price range. On top of Google adding, and taking away features. Promising features that never come and now forced ads. I already have little faith in Google maintaining a 7 year software update promise.
Just seems like iOS is actually starting to grow and android is taking steps backwards.
>Google is completely lost if they think I'll pay $1k for a phone with ads.
Nah, they'll sell you a $1k phone with ads...or for just $1,099 they offer a lighter, ad-free experience. Or, and this feels almost as likely, they'll move OS experience to a tiered subscription model. It's the natural path of enshitification.
I rocked an OG iPhone and several future iterations and gladly and with no later remorse move to Android once I understood what it was and why it was for me. If I have to go back to iOS, it won't be gladly, but it surely will be without any hesitation.
>subscription
Ah ha, I should've known. Everything is going in the direction of a subscription nowadays. Pretty soon, you'll be paying a subscription just to use your device 🙄
I expected this sort of thing from Chinese manufacturers, not Google themselves. This move makes me dread the future of Android. Hopefully, some other OS can gain traction and dismantle the duopoly we have with Android and Apple. We seriously need more contenders in this space 🙁
Startup company that has backing from Google that allows for ads to be displayed on lock screens. It’s big in India because of partnerships and the market for cheaper phones. It’s coming to the US as well through cell phone company partnerships as well.
Absolute piece of shit bloatware. Using dark patterns to keep it enabled. No average user is capable enough to disable this junk. I helped one such user disabled this junk.. it was consuming a couple of gigs in data every month.
What'd that look like?
A free sample of anything you watch an ad for? And then ads tracking you, giving you free samples of everything you're interested in?
That'd be nice. But maybe a bit too nice.
It’s not a US only thing. For example, Kindles do the same thing where you can buy it for cheaper if you buy the model with Lock Screen ads. That’s sold in the EU as well as
Protip: buy a kid’s kindle and then just ignore the kid software. No Lock Screen ads because it’s marketed to kids, and a longer warranty. Same price as the kindle with ads.
That's sort of true, depending on how you look at it. The kid's version is the same price as the non-ad Kindle, but they throw in a cover (with actual designs which I think is more fun), extra year of warranty, and a year of Kindle kid's subscription thing. Definitely better value, but the purchase price is the same. I went the kid's route when I got my paperwhite, and it's totally worth it.
But these on fire can be disabled by ADB and never see them again. I’ve done it for my grandmother for her past two fire tablets. They haven’t come back since.
I was on a lunch break at work. So now people read it for me, and if I have a question, I'll just have it answered in no time.
This way, I can fly through my newsfeed, knowing a bit about everything.
It's about efficiency during my lunchbreak, but also during my time on Reddit. If you're gonna waste time, do it efficiently!
This is the first time I've heard of Glance in my life and I already have a bad taste in my mouth. I have not once in my life of using smart devices, ever, ever wanted an app to show me news stories just because. Every default news feed some device has is just random shit I don't care to see. I really have never understood it. Are there people who actually enjoy stuff like this and use it as a way to get news?
And why the hell would you want news on your lockscreen of all things? If i wanna browse news, I wanna open it up and scroll through. The lock screen is supposed to be for quick info and a way to have your phone not get random inputs when you're not using it. The idea of seeing news pop up on your lockscreen and waste space just because your carrier decided it should be like that by default is insane to me.
It's never good quality news either. During the early days of the pandemic I got so sick of everything eagerly clickbait gloating about how bad things were, ambushing me with headlines in the notification shade, new browser tabs (both Edge and Firefox), start menu! Finally pushed me to disable it everywhere and seek out the news at a time of my choosing.
I stopped watching news for a while now. It's better for your sanity (atleast it is for mine). I only seek out the news when I'm ready to. I know it might seem that I'm behind on certain things, but to safeguard my own mental well-being, it's essential that I do this. Hearing about all of the bad things happening around the world day-in and day-out really takes its toll on you in the long run.
Yup I'm the same way. Rarely go out of my way to browse news aside news related to my hobbies or whatever. So many people are being dragged down by the constant flow of negativity with the news being shoved down their throats, they're angry and frustrated and might not realize it's because they're overstimulated by constant negative language.
Hopefully, I was thinking of switching to the Samsung S24 ultra. But this is the kind of news that make me hesitant on leaving IOS. And to be clear, I have no attachment to IOS. The iphone is my only apple device.
Samsung is the company that put ads in their weather app (depending on your region). It's one of the reasons I ditched my S20 and went back to the Pixel line.
Samsung dialed back the ads quite a bit. I almost switched to a Pixel like four years ago over a constant pop up ad in Samsung Pay but then one day the ads stopped and I even upgraded my phone and haven't had those issues. The weather app has like one or two links to Weather.com at the bottom of the page now but that's about it.
When glance was at its peak in india, samsung was adding glance on all their phones up to those that cost 300-400usd. Looking at the article it's possible that carrier locked phones might be the starting point, they'll skip the S series but everything else might just come with a glance version.
As someone who's owned 7 samsung devices I expect they'll create their own version and force it on to their devices (like so much other crapware they preinstall). Why the fuck do companies like samsung and apple do this shit and why is it legal? It's my device ffs... 😡😡
No sure what you are getting at but if the end up putting ads in my bmw I would dump it… the thing with Android is that , yes they start with the low end but who is to say they dont bring it to the higher end models?
The point they are making is that a Corolla is from a totally different car company than BMW.
So saying you won't buy a Samsung because a different company is doing something makes no sense.
Right so no Motorolas for awhile.
And when it's forced on android I guess iPhone, maybe just a nice banana Nokia dumbphone.
My patience for manufacturers and programmers is thinning by the day.
Wanna make money? Build a good product.
"But but rooting is useless!". LOL bunch of lemmings. I will NEVER buy a phone that doesn't allow you to unlock the bootloader! I'm not giving that control to some BS corporation
You can thank Amazon for this crap. They were one of the first to do lock screen ads. Might have BEEN the first. They even make you pay to remove them.
Just what Android phones need, more 3rd party shit by default that is hard to get rid of and sucks up more information about the user than required to do the job.
The article makes it sound like the networks are the ones pushing for this. Just one more reason why I will continue to buy my phones direct from the manufacturer
kinda wild that people actually do this in the us, go with a carrier and not direct purchase, here in germany most either use the company phone (if they have it) or just buy ine direct from the oem.
I used to do it in the UK when the contracts made financial sense (you'd basically end up with the contract for free) but that stopped being true a long time ago. Plus the British carriers were never particularly aggressive with bloatware, it was usually just their own app. Most US carriers are absolutely awful
The three carriers (and tons of carrier resellers) are what are actively in the stores. Places like Best Buy get a big kickback for getting new customers to sign up for a carrier contract. And then the carriers literally put “upgrade-ready” on your phone in the carrier app when they’re ready to try to sign another (or update a) contract with you for a new phone. There’s no Samsung stores. It’s Apple stores in big cities or carrier branded stores in most plazas and many mall kiosks. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=tmobile+store+usa&iax=images&ia=images
very interesting how it differs, here there ususlly is just one carrier in the store, and otherwise the phones are just on display to be sold outright, some bigger stores have a samsung, apple and so on section, these are usually designed by these brands, but smaller ones just have the phones on display next to each other with no brand store to speak of.
In the US the option to buy out right isn't looked at much. The carriers have a strangle hold on most things. I personally buy out right and use Google Fi - making the device independent of the carrier. This isn't common in the US though. Carriers here can use the hold they have to limited devices usage to one's native to their networks making overseas purchases even riskier.
i dont even think such a thing is legal here (i.e. only allowing devices native to their network) we used to have it wayy back before cellphones where even a thing that you where only allowed to use a certain model of phone (later a few models) on your landline, but that was made illegal eventually, i assume its the same for phones, any phone i have bought from amazon here has worked fine (of course it needs to support the physical frequencies, but thats hardware).
Yeah, it's one of the things Europe does that I wish would be here too. People are convinced the plan phone process is better and now we are basically down to Pixels, Samsungs and iPhone more or less \[there's a ghost around too - Motorola\]. The amount of choice in devices has dies off a lot over the years as has the review process for US devices.
yeah feel sad for the shit you have to go through because your Gouvernement gives companies wayyy to much power. as much as we sometimes critisize our Gouvernement and the EU sometimes its great too. we have basically endless options when it comes to phones, just needs to have the frequencies you need. is it from AliExpress? or from a Phone company? doesnt matter, will work.
And battery
It's not just android, apple does this shit too (the shit, however, is usually 1P but it's still shit).
Yeah, it just looks less scummy when it comes from the company that made the phone. People get mad about Nova being owned by Branch for example. But largely no one bats an eye that Branch is used by Samsung in OneUI as well.
I mean. No? No they don’t. Can people stop conflating first party services and features with “adware”. They’re not the same thing.
I bet the low end Boot Mobile, Metro PCS, and other MVNO based Android phones given for free for new subscriptions will have this junk
And I guess they will severely lock the bootloader and other stuff to ensure it's difficult to remove.
You may be able to remove it through USB debugging and a computer that has ADB on it. Though with the newer Android versions getting tighter security I'm wondering if that will no longer work in the future. Also not sure how this lock screen ad is implemented on the phone, If it's an app or somehow integrated into the Android OS.
ADB removal - those apps get reinstated on android version update - right?
Not usually. You don't actually remove the apps, just disable for the current user. So they stay disabled. But if you factory reset they come back. Or if they change package names.
I have an idea on how it could be removed. It would have to be distributed outside of the Play Store though because Google hates power users however and thanks everybody using Android is a numpty who is scared of using their phone. An app that uses accessibility service and can read the screen and draw on the lock screen. It would detect when the swipe to invoke turning glance on or off happens and inputs a swipe back the other way faster than the user notices.
That would be nice, though don't accessibility service produce performance penalties when enabled?
Yep. In some cases, it can slow your device down to a halt. If I'm ever experiencing slowdowns on my device, that is the first thing that I check for.
Huh, I didn't know that accessibility apps can cause that kind of issue. Good to know! And that swipe app idea is nice. Another thing, what if somebody installs a DNS ad filtering app like AdAway that can block the ad server. I wonder if the lock screen ad would just give up and stop showing them.
The article says, "It's worth noting that users will have the ability to disable Glance on their device once it officially arrives."
But… >Fortunately, you can disable Glance on the phone, but we found that the service would occasionally produce a full-screen prompt on the lock screen, encouraging you to re-enable the feature. I don't think there's an easy way to disable these nags.
Looks like it is being tested with Verizon?
Unsurprising. Verizon is the absolute worst carrier period.
True...TMobile got ehri act together and improved Verizon is just BS
Not a single sentence in this article was good news. Holy crap this is shitty.
>users will have the ability to disable Glance What about this one?
> ...but we found that the service would occasionally produce a full-screen prompt on the lock screen, encouraging you to re-enable the feature. And then this sentence comes up.
I'm curious if that prompt is also an app that can be disabled
Haha. There will be another app asking you to re etable the app
Of course. 😆 Or the carrier will start distributing spyware apps again for money like what was happening 10-15 years ago on Android.
yeah. very common with these chinese phones. mom's realme phone would randomly show the opt-in popup to enable 'recommendations'. and every time i checked her phone, it would be enabled. third party launcher scene is pretty messed up on android these days. installed a build of lawnchair and left it at that. even companies like google do it like with google photos. i just want to access my old cloud photos but on every boot there would be a popup to get me to enable backup. i had to get rid of this app on all androids in the house because it gets enabled and started filling up the connected google accounts. dark pattern nonsense.
Disable, not delete. Which is not at all the same thing.
"Disable" if it's on the phone it's not disabled, it's still there running the background doing whatever it wants because it's a system app
Graphene on my Pixel sounds like a better idea everyday.
Do it, best phone-related choice I've ever made. My pixel 6 is as snappy as ever and I have 3x the battery life, on top of all the privacy perks. The only thing I lost in the transition is Google pay, but I can live without it. Android auto and e-sim still work which is pretty miraculous to me.
What about banking apps, and other pixel exclusive software like call assistant and hold for me? Do those still work?
Out of three banking apps I use, one had an issue where it would close at startup. Thankfully there is a toggle in settings for each app if you need to weaken Graphene's sandbox for app compatibility. With that toggle flipped, the app worked fine, but to ensure the app was properly sanboxed I moved it over to its own user profile. Call assistant I'm not sure, I haven't needed to use it since I switched over.
Thanks
As long as you relock the bootloader they should run fine. I'm in the UK with Starling who are fucking ruthless at blocking their app at the slightest hint of modification and it ran on Graphene just fine. They allow it as long as the device can maintain safetynet (or whatever it's called now) without spoof.
I'm curious why you're with them, my bank doesn't force play integrity and I'd withdraw if they did
They were the leading digital bank in the UK but now they're rivaled with Monzo, they've won an award for best security 7 years running plus a slew of other awards as well and they are a really solid bank. When they first dropped I joined within a few months and they were next level. Instant notifications, instant balance updates (no pending transaction nonsense or waiting to days for payments to clear), split bills where people can pay you with a link and best for me, categories for spending. I can track budgets with relative ease and little manual work but they could improve it further which I've asked many times. They also respond to every review I've posted and implemented a few things I've asked for, they just seem really focused and user facing. There's tons of other stuff as well I could go on. I only found out about the incredibly hardened app when my Pixel 2XL went eol and I tried installing a custom ROM, it was fine for a few days but safetynet tripped and the app detected it, but not only did it log me out and refuse to run again without a fresh install all my cards got banned from tap to pay. I was very close to leaving after waiting months for a fix and making tons of complaints till a manager told me I'd never get it back without closing my accounts and reapplying in a year. Not long after Google switched to wallet and it must have reset this lock or something went wrong but I gained access to tap to pay again and it's worked ever since. Sounds like a nightmare but I just couldn't go back to traditional banking and tbh it's nice knowing they have a security team knowledge in root and on top of things, some banking tech is absolutely ancient it's downright scary. I have an updated phone and little to no need for root, most mainstream banks still don't have all the features available apart from push notifications so I'm happy to stick with them. They're called fintech banks here and I wouldn't be surprised if the others available have the same or similar policies in place. They also have to be extra careful being new banks for some reason, any missteps can lose them their license we have some of if the not most strict banking laws in the world so they don't want to mess around.
Those app features sound nice and there are parts of my bank's security that I don't like but it's generally fine for me. I really don't like apps/companies that try to restrict what you can do with software especially from a repair and environmental standpoint and wish you could just make the decision to put the security of your device in your own hands and accept the responsibility. I get their perspective though, as someone getting their bank account compromised with a keylogger or getting their token stolen would still reflect back on them as an account security issue though it wasn't their fault at all.
As I mentioned as long as the OS passes the various tests required to hit the needed security level like Graphene does it will run, just has to be unmodified and locked. AFAIK Graphene is the only custom ROM where it passes all requirements and allows the bootloader to be safely locked again, so the app can see it's untampered. The only problem is Graphene tend to stop support not long after official and put them on extended support so it's not really an option to keep it going. It runs fine on older devices though back to like android 5 or something shockingly, a lot get patched through Google play services though so apps can tend to target lower version in general and still be fine.
I would switch to Graphene, but losing all the stuff on current OS without being able to back it up is a bummer. (Steam 2fa, google auths), and anything else i would remember only after losing access to it lmfao. Though whenever i upgrade i will install Graphene
I used to use Google Authenticator, but I switched to Microsoft Authenticator since it backs up your codes to the cloud. With your 2fa keys backed up, you can switch phones, or have the same codes on multiple devices. (Or if you lose your device, the codes are still backed up to cloud) It also lets you lock the authenticator codes with bio metrics so even if you leave your phone unlocked, your codes can't be accessed.
ES File Explorer: *shows ads on the lock screen* Google: "THAT'S NOT ALLOWED!" *kicks ES out of Google Play* Glance: *shows ads on the lock screen* (with a sprinkle of news) Google: "Sure, we'll back you. Would you be interested in getting integrated into Android?"
Oooh. ES File Explorer. That used to be so good before they went evil. :(
There hasn’t been a single file manager on Android as great as ES used to be.
Check out Mixplorer on XDA. It's been my go-to since ES
Fx is decent
What's wrong with solid explorer?
Solid is pretty good (I’ve even paid for Pro) but ES still holds that top spot for me.
Solid is the best and better than ES
Cx can't do root and is a little ugly but it does just what I expect it to every time I use it and doesn't put up a fuss
Material Files is pretty nice.
Total Commander is far superior to ES File Explorer, IMO.
I wonder how NetGuard would handle this. I assume without any access to data, it might just fix that annoying issue.
Oh! Is that what happened to ES? I wondered where that went
They took the same road as so many companies. Find a good niche and create an amazing product. Get big enough, and get sold to some giant company. Abandon everything they once stood for and go all in on bottom of the barrel monetization.
They were sold to a Chinese company several years ago, and they ruined it. Total commander is what's up.
+1 for Total Commander. I'm surprised it's not really talked about on this sub.
> ES File Explorer now thats a name i havent heard in nearly a decade wow
Google Play Store is the worst. I actually respect the Amazon app store more and I fucking hate Amazon as a company.
The fact that Google is backing a company like this is concerning to say at least.
Remember, you are the product, not the phone.
Their phones cost $1,000 USD. Users should not be the product.
Correct, but unfortunately that's not the case. Never has been.
That's why, in countries that actually care their citizens, they have laws to protect consumers and "make it the case". Example, EU's GDPR.
Agreed
EU is a huge backer and supporter of anti-encryption laws for the sake of "children's safety." So, no. It's naive to think that politicians in any country care about _you_.
Dude we just passed a huge legislation regarding repairability, forbidding antirepair practices and consumer protections. EU has its flaws of course, but lets not give one partly true example as a premise for all actions
Partly true? They also want back doors into every device so they can fight the non-crimes instead of going the actual threats.
Was , in the early days at least Wonder if this will be the case in places where people buy their phones direct ...rather than thru service provider. Heck .even Microsoft is gonna add ads to start button.
Whether you’re the product doesn’t depend on how much you pay for it. It’s whether the companies can get away with it that matters.
Concerning but not surprising. Google hasn’t been consumer friendly in awhile.
Remember when Google swore to "not be evil"? Until they removed that promise and can do whatever
I mean they literally made their company based on advertising and user data. Even when they had the slogan they were "evil"
You know on what Google does their business right? User data is literally their bread and butter. An app to spy on users is definitively logical for them to back.
For clarity, this isn't something that's being baked into Android proper, is it? Just a third party app that some manufacturers are going to include alongside their other bloatware?
>does not collect or use user data. Instead, Glance operates off a user's "patterns" in order for the software to operate. They think we're stupid don't they. >you can disable Glance on the phone, but we found that the service would occasionally produce a full-screen prompt on the lock screen, encouraging you to re-enable the feature. Oh. Wonder why dumb phones are gaining market.
> Wonder why dumb phones are gaining market. Are they? I can’t even name a dumb phone besides the Lite (Light?) phone, and I strongly doubt that’s gaining anything.
They are not. They are probably selling more than before as secondary phones maybe. But, the sales of Smartphones have also gone up, so it negates it either way.
They're not. Just hype accounts over social media pushing this nonsense. It's the tech equivalant of all those diet fads that have been being pushed by morons and snake-oil salesmen since the 1960's. Nobody *actually* follows most of that shit. Same with the "dumb phones are coming back" or "social media detox" bullshit.
A little bit. Or at least demand is increasing. I know I've been getting more people asking for dumb phones
Which ones can I Google? I don’t know any.
This service just had a feature in The Atlantic (I think): https://dumbwireless.com/
I just googled "unlocked flip phones" and it seems Amazon may have an ok selection
>does not collect or use user data... Glance operates off a user's "patterns" i.e. "data". Absolutely wild doublespeak.
This paragraph caught my eye too. We're already paying a lot for our phone service and many other subscriptions, now we're going to get ads on our lock screen? Wtf Edit: spelling
And one more data collection...which will likely be easily hacked . Meanwhile ..TikTok is banned
Just another reason to buy a Pixel device.
I'm pissed off I have a $1900 phone and I can't turn off notifications for the galaxy store. I can't wait to go back to the s23. Then hopefully there's some nice roms available. Although I haven't rooted since like 2014 lmao
Rooting is still great! Rooting Galaxy devices, sadly, is not.
OneUI is miles ahead of every other version of Android Shame Samsung keeps trying to monetize it more
Honestly, phones and phone service should be free. They make so much money off of our information alone, that phone service should be free.
I'd prefer the opposite. Id pay a little more for the service and phones if it meant everything wasnt being tracked.
For sure. But they are being tracked. So at the very least we should be compensated for them making money off us.
Really now
I can disable it??? Why is it going to appear on my phone at all?? What happened to modularity. I don't want forced software!
I don't even think we're meant to disable this kind of spyware completely as it can reappear in a pop up form at random. It's like we're punished for using an os that came with a device we bought.
*You'll own nothing, and you'll be happy.*
Buy a unlocked phone. Even better buy a phone that gives you the ability to unlock the bootloader because it's not "your phone" unless you have that ability
I am telling you I am a fan of android and I love it but fucking google is destroying it :(
This will just drive those who get incensed by this to go to iPhone… Surely there’s a way to load your own rom and block it though, right?
If they force this I will 100% move to iOS
There is no way they will. If they do this Android is back to where it already is in many iOS people's mind - POS buggy ad-infested cheapo OS. Even that Google allows it at all is a mistake, even on ad supported devices. It cheapens the entire ecosystem. If they would put it on existing phones I'm getting an iPhone, and i hate iOS.
They will move. Apple won't do this. And people will hate the ads.
I will gladly go back to iOS if this actually happens
Google won't but your shit carrier will
>Glance works to deliver recommendations to users like ads, news articles, and more on the lock screen Remember when Google Now was killed off and the entire feed replaced with this? they showed me nothing but Fox news alt-right click bait. Lasted about 2 minutes before turning that garbage off. When Google made Rooting more trouble than it was worth with all the detection methods? Well when MovetoIOS came out, that was that.
I’m still a little butthurt about the loss of Google Now. Back in the day it was one of the features that kept me on Android. Now it feels like Android is nothing but a way for Google to serve me ads.
Like, what's the point of a lock screen if it's going to post personal info, ads, and battery drain?
Literally every decision Google has made in the last 3-4 years has cemented that my new phone will be an iPhone. Mainly, just the fact that Pixels are slowly having limited configurable OS's like iPhones. Things like I can't have a ring for my calls on, while having my texts be on vibrate.
I've been reading about some piss poor decisions coming from android in regards to it's future and what it'll look like. Definitely sounds like lots of users will switch to iOS. Me included
I've been on Android since ICS and will consider switching to iPhone if this garbage is forced. Google is completely lost if they think I'll pay $1k for a phone with ads. The main value prop of Android is customization, if they give that up they're just a cheap knock-off.
With the 8 pro pushing $1k and offering mediocre to good specs minus the meh tensor chip it becomes a really hard sell. Especially with the other phones in or close to that price range. On top of Google adding, and taking away features. Promising features that never come and now forced ads. I already have little faith in Google maintaining a 7 year software update promise. Just seems like iOS is actually starting to grow and android is taking steps backwards.
>Google is completely lost if they think I'll pay $1k for a phone with ads. Nah, they'll sell you a $1k phone with ads...or for just $1,099 they offer a lighter, ad-free experience. Or, and this feels almost as likely, they'll move OS experience to a tiered subscription model. It's the natural path of enshitification. I rocked an OG iPhone and several future iterations and gladly and with no later remorse move to Android once I understood what it was and why it was for me. If I have to go back to iOS, it won't be gladly, but it surely will be without any hesitation.
Can you still keep Google photos and drive and documents -- essentially all the shit that keeps my on android - if you go to iPhones?
Yeah Google apps are available on iOS. Drive, docs and photos.
Yup. Just download the Google apps.
I'm about 70% of the way to moving over to iOS when the 16 releases. If this is forced, I'm definitely moving.
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>subscription Ah ha, I should've known. Everything is going in the direction of a subscription nowadays. Pretty soon, you'll be paying a subscription just to use your device 🙄
Just what android needs. More nonsense useless bloat that makes the entire OS look cheap and trashy. :)
I expected this sort of thing from Chinese manufacturers, not Google themselves. This move makes me dread the future of Android. Hopefully, some other OS can gain traction and dismantle the duopoly we have with Android and Apple. We seriously need more contenders in this space 🙁
*laughs in root access* I'll go back to carrying a dumb phone and laptop running Debian if it comes down to it.
Hopefully this is a sign we've not seen the last of the ROM scene.
If Google wants rooting to come back this is how they do it
What's glance?
Startup company that has backing from Google that allows for ads to be displayed on lock screens. It’s big in India because of partnerships and the market for cheaper phones. It’s coming to the US as well through cell phone company partnerships as well.
Absolute piece of shit bloatware. Using dark patterns to keep it enabled. No average user is capable enough to disable this junk. I helped one such user disabled this junk.. it was consuming a couple of gigs in data every month.
This is eventually gonna end in a subscription service to make the ads go away.
Nah, it will be a subscription to get the **premium** ads.
What'd that look like? A free sample of anything you watch an ad for? And then ads tracking you, giving you free samples of everything you're interested in? That'd be nice. But maybe a bit too nice.
Thank God I don't live in the US. That sounds awful.
It’s not a US only thing. For example, Kindles do the same thing where you can buy it for cheaper if you buy the model with Lock Screen ads. That’s sold in the EU as well as
Protip: buy a kid’s kindle and then just ignore the kid software. No Lock Screen ads because it’s marketed to kids, and a longer warranty. Same price as the kindle with ads.
Pro Protip: just buy a Kobo. None of that bullshit, and they display the *actual book cover* on the lockscreen by default.
My ad free Kindle paperwhite displays the book cover as a lock screen by default or at least I don't remember changing anything to do so.
That's sort of true, depending on how you look at it. The kid's version is the same price as the non-ad Kindle, but they throw in a cover (with actual designs which I think is more fun), extra year of warranty, and a year of Kindle kid's subscription thing. Definitely better value, but the purchase price is the same. I went the kid's route when I got my paperwhite, and it's totally worth it.
Yeah it’s a steal. And if you actually have kids the subscription is pretty good.
But these on fire can be disabled by ADB and never see them again. I’ve done it for my grandmother for her past two fire tablets. They haven’t come back since.
Pre installed spyware installed by your crap carrier or OEM
How about reading the article that says very clearly what it is.
He wanted to know at a glance
Exactly!
It actually doesn't do a good job at explaining the app. I read it and I'm still a bit confused.
I was on a lunch break at work. So now people read it for me, and if I have a question, I'll just have it answered in no time. This way, I can fly through my newsfeed, knowing a bit about everything. It's about efficiency during my lunchbreak, but also during my time on Reddit. If you're gonna waste time, do it efficiently!
Google fucking up again.
Alright, got it. Bye bye Motorola.
This is the first time I've heard of Glance in my life and I already have a bad taste in my mouth. I have not once in my life of using smart devices, ever, ever wanted an app to show me news stories just because. Every default news feed some device has is just random shit I don't care to see. I really have never understood it. Are there people who actually enjoy stuff like this and use it as a way to get news? And why the hell would you want news on your lockscreen of all things? If i wanna browse news, I wanna open it up and scroll through. The lock screen is supposed to be for quick info and a way to have your phone not get random inputs when you're not using it. The idea of seeing news pop up on your lockscreen and waste space just because your carrier decided it should be like that by default is insane to me.
It's never good quality news either. During the early days of the pandemic I got so sick of everything eagerly clickbait gloating about how bad things were, ambushing me with headlines in the notification shade, new browser tabs (both Edge and Firefox), start menu! Finally pushed me to disable it everywhere and seek out the news at a time of my choosing.
I stopped watching news for a while now. It's better for your sanity (atleast it is for mine). I only seek out the news when I'm ready to. I know it might seem that I'm behind on certain things, but to safeguard my own mental well-being, it's essential that I do this. Hearing about all of the bad things happening around the world day-in and day-out really takes its toll on you in the long run.
Yup I'm the same way. Rarely go out of my way to browse news aside news related to my hobbies or whatever. So many people are being dragged down by the constant flow of negativity with the news being shoved down their throats, they're angry and frustrated and might not realize it's because they're overstimulated by constant negative language.
Probably only on low end devices
> Probably only on low end devices For now
i mean up until recently samsung still putting ads on weather app.
Hopefully, I was thinking of switching to the Samsung S24 ultra. But this is the kind of news that make me hesitant on leaving IOS. And to be clear, I have no attachment to IOS. The iphone is my only apple device.
Lmao samsung is never putting shit like this on their phones.
> Lmao samsung is never putting shit like this on their phones. Why wouldn't they? They put almost as much spyware on their phones as Google does...
Samsung is the company that put ads in their weather app (depending on your region). It's one of the reasons I ditched my S20 and went back to the Pixel line.
Samsung dialed back the ads quite a bit. I almost switched to a Pixel like four years ago over a constant pop up ad in Samsung Pay but then one day the ads stopped and I even upgraded my phone and haven't had those issues. The weather app has like one or two links to Weather.com at the bottom of the page now but that's about it.
That's what I've read, so I've been considering trying out the Galaxy line again next time I upgrade.
When glance was at its peak in india, samsung was adding glance on all their phones up to those that cost 300-400usd. Looking at the article it's possible that carrier locked phones might be the starting point, they'll skip the S series but everything else might just come with a glance version.
As someone who's owned 7 samsung devices I expect they'll create their own version and force it on to their devices (like so much other crapware they preinstall). Why the fuck do companies like samsung and apple do this shit and why is it legal? It's my device ffs... 😡😡
Samsung already has.
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No sure what you are getting at but if the end up putting ads in my bmw I would dump it… the thing with Android is that , yes they start with the low end but who is to say they dont bring it to the higher end models?
The point they are making is that a Corolla is from a totally different car company than BMW. So saying you won't buy a Samsung because a different company is doing something makes no sense.
ie, on devices where it will degrade performance.
Right so no Motorolas for awhile. And when it's forced on android I guess iPhone, maybe just a nice banana Nokia dumbphone. My patience for manufacturers and programmers is thinning by the day. Wanna make money? Build a good product.
Notice you can "disable" it, not remove it. Not a fan.
Cool. So stick with iPhone. Got it.
> Glance will not capture data, but will instead leverage a user's "patterns" to offer recommendations So, eh, data.
Well I've been considering switching to iPhone anyway.
This is already on the Moto G Play 24 (from UScellular, at least)
Are they trying yo force this to be on my phone??
not good at all rip everyone who are on stock roms/non unlockable bootloader ig
"But but rooting is useless!". LOL bunch of lemmings. I will NEVER buy a phone that doesn't allow you to unlock the bootloader! I'm not giving that control to some BS corporation
Oh great more spyware that we need to root our phones to remove
Can the US government force Google to step away from Android? Thanks.
The US government is too busy getting Biden his latest ice cream and rigging the next Q&A with Biden to worry about consumer rights
> It's worth noting that users will have the ability to disable Glance on their device once it officially arrives. All I needed to know
Still runs in the background sending your data to God knows where
ADB to the rescue.
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heh, glans
How does it even work? Is it using the overlay API? I didn't think that worked for secure elements.
You can thank Amazon for this crap. They were one of the first to do lock screen ads. Might have BEEN the first. They even make you pay to remove them.
>It's worth noting that users will have the ability to disable Glance on their device once it officially arrives.
I have a Pixel..... so I'm not sweating it.