Further thoughts on the Musk Phone:
Has anyone made an Android fork that wasn't locked to the Google Play store and even bothered to support it for a few years?
I think Amazon was going to have their own app store. How's that going.
There's a Chinese fork, I think. How's that?
@WomanCorn
Room in the clown car for one more?
Though sporting a Fairphone4 with /e/os.
@WomanCorn I'm not entirely sure, but I believe that's literally what the Freedom Phone is https://www.freedomphone.com/
(It's shit hardware and has no transparency in what software it's actually based on, but still funny)
@tess looks like they're running something called ClearOs Mobile.
I don't know anything about it.
@WomanCorn The Pinephone is an attempt.
And we'll see where the Librem 5 goes.
@WomanCorn Amazon's app store is good, actually! With Android 12 it can even auto-update apps (major pain point in previous android versions).
If you're on microg and have trouble with the play store version of an app that's also available on the amazon store, I recommend trying the amazon version. That's how I got Pinterist and some other problematic apps to work that way.
@tess I would expect Amazon to be more likely to keep their store up and functional, so that's a good sign.
I haven't had any problem using the Aurora Store app to pull things off of the Google Play store if they're not on F-droid, but I'll keep the Amazon one in mind if I do.
@WomanCorn yeah, I use aurora for most stuff, but since that's pulling the play store version those apps often require play services. Which is usually fine if you've got microg, BUT sometimes microg doesn't work quite right. I believe the amazon version of apps (if available) don't require play services and so will sometimes work even if the play store version doesn't.
@tess that's a good thought on the mechanism of action.
MicroG has been good enough for me so far, but if I run into trouble I'll see if Amazon has a Play-free version.
I, of course, am the kind of clown that installs Lineage+MicroG and uses F-droid first, but no one will sell me a phone configured that way.