SafetyNet isn't a shit anymore and it could be ez passed on unlocked BL with magisk. Play integrity check is nightmare nowdays specially on stock roms but it also can be passed on some phones/custom roms using lsposed or other magisk modules.

A banking app allowing itself to run on rooted devices isn't a security issue.

A mobile phone that increasingly has more of your life on it at that. So whereas 12 years ago you might have just lost your contact list and some fart sound boards, today you have bank apps, payment apps, tickets, cards, identification, auto logged in shopping access, and more!

I know more recent versions of android made me curse at google for adding all these guard rails and walls making doing some stuff more difficult.

On the other hand I recently had a phone fall out of my pocket and in the time it took me to get from the corner back to the place I dropped it someone had nabbed it. I was suddenly a lot more appreciative of the restrictions in place that turned my stolen device into a chargeable paper weight.

That sounds like proper security to me?

For casual consumers, I guess. But for power users being able to download, modify, and execute code is core functionality. Shit doesn't work without it.

Yes. Everyone can just release a tweaked Android version and Google can't really stop them.

But if you plan to ship Google services (including the play store, which effectively makes a device an "Android device" in many users eyes) then you will have to be able to pass Googles verification suite.

That's already the case today and adding new requirements to that in new Android versions happens all the time.

Not when all of them, from a business pov, need to be able to run Google services. As a case study we saw how brutal it was for Huawei to be locked out.

And it also couldn’t be installed on any phone.

If at least Linux kernel were GPLv3 we'll be safe from OEMs preventing unlocking bootloader.

If whole Android was GPLv3... Too good to even imagine, it's not going to happen anyway so why even imagine...

Nah this is changing.

This of course is what they said about tablets. Now people are replacing desktop or laptop workflow with tablets, or alternatively tablets are being designed with removable keyboards so the lines are blurred.

I know scientific researchers who now only travel to conferences with tablets instead of their laptops.

Finally, I predict that we’re moving to cloud computing. It’s the natural way. You VPN into a network and your computing is done on a cluster or on a central computer.

The same is already happening for gaming. People are connecting controllers and glasses like the Xreal Air to phones, then networking into a computer to play a desktop game on their phone.

This is my take on it as well. My phone is for basic quick communication. My real productivity happens on my laptop and desktop.

While this is the case for me personally, a lot of folks just pull out their cellphones to do the work they need. I feel like we're the minority with this opinion.

Does it run android apps?

iPhones are much, much more of a walled garden because Apple is an anticompetitive control freak that loves planned obsolescence. The EU is having to force them just to allow other app stores on iOS other than Apple's, and obviously it's impossible to install a different OS on an iPhone (and it's becoming impossible to manually install MacOS on their desktop machines).

Meanwhile on Android phones you can install any app store you want (Play, Amazon, itch, F-Droid, etc.) or just download an APK and install it directly, like we've done for 30 years on PCs. Many Android phones have an unlockable bootloader so you can flash a custom build of Android or even Linux on it. Even if the stock ROM doesn't let you acquire root access, a third-party build often will (though many banking apps will complain if you try to use them while rooted). I put GrapheneOS on my Pixel so I could deny Play Services most of the incredibly invasive permissions it wants; other ROMs exist for many popular Android phones such as CalyxOS, LineageOS, etc.

In my experience, I haven't really needed root for anything on a recent device. Running a custom ROM takes care of most of the reasons to want root in the first place, and what's left isn't worth the risk, to me at least, of a malicious or compromised app having root access to the device.

No definitely not.

You'd want basically any phone that has a build for lineageOS if you really care about that sort of stuff. But in all honesty, if you buy a phone that has what you want without having most of what you don't want (LG, Sony are two that come to mind) they'll last you a good 5 years by which point someone will have made a different OS for the phone.

I was a dedicated Android user from the Galaxy S2 to the Pixel 3, and was on Google phones since the nexus 5. I always had my phone rooted, and until it became too inconvenient, I was really into ROM hopping.

When I got the nexus 5, I vowed not to get another Samsung phone because of how hard they were making it to unlock your bootloader. Then on the pixel 3, Safety Net kept realizing I was rooted and breaking the apps I needed for work, and I realized I was having to plug my phone into my computer to fix things way more than I wanted to. I ended up just running stock because I didn’t want to worry about not being able to log into my mobile banking when I was out of the house.

When I was looking at replacing my pixel 3, it was clear that Google was no longer as root friendly as they once were, so I started looking at other Android options. I wasn’t impressed. It occurred to me that the main reason I’d always avoided Apple was because of the lack of root support

So I went out on a limb and got the iPhone 12 Pro, and to my surprise, I loved it. If you’ve already accepted the idea of leaving the FW stock, it’s perfect. I get updates the day they roll out, the hardware is so much nicer than anything I’ve seen from Android (that’s partially subjective), the software/hardware integration is so good that it blows me away. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen so much as a UI stutter, I still get a solid 2 days/two nights of battery life on a >2 year old phone. The 3rd party apps are more consistently high-quality, and the native apps actually feel consistent and thought out, rather than feeling like the work of 10 different teams throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks. And a lot of people don’t care about this, but it’s a huge deal to me; Google is an ad-tech company that sells user data to advertisers. Apple is a hardware company that sells devices to users. The difference in their policies on user privacy are stark, which means I no longer have to worry about every website I visit knowing what prescriptions I’m taking.

Siri is useless, especially compared to Google assistant. Notifications are better on Android. Ecosystem integration is a huge selling point for Apple products, IT really can’t be overstated how well things work together, but that only matters if you are open to owning an Apple Watch, AirPods, AirTags, an iPad and a MacBook. I miss the *variety * of apps on the Play Store, especially free ones.

I’m not a loyalist for either team, they’ve each got pros and cons, but my best effort at an objective analysis makes me feel that the iPhone is a lot better of a fit for someone like me.