So we have these regular announcements like https://lemmy.world/post/48341079
The app stores listed there are only from the big hardware vendors. Not a single mention out of the Open Source world. I guess ut means all these developers were reasonable enough not to play along.
What do you think is going to happen? Is Google really going to cut them all down?
Eh, it’s most of the world? Add apple to it, and it’s 99% of the world
I wouldn’t call that annoying, I would call that attempted annihilation
Mobile phones, sure, and they are important. But I’m typing on a Debian laptop right now. Not a phone. Phones aren’t the whole world.
There are about 6 billion smartphone users and close to 8 billion smartphones in 2026. Meanwhile, there are about 2 billion pcs in use in 2025. Smartphones aren’t the whole world, but they are most of it.
It occurs to me that everyone using phones might be why the quality of Lemmy posts is so low. It’s too big a hassle for people to write anything informative through the phone keyboard, so they post a youtube link instead.
I hope we start getting more Graphene and similar phones but I also see some benefits to adding a little friction to using them on text-heavy sites.
And yeah, 6 billion phones users, but most of them don’t give a crap about source code. So they’re not really affected.
This affects much more than Lemmy, and frankly the screen keyboard is only a little slower for me than a keyboard (the keyboard is way more convenient, though). Having an app that reduces friction for crafting Lemmy posts certainly helps.
And I would love for more open and secure smartphone OSes to be available, Graphene or otherwise.