The discussion I stumbled upon, about this SSH app for Android, is really worrying. Will Google really manage to make it impossible to root your phone?
But there’s more to this, it’s more complicated. In the Big Picture, Google has every incentive to make these changes — they lead to more security, and they’re aligned with Google’s corporate goals as well.
- When talking to users, Google will emphasize control over hackers.
- When talking to stockholders, Google will emphasize control over users.
Edit: I disagree with “they lead to more security”. That’s not “security”, let’s not turn words upside-down.
I rarely defend google, but I can understand them here. For some reason, we are moving towards a “phones control everything” world, phone security for normal users in this (kinda crappy, imo, Desktop for life) world is paramount. For users who want control, that is still available. Root your device, install a custom ROM.
I do miss some things from older versions (mainly just nandroid backups, essentially a full phone image that you can restore), but otherwise, not much changed, and I’m on Android 13.
You missed the point. If Google pushes this through you won’t be able to root your device anymore.
Without rooting it gets a bit tough to install your favorite custom ROM.
Where does it say that? This was about Android 10 released in 2019, the post is from 2020, and we are currently at Android 13.
The article even claims Termux will stop working, yet Termux works with Android 13…
What? Rooting is not required for custom ROMs at all.
You don’t need to root the stock ROM to install a custom one, you just need an unlocked bootloader
On most, if not all, modern Android phones you can just unlock the bootloader from the dev menu. No rooting required.
There are phones with locked bootloaders. But for now there are ways to unlock them. In theory though they could just lock the bootloader and that’s it, if you can’t jailbreak the device or root the stock ROM you’re out of luck.
That is actually how it used to be, you needed exploits to unlock the bootloader. This is what has been changing. It’s just the opposite direction.
Yeah, my experience was mostly from that time. For example with an original Galaxy S (custom ROM + overclocking).
I also had a OnePlus One, which was unlocked of course, but the key combination to get to the bootloader was super unreliable or straight up didn’t work at times.
Funny thing is: Now that it’s easier to install a custom ROM I’ve just been running stock for years.
The longest I ever ran stock was on the HTC Desire Z (T-Mobile G2 for USA peeps), 3 days before I decided to go with (I think) Cyanogen.
But I’m still waiting for you to explain where you get “You missed the point. If Google pushes this through you won’t be able to root your device anymore.” from as that is certainly not from the linked article.
Sorry, that was more of a general comment to the topic (especially with Google getting more strict lately, see the Chromium and YouTube drama).
I didn’t expect someone to link old news, so I treated it more like a discussion.