Tried to restart my fairly new Pixel phone a couple days ago by holding down the power button, but instead of showing the Power menu it prompted me to ask the Digital Assistant something. Excuse me? I don't remember enabling that. Every other phone I've ever had, holding down the power button has always been the way to power down or restart. I had to search Settings to find how to configure the power button to control the power. Or course maybe I could have asked the Digital Assistant - but fuck that.
this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2025
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Graphene is the only one that gets rid of webview right?
What do you mean by webview? If you mean the entirety of webview then no ROMs do that AFAIK. android would be broken without it. If you mean replace Google's webview with their own version, I'm pretty sure all the ROMs I listed there do it. I didnt fact check it though so feel free to prove me wrong
The second one, it appears you're correct
Yep, this is how they trick people into inadvertently using their shitty ai Spyware. Welcome to the future, yay. Fuck Google and Samsung.
So, how do you power it down?
In Settings you select Power as the function of the Power Button instead of Digital Assistant. Then the power button works like it should.
Sure, but what did they expect you to do before making that change.
It's designed as an always on device. They expected you to leave it always on. Wankers
On my P7Pro, pressing power and volume up simultaneously brings up the shutdown/restart/lock prompt
Well that is shit.
On android the off button is on the quick settings, and on iphone you hold the power button and one of the volume buttons
No idea. Presumably they expected me to figure out the settings and change it like I did. Or maybe I could have told the Digital Assistant to restart the phone, I dunno.
It's almost like the organization itself is designed to make things worse if it means short term profits, useful and appreciated apps sacrificed at the altar of line must go up
My pixel 5 recently broke and the only reason I went with a pixel 9a was to install grapheneOS on it as soon as I got it. The process has become way easier than it used to be. After setting up/skipping all the first run screens I plugged it into another Android device and used the grapheneOS site to run the install, took like 15 min.
hows your experience with graphene? Better than stock? I heard they have a sandboxed Google Play store now, so getting apps is even easier.
So far it's been good for about a week. Highlights have been the easy install, secure by default but lets me override when I want (block app network access on install is awesome), and getting access to the other app repos than Google's I haven't seen since I installed dirty unicorns years ago. I setup multiple users so I can keep my primary like a root which was also simple to do.
Only complaints I have are when I get messages on another user than primary I can see the messages in the app but not the message content in the notification, its just a generic alert message like new messages received. Nice to have but not going to make me switch back. And the keyboard doesn't have swipe typing so I use gboard with network access turned off.
Also I did install the Google app store to get a couple paid apps and calendar/contacts I need to move out of Google. It does sandbox by default which is really cool and i think should be required for phone manufacturers. I just disabled services/store/calendar access to the network after I let it download everything.
Edit: also not a OS thing but I tried switching VPN to orbot/tor at the same time and it is still really unreliable for that use with the way so many sites try to sniff out your location
do you have the ability to remove whichever apps you dont like?
The user notitication makes sense, i guess its more secure. Btw, so everytime you switch user, you have to restart?
Yes, and it comes with very few by default as well
No restart needed, pull down twice and the switcher is on the bottom right. Usually takes just a couple seconds to switch.
thats nice to hear. I thought you need to restart to change profiles.
You're on the 9a right? How is the battery under Graphene? I used to have the OG Pixel (codename sailfish) and try different roms on there, but the battery is just terrible.
I'm still feeling that part out since it's only been about a week, a full charge can last me multiple days (5100mAh) and the battery in my pixel 5 (4080mAh) was pretty run down.
Fully charged 25.5hr ago & pretty heavy use yesterday and I'm at 63%, the 5 would have been twice dead by now.
Only complaints I have are when I get messages on another user than primary I can see the messages in the app but not the message content in the notification, its just a generic alert message like new messages received. Nice to have but not going to make me switch back.
I haven't confirmed it, but enabling "Sensitive notifications" or a similar setting might fix this. Although it is more secure in theory not to have your message content visible on a locked screen.
Also I did install the Google app store to get a couple paid apps and calendar/contacts I need to move out of Google. It does sandbox by default which is really cool and i think should be required for phone manufacturers. I just disabled services/store/calendar access to the network after I let it download everything.
FYI you can use Aurora Store instead to download from Google Play, and even use it anonymously. It's sometimes buggy, but IMO the tradeoff is maybe worth it.
The best thing about switching to an iPhone is that I use my phone way lesser
I can't tell what this is a dig about. Less Apps available? Less required maintenance time? Less Notification spam? Or?
But I'm all for it.
I can offer an answer as a former lover of android (12 years)…
I used to do all of the phone modding/flashing roms etc. it was like I could never be just satisfied with my phone. After years of this, I got tired of the nagging in my head to improve it. So, I switched to Apple, and it just works and I don’t feel as though I’m missing out on anything.
So, yes I don’t have to be on my phone all of them time other than when I actually need it.
Maybe we should start resurrecting symbian
or just start pooring support into PostMarket or UBTouch
I'm thinking about getting the new FairPhone 6 when it comes out and running /e/ OS, but I'm so reliant on Google Maps and Gmail (my email account, not necessarily the app ... but I do rely on the app).
I'm afraid that I'll either install Google apps and end up with a phone just as compromised as a stock Android install, or if I don't it will be too much of a pain in the ass to use.
There are Maps alternatives. For instance, Organic maps or the fork CoMaps. Not nearly as good UX as Google Maps.. and zero traffic data available.. but the upside is they work entirely offline.
Organic Maps is great in many ways. It's maps are so much better. But the lack of traffic data is a killer for route planning in the UK. All the open source maps suffer this. There needs to be open access traffic information for there to be competition.
As far as I know, traffic data is gathered via spying on users—Google Maps and similar apps sending device location to a central cloud service. Maybe somebody could provably anonymize the data somehow to make an alternative service for the open competitors to use.
That's what we need.
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