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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Yep, this is how they trick people into inadvertently using their shitty ai Spyware. Welcome to the future, yay. Fuck Google and Samsung.
Graphene is the only one that gets rid of webview right?
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.
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
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.
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.
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