I was an iOS supporter until iphone 5 then I discovered the beauty and freedom of Android.

To this day with Samsung s22+

But currently I am a bit tired, there is no android phone that I am passionate about, oneplus has given me nothing but problems, Samsung with exynos is a disaster (not to mention the new blockages at sideload and the green stripes on the display), I don’t even want to go near all the other Chinese brands, and Nothing is not what it promised to be.

I want to go back to iOS but there are a few things holding me back:

  • how can sideload be managed on iOS? Are there modified apps like youtube, reddit?

  • I follow a lot of NSFW channels on telegram, discord and reddit itself, are there any problems on iOS? are there ways around this? (my girlfriend has iOS, and every time I want to forward an nsfw gif she doesn’t see it)

  • surf the sea, is it complex on ios? Especially in terms of gaming?

TBH only yt, nsfw and modded apk keep me on android. Thanks a lot in advance

      • DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        Interesting. I don’t like this at all. Remember AT&T tried this with locked phones (or something like that I believe) where unknown sources was completely gone?

        • lemmyvore@feddit.nlEnglish
          0·
          3 months ago

          Normally I wouldn’t worry about it, Samsung just apes everything Google does. It’s part of their tug of war, basically Samsung is saying “if you ever pull a Huawei on me and disable every Google feature I’ll still have a copy of everything”.

          Then again the US market is wierd so I don’t know. You can unlock Sony bootloaders everywhere else without a hitch but they cut a deal with US carriers so they won’t give unlock codes to US models. If Sony did deals like that so can Samsung.

            • lemmyvore@feddit.nlEnglish
              0·
              3 months ago

              Just to be clear, I’m talking about bootloader unlock (so you can root it and install custom ROMs) not carrier unlock. Normally Sony offer bootloader unlock codes on their website, but not for US models.

              Carrier (network) lock and unlock is done by the carriers, manufacturer doesn’t care.

        • Jay@lemmy.caEnglish
          0·
          3 months ago

          Ya it’s not a good look of things to come, but so far it’s not a huge issue (yet).

    • holgersson@lemm.eeEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      Chinese companies steal your data

      Try Pixel

      lol

      Putting GrapheneOS on the Pixel is good advice though

      • grandma@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        Pixels are arguably the most private android since you only get Google tracking. With other androids you get Google tracking on top of all the other tracking

            • FrostyPolicy@suppo.fiEnglish
              0·
              3 months ago

              You can basically disable most Google tracking though a good DNS that blocks that traffic.

              So only most but not all. Therefore it’s not private if there’s any tracking. Thus a de-googled version is the only option.

                • FrostyPolicy@suppo.fiEnglish
                  0·
                  3 months ago

                  You won’t get rid of google tracking you on Youtube or Gmail,

                  For gmail that’s true (one should use something else anyhow). For youtube you can use an alternative frontend like NewPipe to avoid tracking.

                  If you care about privacy you should use a trustworthy paid email. They even aren’t that expensive. You can get them as low as 1 € / month.

  • XNX@slrpnk.netEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    Ive use sideloaded youtube thats ad free, apollo for reddit to this day, telegram nsfw stickers, chats, everything, i havent pirated games but i wouldnt sideload a pirated game cuz that seems like a recipe for viruses (for android too). Roms and emulators are fine and easy to play now

  • Petter1@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    First I would say best Android right now, is a pixel with custom ROM installed.

    Sidload: there exists modified apps for iPhone. To install them you have 3 options (if not in EU) you can sideload using your personal free apple dev account, there you are limited to 3 different apps and you have to reinstall them every 7 days to keep them working, if you pay apple 100$ a year, you can upgrade to a “real” apple dev account without the limitations. Easiest way to self sign apps using above methods would be AltStore application. The third way is Sideloading using a service, that uses enterprise certificates to distribute such apps, those services are either expensive (e.g. BuildStore) or they inject ads into the apps you sideload (sorry, you have to “google” yourself).

    I had no issues with NSFW on Reddit, Lemmy and discord yet, 🤔 for discord I don’t know if it changed since I used it. NSFW on telegram is blocked in the iOS app, but the webApp of telegram can be added to the homescreen and then it feels like an App

    I use the sea via the self hosted arrr apps and have added the webUI of each to my homescreen, alternatively you can control your arrr apps using LunaSea app. For streaming, I use plex and jellyfin which both work great on iOS

    For youtube, there were some modded apps, but I just went with premium via India, because that was more convenient.

    I block ads on my phone by routing my internet through my server running adGuard and on device I use 1blocker as backup (since i payed for lifetime long time ago)

  • Shimitar@feddit.itEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    Xiaomi. Or poco, redmi… Same stuff. For 200 bucks you get awesome phones and you can usually always remove stock and install LineageOS. They are all freely uockable and still under warranty after that.

    Get a model near its end of market life, buy new the oldest you can find… Unlock, install LineageOS, enjoy.

    I bought my Poco X3 NFC for 160€ 4 years ago and still rocks today with LineageOS 21 (Android 14).

    (It usually take 6 months to 1 year for each new model to get LineageOS support, so don’t buy the latest model Also worth looking if there is official support on LineageOS before buy, or at least some unofficial ports).

    • mr_right@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      Get a model near its end of market life, buy new the oldest you can find

      This is a very good advice for someone who is buying a new phone to install a custom ROM on it, since they are indepandant effort they need some time to hack things and find workarounds

      • Shimitar@feddit.itEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        Yes, I am a maintainer for a 4 years old device, and I would love to be able to buy it new today! New battery and all.

  • Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    Funny, I followed the same exact course. IPhone 2-5 then switched to Samsung after 5. I feel like they had a strong edge at that time and it was getting to be more and more of a PITA to jailbreak the iphones then. Pixel w graphene sounds intriguing but I can’t imagine it’s without headaches. If you are already sideloading things frequently though you might be the type to not mind some of the extra steps graphene will demand. I wouldn’t blame anyone for going with Apple right now - I don’t think the Android benefits are as strong as they used to be. At the same time, I don’t see any attractive reason to switch since for me it would mean more cost and dealing with the frustrations of an ecosystem switch without any clear reward in return.

  • NicoCharrua@lemmy.caEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    Sideloading is quite bad. If you’re in the EU, I know you can use AltStore PAL, which costs money (~€1.50 a year), but all you’ll be getting is emulators, virtual machines, clipboard managers, and torrent clients.

    There is another method for sideloading that works anywhere and lets you download modified apps, but it is very limited, tedious, and probably insecure. I’ve done it, it’s not worth it. Better to stay on android or use a browser with adblock or something.

    I don’t think iOS has any specific limits to do with NSFW stuff, I’ve never heard of anything anyways.

    Pirating games is probably not going to be worth it either since you have to sideload apps with the second method.

    Other types of piracy are probably fine. If you have AltStore PAL you can get a torrent client and an emulator.

  • OpenStars@discuss.onlineEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    Why not Nothing, if you don’t mind my asking?

    I’ve also thought about Fairphone as my next one.

    And I’ve thought about an iPhone like this too - if you have adblocking via a home router or pihole or some such then why not? Piracy could be done indirectly and just play/stream from Jellyfin or some such. But my thoughts are not well enough along to be of any use to you there, just to say that your ideas don’t seem crazy to me. Buttery smooth operation, actually pleasant to hold and use (not burning a hole in my hand after not even a minute of standard web browser usage as my own S22 does, probably bc of my Blokada VPN adblocker?), so long as the downsides can be mitigated.

    Pixels seem to be to be entirely too imbalanced to me to include a super expensive camera that I barely use and barely any stats that I actually do (game emulators or whatever) - I really want a Nexus except they don’t make those. Even OnePlus doesn’t make those flagship killers anymore. I doubt they exist at all tbh.

    Another idea is to get like an old OnePlus 7-ish device and just immediately replace the OS with a custom ROM. Fast charging is both good and bad - great utility but leads to heat issues later in the battery’s life.

    I almost just want a cheap piece of crap dumb phone at this point, so that I don’t have to spend hundreds of hours researching every damn thing that the manufacturers are trying to do to me and ways to get around them without leaving (literal!) scorch marks on my hands.:-( But I also want Google Maps and maybe an Uber app in an emergency so that’s what holds me back.

    So with that I think I’ve recommended just about literally everything now in this comment… :-P

    • ladfrombrad 🇬🇧@lemdro.idEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      I almost just want a cheap piece of crap dumb phone

      Looked into a KaiOS device? Not entirely dumb, GMaps is only the web version so no voice navigation etc.

      But might be something of interest to ya?

    • Teknikal@eviltoast.orgEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      My Nothing is the most unstable Android device I’ve ever owned and they don’t ever actually fix anything just come out with childish gimmicks.

      I think the last one was Chat Gpt integration which turned out to just be a widget that launches chatgpt if you manually install it and even that only worked for a couple of weeks and chatgpts own widget is better so what was the point.

      • OpenStars@discuss.onlineEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        YIKES!? So it’s a marketing gimmick then? Not the ChatGPT, that’s obviously one, but the Nothing phone itself? So sorry to hear that:-(, but at least you are spreading the word so as to help others avoid that for themselves.:-)

        I do have higher hopes for the Fairphone though.

        • Teknikal@eviltoast.orgEnglish
          0·
          3 months ago

          Yep every article you ever see about them is some type of gimmick or another and most of them last about as long as Nothing Messages did.

            • Teknikal@eviltoast.orgEnglish
              0·
              3 months ago

              I really suspect in future years it’ll be revealed Nothing is a oneplus brand, I mean I know a lot of people already suspect it but yeah I d say Nothing is to One plus what Honor is to Huawei.

  • deranger@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    my girlfriend has iOS, and every time I want to forward an nsfw gif she doesn’t see it

    Say what? There’s no content censoring that I’m aware of. I’ve had no issues looking at all kinds of NSFW/NSFL content.

    Regardless, you’re likely not going to enjoy the lack of modified apps and game piracy; I don’t do either of those. Maybe it’s possible but you’ve gotta jump through so many hoops IMO it wouldn’t be worth it.

    Zero issues with NSFW though, that’s bizarre to me. There’s screen time web content filtering but I believe that only affects safari.

    • TheDuckPrince@lemm.eeOPEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      I can tell you that there are channel marked as NSFW that share video and gif and if I send it to my gf, on her phone (even with nsfw enabled) she get the message “this channel is used to share pornographic material” while on android I can see everything.

      • Taleya@aussie.zoneEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        Yeah but there’s a difference between’doesn’t support webp’ and 'blocks porn*

  • onlinepersona@programming.devEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    iOS is probably the most locked down option you can pick. The EU even told Malus to open it up and Malus tried to fuck around. Now they might be in for some monetary justice, but that might take a year or two. Emulation was even only recently allowed, but only of old shit like Windows XP.

    Android is still the most open, mainstream, phone OS out there. Get yourself a phone that can run a ROM like LineageOS, eOS, FairPhone or (if you want to give Google more money for surveillance) a Pixel to put GrapheneOS on it (easy process, you just need a browser and USB-C cable). That’ll get you more freedom to keep the phone alive longer and optionally become more private (if you can learn to live without Google).

    To save money, you don’t even need to buy a new one. Get a refurbished phone. They are often 100-200€ cheaper than new phones and are sometimes as good as new.

    iOS will lock you in, give you less options, and cost you loads to boot.

    Anti Commercial-AI license

  • HatchetHaro@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    iOS is probably the worst choice if you want to sideload apps. I would recommend sticking with Android and run your Samsung into the ground (maybe flash a custom ROM?) before getting something like a Fairphone.

    Besides, what do you want to be “passionate” about in mobile phones? To me, they’re just tools for browsing the web, playing games, and staying in contact with friends and family while on the go; anything extra is superficial.

    • TheDuckPrince@lemm.eeOPEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      Actually I love to testing modded app, rooting, changing roms, with samsung and oneplus I lost this because install a custom rom brings a lot of issue with banks, camera (damn camera2 api) and so on almost all modern phone is not convenient to go to a custom rom

      • PetroGuy@lemmy.caEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        so you are choosing to go from having issues with those things to not being able to do it at all? I don’t understand. isn’t finding/solving the issues part of the testing you mention?

      • mr_right@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        I dont think its possible -or easy- to install custom roms on samsungs since they dont allow unlocking the bootloader

  • daisyKutter@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago
    • For nsfw I use Quix but its shareware
    • For youtube I use Yattee
    • I don’t use reddit since some of us moved to lemmy
    • For gaming I use RetroArch
    • I don’t know how are things with sideloading
  • 2xsaiko@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago
    • I used to do side loading on iOS for a modded YouTube app (uYou+) but now I just use YouTube in the browser with AdGuard and Vinegar extensions. There’s ways to sideload and auto refresh the certificate that don’t need you to connect the phone to a computer which apparently work pretty well (I used AltStore which was pretty annoying because it doesn’t do that).
    • Usually I think you just have to enable NSFW on a computer/via the browser for it to work in the app. At least that how it is for Telegram iirc. Generally there shouldn’t be a problem accessing anything.
    • No idea, the only thing I play on my phone is Shattered Pixel Dungeon and I bought that