A cute detail of the Aurora Store is that it tells you whenever apps are GSF (Play Services) dependent or not

Sadly, most Play apps aren't, and most GSF dependent apps will unavoidably crash

But hey. Snapseed works. And that's all that matters.

This is what peak performance looks like

Trying to give a try to uninstalling Play Services with my main account, I just realized why it's not possible: it's set as a device owner (the closest thing to root in a non-rooted Android), which cannot be undone unless from inside the app itself - something that I doubt Google wants me to do.

So yeah, only three ways to properly uninstall Play Services:

- find an exploit in the Play Services app,
- find an explot in Android itself, OR
- wipe the device

There's also another challenge: if you uninstall every input method provided by the system, you won't be able to type your password in an encrypted phone unless ADB is enabled.

Yeah, I don't know how to feel about this one.

Actually, that only applies with safe mode, so I think we're safe here

This phone is basically begging to be wiped, I'll do a few more backups and then I'll dab on em spies

Current mood: struggling to find out how to prevent the Play Services from becoming the device owner

Apparently you need to do NFC provisioning to set a device owner... and how do you do that?

So, you have to put the phone in contact with an NFC device (like another phone!) in order to #provision a device owner. However, you still need to be able to somehow install the device owner APK... how can you do that if you don't even have ADB...?

Apparently it can download the device owner/device policy controller/admin app from the Internet. I'm afraid it probably relies on Google Play for that, though.

what the hell, apparently there's even a more unknown QR provisioning mode

AHHHHHHHHH I JUST FOUND OUT HOW TO TELL ANDROID WHERE TO DOWNLOAD THE APK FROM

I CAN ACTUALLY MAKE A CUSTOM APP THAT REPLACES GOOGLE PLAY

Installed a demo app. The moment of truth, let's see if I can uninstall Play Services with this one!

wait, can there be *two* device policy managers?

Oh, Google...

Well

I kept trying

and it worked somehow

@Senkowo

@espectalll Icecast runs sightly faster than Firefox

@15F9 I'm not trading a little faster (which isn't even true when compared to nightly Firefox or GeckoView) for an outdated browser version maintained by people who don't even have time for it, honestly

@espectalll well, on new terms, Falkon replaced ffox in my Slackware XFCE machine, runs great with a fake Android UA. I am still with OpenBSD, but Slack is needed for work. At least it runs predictabily well with my MESA slackbuild upgrade from the old OpenBSD release.

@15F9 Hmm, it's QtWebEngine so you're still supporting Google's monopoly and some rather subtle and questionable technical choices, but I guess that's worth not complaining much about

@espectalll it's not blink, it's webkit.

@15F9 you sure? That's not what the docs say https://wiki.qt.io/QtWebEngine

@espectalll Location *can* be provided by Google services, but it can also be provided purely by the GPS in your phone if you don't have the Google provider installed (in that case location will take a longer time to get a fix and only work outside, but it'll still work)

@vurpo yeah, but you know, Google Maps

@espectalll and it's possible to install Mozilla's location provider instead and use their WiFi database for assisted GPS

@vurpo ...but if Whatsapp tries to create a map using Google Maps, will that work?

@espectalll That I don't know about actually, but the Google location services is entirely separate from the Maps embedding thing (so embedded Maps views might break while location itself keeps working)

@vurpo yeah, but you know, Whatsapp may crash and stuff

@Pervertor it still doesn't work unless you root

@espectalll does if you have spoofing in your ROM, which presumably you don't. Hence you need root for XPOSED spoofing patch.