alt Hacker NewsNot having support for messaging apps is a bit much considering it's still Android based. Why is it WIP? What's the P to W? Play services?
Replies
monooso • today at 2:02 AM
They support WhatsApp and Signal, according to the website.
"Telegram, Messenger, Threema, WeChat and more" are marked as WIP.
ftchd • today at 12:03 AM
Apps:
- Proton VPN, Drive, Mail
- Signal
- Obtainium
- Uber
- Podcast player
- etc
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They mention in several places that the phone is degoogled and that certain apps won't work due to lack of Play services. They also probably can't redistribute popular messaging apps without a special agreement with the developer, or risking it with Aurora Store or similar. Unfortunately Google is leading a fight to close Android that so far no big entity is really resisting anymore (Epic now having settled their lawsuit and agreeing to never badmouth Android again), with efforts such as Play Integrity API, automatic protection that they're pushing developers to activate, etc. Unless something changes, in the near future "it's Android" won't mean much for app compatibility...