Per one tech forum this week: “Google has quietly installed an app on all Android devices called ‘Android System SafetyCore’. It claims to be a ‘security’ application, but whilst running in the background, it collects call logs, contacts, location, your microphone, and much more making this application ‘spyware’ and a HUGE privacy concern. It is strongly advised to uninstall this program if you can. To do this, navigate to 'Settings’ > 'Apps’, then delete the application.”
if there was something that could run android apps virtualized, I’d switch in a heartbeat
Every one of them can, AFAIK. I have a second cheap used phone I picked up to play with Ubuntu Touch and it has a system called Waydroid for this. Not quite seamless and you’ll want to use native when possible but it does work.
SailfishOS, PostmarketOS, Mobian, etc all also can use Waydroid or a similar thing
I have used Waydroid, mainly with FOSS apps, and although it has some rough edges, it does often work for just having one or two Android apps functionality.
Linux on mobile as a whole isn’t daily driver ready yet in my opinion. I’ve only tried pmOS on a OP6, but that seems to be a leading project on a well-supported phone (compared to the rest).
There are two solutions for that. One is Waydroid, which is basically what you’re describing. Another is android_translation_layer, which is closer to WINE in that it translates API calls to more native Linux ones, although that project is still in the alpha stages.
You can try both on desktop Linux if you’d like. Just don’t expect to run apps that require passing SafetyNet, like many banking apps.
Do you mean sandboxed?
not necessarily… I mean If they run under the same VM, I’d be fine with that as well…but having a sandboxed wrapper would for sure be nice.
Waydroid?
To be clear, I haven’t used it at all and have no idea how well it works.
I gave it a run on Ubuntu touch with a fair phone like 8 months ago… It was still pretty rough then.