My first phone was a Samsung Galaxy Gio. My dad got it for me in 2011. It was “practically free”; the amount we paid got loaded as credit to my SIM card. On this very phone, I learned to sideload apps using APKs and do rooting.
A few years later I got my hands on a Samsung Galaxy Note 3, and I fell in love immediately. Even though it was a gift to my dad, I quickly “took over.” This phone with its big screen and stylus was perfect for tinkering. And, dear reader, did I tinker with it. Everything from custom and self-compiled ROMs to modding the hardware. I played with it for 6-7 years while carrying it as my daily driver. Many times I thought I’d bricked it, but some XDA thread always came to the rescue. I owe a lot to that phone and everything it has taught me, as well as the Android hacking community.
My family of eight back then naturally accumulated a lot of phones over the years. I also got bunch of phones as prizes thanks to school competitions. Most of them were budget Android phones, but I was able to get them working pretty well with lighter custom ROMs. My Note 3 still runs well on LineageOS today! I have the freedom of doing whatever I want with my older phones. One runs as a digital clock, one as a DNS server, and one is running as my doorbell camera.
But that freedom is disappearing.
Google recently announced mandatory developer registration for all apps, even sideloaded ones, starting September 2026. Samsung removed bootloader unlocking globally with One UI 8 (July 2025). Xiaomi has an approval process that leaves users waiting indefinitely. Banking apps now refuse to work on rooted devices or custom ROMs you own.
What I could do on a budget phone in 2011 is becoming impossible on flagship devices today. An entire generation of tinkerers, developers, and students won’t get the education I got because manufacturers are pulling up the ladder behind them.
Think what’ll happen in 10 years when the current phones become old. We’ll have to simply discard them because we can’t make meaningful use of them anymore. Post-collapse computing is already happening, and this trend will only accelerate it.
I know some clever people out there will find ways to bypass these restrictions. But when I was 8 years old, rooting my Galaxy Gio wasn’t about being clever. It was about being accessible and open. Today I rarely find people who even know what rooting is — most peers I had in 2013 have had at least heard of rooting. And it’s not the current generation’s fault. There’s a huge gate in front of them, and it’s getting taller every year.
And we are being told a lot of lies, mostly “privacy” and “security” concerns. I learned about Android’s permissions system because I could see it. Custom ROMs showed me what apps were doing behind the scenes. I installed privacy-focused alternatives, removed bloatware, blocked trackers. I learned to care about privacy because I had the tools to do something about it. If having an open model of security and privacy was a concern, we’d be deep, deep in trouble by now.
The people who need privacy tools the most — students, activists, journalists, people in restrictive countries — are the ones who suffer when tinkering becomes impossible. And we all know by this point that trusting your data to big tech never really ends well, no matter if it’s Apple, Google, or Microsoft.
To end this writing on a more positive note, I do strongly believe there’s a hope left and very smart folks working on this problem. We should support them and help as much as possible.
Please read and sign the Keep Android Open petition so the same joys of having an open platform remain for future generations.
Here is an incomplete list of old phones that I still have and are still working today. Not all of them are Android but all of them are hackable and usable in some way.
My old friend Galaxy Note 3 is on the top right.