[mondoshawan]

It wasn't. Play services is just add on features that proxy app permissions and centralize push notifications -- no actual Android features moved into Play services that I know of. Ie: auto filling SMS OTP codes. It feels like Android is being sucked up that way, but that's because there are a lot of really nice features in there, like push notifications, geofencing, etc.

You can still run Android without GMS core and Play services -- I do that, myself, on a Pixel 3a running Graphene. The trick is that you lose some nice functionality (which Android actually makes up for in some cases, ie: SMS OTP copy buttons), and the mapping experience is god-awful (mostly because the OSS mapping scene is hopelessly stuck in the 1990s GPS model)

[asddubs]

one example i can think of without having to look things up is that the music player used to be part of AOSP and then got replaced with a google play variant

e: here's an article from 2018 with some more examples:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip-on...

[efreak]

So the old music player isn't still included by default. It should still work just fine on modern android if you install it, and there's plenty of foss media players on fdroid (ie not Google-dependent), most of them thin wrappers around the android media apis with a few extras like playlists. Kodi and VLC should work fine without Google services, and LineageOS Eleven doesn't require Google, though I'm not sure if it still works on modern Android.

Lack of media playback options shouldn't be able to stop you from using AOSP.

[exikyut]

What would get open-source mapping out of this "1990s GPS model"?

[mondoshawan]

Stop geocoding by separating out addresses into singular fields, for one. Stop showing mostly irrelevant contours on maps, for another. OsmAnd~ is unfortunately the only game in town, and the UX is freaking terrible.

[benwaffle]

how do i get SMS OTP copy buttons on my google-free android device?