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Israel’s IDF Bans Android Phones—iPhones Now ‘Mandatory’
(www.forbes.com)
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this post was submitted on 30 Nov 2025
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Bullshit. I have it turned off on my pixel 9pro and Samsung s24 plus
You actually turned off geminis ability to serve YOU. You never turned off Gemini itself. Google won’t allow that. It’s still running in the background send your data to Google and its advertising partners. Google has publicly stated this is the intended design and they will not allow turning that off.
Show me.
I don't have to show you. Google, the people who made the fucking OS, told you that's how this works!
No. They provided me a nice little button that allows me to disable Gemini, and they have allowed me to opt out of any usage. So again. Show me that it is still active after I have disabled it.
I was curious so I searched. This is the best info I could find.
https://proton.me/blog/turn-off-gemini-on-android
Proton claims that even if you turn everything off, it will still watch in the background because Google is replacing assistant with Gemini. That still hasn't happened on my phone. I can still use the regular Google assistant, but I feel like I'm not smart enough to evaluate the claims to know whether it is really running on my phone or not.
Proton also has a profit motive in making people upset with Google, so I don't know.
It’s true profit can benefit from people being mad at Google but abandoning Google services doesn’t automatically make you a proton user either.
Let’s say I install a button on your car that flips from “broken” to “fixed” my itself. Anytime you complain something is wrong, I flip that switch to “fixed.” That doesn’t change anything. The switch just tells other things to do something. It doesn’t enforce anything. It’s basically telling Google whether you want it or not, not actually obeying you.
Sure buddy. You believe what you want. I'll believe the programming.
Typical redditor response, you're in the wrong community friend. Using deflection instead of constructive discussion. Your kind are no better than MAGA people.
ok
I've lost features that used to work without Gemini, but I believe it is disabled on both my Pixel 7 Pro and the Pixel 8 I have access to.
Nope, it’s still running in the background. You just turned off its ability to interact with you but can and does still interact with others.
Do you have some sort of evidence for this claim?
https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/how-to-disable-gemini-on-android/53771/ and https://proton.me/blog/turn-off-gemini-on-android were easy enough to find. If I remember correctly the grapheneOS guys spoke on this too.
The first one does tell you how to "completely remove Gemini from your smartphone" under that heading. I do not have the Gemini app installed.
The second one says:
But, I've also disabled Google Assistant across all applications, so I don't share data with Gemini/Assistant. I had to lose some features to do so.
Overall, your reply serves to confirm for me that I have disabled Gemini on both of my Android devices. Still, I appreciate the links!
Trust him bro...
Honestly, it wouldn't surprise me either way. There IS a lot of telemetry and other BS that is definitely still on my phone, included in OS updates, and not uninstallable (I can "uninstall updates", but that would also give me back any security issues). But, I don't think that it is Gemini, or at least predates that naming convention.
To get free of Google telemetry, I'd have to install a non-Google ROM, and I haven't ever tried that.
Telemetry certainly can be abused, and Google should be legally (by regulation) required to provide a simple opt-out. BUT, telemetry really is a fairly normal thing to include in "web-scale" deployments and is primarily used to discover issues that have escaped into production without affecting a testing environment--or, at least, that what the telemetry systems I've interacted with as an software developer were for. So, I'm not too worried about non-personalized data collection.
EDIT: I confirmed that Google says I have no Gemini activity to delete, so while I'm sure my phone is reporting stuff, it's not to Gemini.