Note that I have no "proof" for this statement that they actualy "are" a conspiracy as I have no insight into their internal documents. But for all practical purposes, for me they ACT LIKE they would be a conspiracy - Android offers flags for app vendors to block access to app data (started from usual file manager of smartphone, it spread to ADB - Android Debug Bridge - tool on PC either) - and WhatsApp uses them. If such flags did not exist, then WhatsApp would not be able to use them.
On top of it, there is "integrity" of Google Play which also may be used by apps - I am unsure whether WhatsApp counts them towards "score of less-than-perfect device to allow running this app", which will lead to locking out of WhatsApp as soon as this score gets too high.

Some video games, many of them are retro, are based on tiles. They have different levels which may be huge and logically highly complex but they are all based on limited sets of tiles.
Even a minute long video is usually bigger in file size than the retrog game itself.
It happens with Prince of Persia, Boulder Dash, Supaplex, Commander Keen, Bio Menace etc. - easier to recognize in two-dimensional games.
If video encoding used a database of tiles available in the game, it would enable much smaller file sizes and also higher quality of video as it would not have to use approximations to reduce file size as the tiles are exactly the same everywhere (meaning that lossless video would be affordable by bitrate). I am under no pressure to get it implemented ASAP but I would like a technological discussion about how-to.

Plain mobile phone was made with primary features of calls and SMS. Some small games, such as snake and tetris. Awesome.

Then some web browsing and E-Mail features came, as well as camera features. It was good idea, albeit not implemented in such high quality back then...

Then "apps" became omnipresent and as the society did not like to pay so much for so little data volume as in text messages (such as €0.19 per SMS which is less than one kilobyte counting the metadata too), WhatsApp with identification per phone number conquered much of the world.

And cameras eventually got way much higher quality of images - which is suprizing given the theories about physical limits of light sensors well-known for decades before. Until this point - awesome. But then...

Then "bank card as well" came, as well as "card reader for government ID" (and something alike either that I never heard of but might unexpectendly discover for myself that such features exist), "It's all sensitive data, do you want your smartphone stolen of hacked with one more side-effect that your money gets withdrawn, your government ID hijacked etc? You don't? Well we invented hardware-baked storage for secrets, so it's much less likely to happen.

But once such digital fortress is there, what stops them from changing the rules from merely Google Pay, Apple Pay, NFC bank card, card reader being allowed to use the TEE (such as ARM TrustZone, Secure Enclave, Samsung Knox, Titan M etc.) to every app being allowed the same, so that not even if you DO root or jailbreak your smartphone, depending on whether it's on Android (root) or iOS (jailbreak) you STILL get only heavily encrypted database of WhatsApp because they use hardware-baked keystore which is resistant even against root, requiring one more hack - of TEE - to become hopefully readable?

I was somewhat surprised to learn that LG no longer makes smartphones, having exited the market in 2021.

To be fair, not every LG phone was bad. Some of their older devices ran Android 2 or Android 4, from a time before mobile operating systems became as heavily restricted and locked down as they are today. But when I think about what LG would likely be producing if it had stayed in the business, I don't feel like much was lost.

Modern smartphones are increasingly designed as closed ecosystems, where users have limited control over the hardware they own and are expected to accept whatever restrictions come with the stock software. They often feel more like digital fortresses than personal computers. Combined with short support cycles and a market that encourages frequent replacement, many devices seem destined to become electronic waste far sooner than their hardware would otherwise require.

From that perspective, LG's departure doesn't strike me as particularly unfortunate. If anything, it means one less manufacturer has spent the last five years producing devices built around the same locked-down, disposable model that dominates the smartphone industry today.

Plain mobile phone was made with primary features of calls and SMS. Some small games, such as snake and tetris. Awesome.

Then some web browsing and E-Mail features came, as well as camera features. It was good idea, albeit not implemented in such high quality back then...

Then "apps" became omnipresent and as the society did not like to pay so much for so little data volume as in text messages (such as €0.19 per SMS which is less than one kilobyte counting the metadata too), WhatsApp with identification per phone number conquered much of the world.

And cameras eventually got way much higher quality of images - which is suprizing given the theories about physical limits of light sensors well-known for decades before. Until this point - awesome. But then...

Then "bank card as well" came, as well as "card reader for government ID" (and something alike either that I never heard of but might unexpectendly discover for myself that such features exist), "It's all sensitive data, do you want your smartphone stolen of hacked with one more side-effect that your money gets withdrawn, your government ID hijacked etc? You don't? Well we invented hardware-baked storage for secrets, so it's much less likely to happen.

But once such digital fortress is there, what stops them from changing the rules from merely Google Pay, Apple Pay, NFC bank card, card reader being allowed to use the TEE (such as ARM TrustZone, Secure Enclave, Samsung Knox, Titan M etc.) to every app being allowed the same, so that not even if you DO root or jailbreak your smartphone, depending on whether it's on Android (root) or iOS (jailbreak) you STILL get only heavily encrypted database of WhatsApp because they use hardware-baked keystore which is resistant even against root, requiring one more hack - of TEE - to become hopefully readable?

Such protection about possible spam, has the side-effect that some people just become isolated even more. Imagine the rule "Ban Evasion" being not enforced (or perhaps not even existing) - it would mean that only behavior of user of specific account is judged and if someone goes wrong between the specific account and subreddit, there would be just a way for fresh start without worrying about the permanent effects of actions under older account under new account. Fresh start would be fresh start.
Nowadays it works such way that protection of convenience of some people comes at cost of other people having no way anymore to get listened to at all.

Such protection about possible spam, has the side-effect that some people just become isolated even more. Imagine the rule "Ban Evasion" being not enforced (or perhaps not even existing) - it would mean that only behavior of user of specific account is judged and if someone goes wrong between the specific account and subreddit, there would be just a way for fresh start without worrying about the permanent effects of actions under older account under new account. Fresh start would be fresh start.
Nowadays it works such way that protection of convenience of some people comes at cost of other people having no way anymore to get listened to at all.

The thing which they developed best, so far - is binding on their services.
Export chats to get rid of storage of content in WhatsApp? They invented Advanced Chat Privacy to stop that - more app-binding!

Use WhatsApp to maintain phonebook? Sorry, no longer possible as Usernames get rolled out!

They also planned to invent their own cloud service to make even more dependencies.

Just forget about lightweight app like it was in 2009/2010. By 2026 nothing remained the same except to same name of service "WhatsApp".

Never used any payment feature on smartphone and I do not miss it either. First turn smartphone to "logical bomb" - a danger of leakage of "sensitive data" then invent such OS or (worse) TrustZone chips that are not rootable - and of course, WhatsApp is going to use it in order to stop consumer from copying raw database to USB stick (and no, it's NOT only decision of app vendor - if OS and hardware were designed for all contents being copyable, what could app do against it?)

with Advanced Chat Privacy, there is no more just "export chat". Meaning that consumers should be preparing to extract raw database instead. I could see no movement towards making Android-compatible OS but WITH access to app data,

Now if Restricted Chat feature will appear as planned, it will be locked within only primary device, no secondary devices and no WhatsApp Web either. Meaning that importance of a battle against Tamper-Resistant smartphones grows even more. Cat-and-mouse game seems to work ONLY from the side of vendors - constantly inventing new restrictions. Where are new workarounds from the consumer side?

Now there is no guarantee at all that if you keep content on your smartphone (local device that you supposed to "own"), you can read and copy it. Neither there is guarantee that you can just capture everything that goes on in smartphone (display output, audio output, audio input) as "just inherent feature of computer". They broke the entire world model where digital devices are subject of exact copying of content (exact provided that it's not getting encoded with a codec for photo/video/audio for lossy compression). And the world around me seems to no longer be even able to imagine such openness of digital devices. Myself being a rarity - living memory of how it used to "just work".

Does the "Termux as such" suffice without need for some add-ons?
Question applies to Android which is still compatible with Termux (no more than 9 or what?) and to normally accessible folders that require no root or exploits.

ADB Backup being no longer necessarily covering all app data? I told enough about it... No need to repeat.
ADB downgrade no longer being straighforward guaranteed process? Alike...
Play Integrity which used to be SafetyNet and didn't exist before? The same...
No longer compatibility with Termux. Maybe it would launch at all but nowhere its original functionality. Did it ever draw so mcuh attention?
No more call recording guaranteed by third-party apps. They did not suffice with only banning such apps in Google Play, they went as far as taking away API either...
All look like signs of NOT really open OS. The "openness" which is supposed to exist nowadays - "you can recompile the OS starting from provided source codes to re-include the functions that you want to have again". Not out of box.

instead of doing whatever it can to ensure maximum failsafes, it is deliberately designed such a way that such "backup" can only be restored to WhatsApp itself, not downloaded to PC. Unless someone either steals code from Google development team or reverse-engineers it and makes a third-party downloader. And it applies even to paid Google Drive accounts while also counting towards the data storage quota. It also auto-deletes after few months and it applies to paid accounts either.

Never again Google Drive!

instead of doing whatever it can to ensure maximum failsafes, it is deliberately designed such a way that such "backup" can only be restored to WhatsApp itself, not downloaded to PC. Unless someone either steals code from Google development team or reverse-engineers it and makes a third-party downloader. And it applies even to paid Google Drive accounts while also counting towards the data storage quota. It also auto-deletes after few months and it applies to paid accounts either.

Never again Google Drive!

WhatsApp is testing a safety warning for unofficial Web clients - looks as usual good promise of security - but I am absoutely NOT sure that it will not become one more step of furter lock-down of WhatsApp ecosystem.

The official GUI of WhatsApp Web is intended only as "Mirror" for the content of main device, not as standalone app. Neither as backup.

If an app appears somewhere, which allows auto-extraction of chat content to text files, as well as media files, which will NOT be auto-deleted if WhatsApp logs out, then it might become a helpful tool to NOT keep everything within WhatsApp which has LOTS of additional points of failure beyond storage corruption, filesystem corruption and overwritting.

Now WhatsApp introduces "a warning". Who trusts them it it will always stay warning and not turn to one more way to get punished by WhatsApp?

One might assume that Samsung smartphones are popular mainly among the general public, while technically knowledgeable users avoid them because of Samsung's eFuse technology. After all, anyone who understands what eFuse is and how it affects device modification, rooting, and warranty status might be expected to view it negatively.

However, based on my observations, many IT enthusiasts and power users still buy Samsung Galaxy devices, and this does not seem to be uncommon.

Why is that the case? Why do many technically savvy users continue to choose Samsung smartphones despite the presence of eFuse? What advantages or trade-offs make Samsung devices appealing enough that enthusiasts do not reject them over this design choice?

If used from 2009 to 2026 for $1 yearly fee, it would have cost $17 for 17 years.

What does forensics costs - for attempts to read WhatsApp database - if something goes wrong? Guess MUCH more than $17. And they claim they are using the knowledge of physics in order to make NO WAY to decrypt not even if several nations unite themselves against encryption of ONE device - and there are more than one devices globally!

I have read reports that only very first versions of KoBackup 9.something will backup app data at all, Any newer version won't.
At same time, I have got KoBackup 10.something on Huawei P20 Lite with EMUI 9.1, uninstalled this version, tried to install 9.something (several different APKs), it always refused to install this app, then reinstalled 10.something from same backup of APK - it gets installed (but again useless).
So, switch to Huawei smartphone on Android 8 is the only way out? At least Android 8 will work? Or 7 at most?
At same time, very soon WhatsApp will refuse to launch on Android below 6, with no plans to stop raising their system requirements again and again (then 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 etc.), so at some point there will be no smartphone left which runs BOTH earliest KoBackup 9.something and WhatsApp anymore...

While Android no longer supporting extraction of app data by ADB unless the app vendor agrees, "signature mismatch" stopping consumer from replacing WhatsApp by dummy app followed by ADB Pull, ADB Backup etc, I have heard even no more guaranteed downgrade of apps anymore - there was a workflow "export chat" - however in April 2025 Meta invented "Advanced Chat Privacy" which disables export too, while at least (knock on wood) copy-paste still being unaffected (but who knows maybe they are going to take it away too, just like screenshots which remained unaffected so far - and who knows maybe even excluding such chats from Web version either).

So while so far this regime only replaces easy "chat export" by much more annoying copy-paste (still nowher near manually rewriting content on another keyboard, as manuscripts, as well as photo of screen by second device) it already HIGHLIGHTS (draws attention to) what Android has done by non-backup-able app data. So for those who are looking for good riddance from app-binding of important contents, in replace of readable files that do not depend on vendor having a key that you do NOT have - this feature (restrictive regime) of WhatsApp is an important breakthrough in highligting restrictive nature of modern Android for maybe a decade so far!