I realised in the next months that the perceived "freedom to tinker" on Android is something hugely overrated. I could achieve almost everything I wanted on my iPhone -- it just took a bit of time to find the proper apps. Later Apple added the Shortcuts which is a very solid automation app.

Many Android users also lament the lack of a visible filesystem but that's a huge plus in my eyes. What are Android apps doing with that? You guessed it, scan your internal storage and SD card and upload them feck knows where (and this has been proven by many advanced Android users). iOS' sandboxing is not a bug. It's a feature which I appreciate a lot.

I'll not shy away from the fact: there are areas that I miss from Android. For example, I could have inspected WiFi strength signal with an Android phone and I cannot with a non-jailbroken iPhone.

Again though, as a guy who used Android phones for 4.5 years before switching to an iPhone, I found that the uncomfortable feeling of switching to an entirely new (and supposedly more "locked down") ecosystem is mostly an illusion created by our brain's unwillingness to endure big changes. You get over it very quickly. Don't trust your brain on these matters, it floods you with non-truisms to avoid cognitive shock.

P.S. I too loathe the notch. So after 15 months with the iPhone X I switched to iPhone 8 Plus. Easily the best phone on the planet to this day (plus a bigger screen and a slightly bigger battery). Now I dread the day the device will no longer be sold.

I went iPhone -> Android -> Windows -> Android. I'd really like to get back to an iPhone for privacy reasons, but the storage situation really doesn't work for my family. Traditionally, it's been a low capacity entry model and then ~$100 to upgrade to each new tier, paying Apple's wildly inflated markup. The pricing is also way out of line with our budget. I was really hoping for a new SE model for my wife.

I'm fairly happy with my Galaxy S9+ now, but I really miss a lot about Windows 10 Mobile. I'll never forgive Google for doing everything in its power to make sure another mobile platform didn't become viable.

This is why I bought the 256GB versions (although your photo archives might be even bigger).

Not sure what I can recommend but in any case I'd probably get a professional camera with 400GB SD card. :D I mean, if you guys like to make long videos during a time outside, why not?

I agree Apple's proposition has cracks by the way. Not arguing that.

As for W10 Mobile, yep -- I sold my Lumia 1520 the summer of 2017 and my heart is still broken. :( This system had so much potential! And I have never found a phone whose form factor and feel to the touch that I like so much as the Lumia 1520 and the Lumia 950 XL.

As for photos, I wouldn't say I take hundreds of gigabytes. The point is I don't want to have an anxiety attack over running out of space where I have low coverage. I can get a 512 GB microSD card for $100 and smaller capacities for much less. That let's me have my apps, offline music, offline maps, photos, 1080p videos, and so on. But, thanks for the suggestions nonetheless.

Use what serves you best. I recognise that your scenario isn't well-served by Apple. Of course you'll switch.

I'm preaching to the choir, but it sucks that the only two viable options these days require such huge trade-offs. And that the premium for privacy is so much greater than what typical Android hardware costs.

I'm glad you've been able to find a trade-off that works for you. I'm hoping something changes in this duopoly system we have.

I completely agree we shouldn't have to make the big trade-offs between the duopoly. But truth be told, if Microsoft failed to gain ground as a third smartphone vendor, what hope does anybody else have? They were sabotaged by Google at every turn and let's face it, if your mobile OS cannot have YouTube that means at least 80% of the smartphone populace will write you off as useless. If not 95% even.

I also haven't found the perfect setup yet. Pondering investing heavily in a 10Gbps router + 10Gbps switch + NAS with 25TB as a start. I have loads of videos and can't pay iCloud for them. So things are still shaping up.

Overall though, I am really happy with my choice. Serves me well in 98% of the time.

Thank you for the kind words. Right back at you. :)

Well then 40% of American households are concerned: https://money.cnn.com/2018/05/22/pf/emergency-expenses-house...

I'm a former ios user (9 years, from my 3GS in 2009 to my 6S which I used until 2018) that switched to Android last year mostly out of cost. Apple crossed a threshold I'm unwilling to follow.

Now I have a moto x4 that was just $300 so I'm not terrified to take it running/hiking with me in case I trip or fall or otherwise break/drop/lose the phone. It takes an SD card so I don't have to pay inflated rates for memory during purchase, the one chance you get. And on top of it I'm on a cheaper carrier (not strictly Apple's fault).

That being said, don't most US households get carrier-financed phones?

I'll grant you that Apple providing better software support for their phones was a huge advantage. And their stance on privacy is leagues apart from Google's. So, I could work out the math on that iPhone 8+ and call it roughly breakeven. I typically keep a phone for 3 years, so the per annum cost was roughly the same. But, for that money I likely wasn't going to be happy and that factors in. I just wasn't going to have what I want out of a phone and I'd have to console myself with having an intangible benefit of better privacy. I care about privacy, but trying to be honest with myself, that likely wasn't going to make me feel better about paying $200 extra because Apple doesn't think I need a microSD slot.

My wife has a completely different hang-up. She gets very nervous about carrying around a fragile $800+ device. And she'd lose her mind if she misplaced such an expensive device. Prior to inheriting my Lumia 950 XL, she had a Lumia 640 she loved and only paid $30 for. So, she was never going to be happy with an iPhone 8 either. If Apple had refreshed the SE device, we may very well have made the switch to iOS. But, they want to sit at the high-end of the market -- as is their right -- and so we decided to self-select out.

All of this is a really long-winded way of saying that affordability isn't the only concern when it comes to making a purchase. For all its other faults, the Android ecosystem provides many options to suit people's budgets and comfort zones. And yet again, I have to lament the demise of Windows 10 Mobile because it really offered the best of both worlds there.

I most certainly do, but as mentioned in a sibling comment, don't most US households use carrier-financed phones? That's like, $20 - $50 extra a month?

The 3 years usage period is kind of surprising to me because it clashes with my anecdotal evidence somewhat -- I've known 20+ people holding on to iPhones for 5-6 years. But I am pretty sure the median you gave is more accurate so in that case the cost per annum might indeed be equal to Android flagships (or larger).

> paying $200 extra because Apple doesn't think I need a microSD slot.

I now dearly regret not keeping the link but there was a research showing that the SD controller introduces lag in the entire system (in the case of SoCs anyway). However, nowadays that probably can be solved. Likely nobody in Apple tried though. So there's not only Apple not thinking you might need a microSD. There seem to be other factors in the equation. iPhones are known to be fast and Apple doesn't want to risk losing that no matter what -- would be my guess.

> She gets very nervous about carrying around a fragile $800+ device.

As I mentioned in the other sibling comment here, I really miss the days I didn't have to care if I dropped my phone. Sadly I don't think these days are ever coming back. :(

I personally am unwilling to sacrifice privacy and smooth operation (most budget Androids lag like hell) -- because I consume a lot of reading and video and audio material on my phone and replacing light amounts of anxiety (that most of the time I can put under control) with severe annoyances on a daily basis is a bad trade for me.

Of course, we aren't trying to convince each other, I am aware. We're sharing use cases and I am grateful that you oblige.

The problem isn't that I'm using the device wrong. The problem is the device isn't fit for purpose.

especially in the case of a phone failure to boot.

So consider that this niche feature you find useful is of almost no consequence to anybody.

Additionally, iPhones and Samsung devices have really durable internal storage. Almost always the battery craps out first.

The ability to do offline salvaging does not seem like such a big selling point to me.

As for offline salvaging, do you realize how many phones have had bugs that resulted in boot problems in the last 10 years?

As for privacy, I would disable cloud sync and backups as well. But eventually came to the sad conclusion that I have a lot more going on in my life and I cannot sacrifice even more of my preciously little free time to self-manage all my data -- not to mention this would require a moderate investment in my own NAS / 10Gbps switch / 10Gbps router and end-to-end encrypted backups to 1-2 VPS-es.

I get where you are coming from, I do. But I had to make a choice between an actual life and paranoia. I settled for a "mostly ok" solution and a bit more of a personal life and free time.

If privacy and offline-first own personal data get commoditised, I'll be the first to switch away from cloud (and thus Apple).

Now my phone has 64 GB based storage and I'm still in the same situation because everything has bloated to fill the available space. microSD is a really cheap and incredibly effective solution to the problem. Certainly much cheaper than buying a new phone so you can get more storage.

That's awful in my eyes. What's more is my inability to browse that file system without a third party application when i want to simply move files to my computer.

The only reason I'm even contemplating the move to iOS, is b/c I have a android based, digital audio player that has 2 SDcard slots that I keep disconnected from Wifi (and it does n't have a 4G connection at all).

If my music was still on my phone, I simply would not move to iOS over this singular issue. You're talking 250-400GB of files, not including my downloads, my pictures, my Keepass databases, my SSH keys, my certs file for my VPN, and files that I don't want the OS to index and put in some general library.

It stills seem ridiculously daunting to let go of. Because I use it extensively. Daily - even without my music on there.

>ou guessed it, scan your internal storage and SD card and upload them feck knows where (and this has been proven by many advanced Android users)

Except only the apps I trust are allowed storage access.

As mentioned in a sibling comment, Apple's proposition has cracks and that's unequivocally true. Your usage sounds like an outlier case.

In my case, I have tons and TONS of videos (800GB at this point) so I am pondering the home NAS + 10Gbps router + 10Gbps switch setup. And yeah, I can't use Apple's iCloud for my videos.

That's not the case almost anywhere though. And you won't be able to access your own stuff without internet either. That's would be very annoying for music, imo.

In my case I am on 1Gbps ingress/egress for ~43 EUR a month and could negotiate a deal for a datacenter level of a link (10Gbps) but I don't want to.

The reason I'll go for 10Gbps router and a 10Gbps switch is because if you put a NAS in your home network then the gigabit speeds will never be achieved again (various reasons, including LAN chatter). And also because I'll buy a 10Gbps-enabled machine and would like to be able to work with the data on my NAS with 1.25GB/s.

I agree that my planned setup is an overkill but I am setting myself up for such a tech overkill setup in all my work endeavours because I want to have a peace of mind for about 10 years -- if at all possible.

I don't think any of us will soon need more than 1.25GB/s ingress/egress anytime soon (unless of course our games are rendered on the cloud and streamed directly to our PCs). And since I am sick and tired of eternal tinkering, I want to go for an ultimate endgame, or at least one that can last me some years in the future.

Quite an investment I admit. But it's long-term. I don't anticipate changing that setup for like 10 years.

My main complaint about iOS is text entry. Both the keyboard and voice input are incredibly bad compared to Android, even compared to Android of 3 years ago. I still struggle to type accurately or voicetype without having to make a ton of corrections. And there are better 3rd party keyboards (including GBoard) but they tend to be slow and awkward due to iOS limitations, plus then you lose voice typing completely which is not acceptable to me. If I could have an iPhone with the native Android keyboard and voice typing I'd be super happy.

Doesn't stop Google's keyboard to periodically pester you to give it full access "to get the full experience" (or something along the lines) but if you don't, it will never get or send a single byte to Google's servers.

Trust me, I researched. I too didn't want the huge irony you mentioned to hit me. And it doesn't.

I use GBoard on iOS, and on the iPhone XS with iOS12, you can still use the native voice typing while using GBoard

The best part is the equivalent Android APIs have terrible performance and stability.

Android has been steadily moving away from both being open and supporting power users, with stuff like Doze relying on GCM, nerfing WiFi control, disabling getting BT mac addresses (and not even letting apps ask for permission)

It turns out being able to replace a users lock screen with a full page ad is not a good thing.

iCloud is accessible as a "filesystem" on iOS. It's a decent compromise that doubles as a dropbox replacement

I've never really wanted to tinker much with my smartphone. I want it to do a handful of simple tasks (calls, texts, maps, music, light web browsing), and otherwise get out of the way.

Similarly, I switched to Mac OS X awhile back after years on Linux and BSD, because I realized that I would never want to tinker with (the source code of) my web browser or word processor, and there was a whole tinker-friendly Unix system sitting right next door. Pace, Stallman, but I don't need the freedom to tinker everywhere.

I used Debian as a main driver for several years and lost patience around 2010. Using a MacBook Pro with an external monitor and working to get an iMac Pro with maxed out settings (~14_000 EUR) to have as a main driver for the next 9-10 years.

Customisation and freedom to tinker with the details is great but only when you need it. Not all the time.

I ask you what can we realistically do though?

It's very apparent that budget Androids that lag like hell and break down often aren't to the general populace's taste if they have a choice -- in my "poor" country (Bulgaria) people get loans so they can buy the Galaxy S10 or Huawei P30, en masse. Most people I've known in my life buying budget Androids only did so because of money constraints. I only knew 2 people who bought cheap Androids to tinker -- and it was because they loved tinkering with tech more than having sex with their wives, or spending time with their kids, or go jogging.

I already said I am not OK with Apple lobbying against the right to repair.

But I have no recourse as a customer. My iPhone is legitimately saving me time and frustration for a no small amount of leisure and work activities. If it didn't, I'd be using a budget Xiaomi for life. But here we are.

What would you do? Would you sacrifice your free time so you can punish the big evil corporations? And how?

If the only Android phones where the cheap, shitty ones, I'd probably be on an iPhone now.

I loved Samsung while I was using Androids but they were starting to lag at the 6-9 months mark, without an exception (I owned 5 of their devices over a course of 4 years). Eventually it pissed me off.

Only Android device I legitimately loved was the Xiaomi Mi 6 (the high-end version with 6GB RAM and 128GB storage). Truthfully a masterpiece!

In the end though, my need for full and easy integration between my mobile devices and laptop (soon a desktop as well) prevailed. I arrived at the conclusion that "tinker at all costs" is not for me. There are plenty of people who do only that, I am passing the torch to them.

The current toss-it-over-the-wall-ware model is good enough. Android and Chromium technically "work" without Google, and their code is online. There are multiple Firefox forks. I don't know about OSS programs for Excel spreadsheets and Word docs, but I'm happy to sacrifice some freedom in order to never have to go down that rabbit-hole.

Instead of being hung up "but if the people just do this...", how about we formulate a new strategy based on the facts observed so far?

Trust me, I'd like some of my ideas to be funded as well. But it doesn't seem to be the world we are living in. :(

A free-as-in-freedom re-implementation of Google’s proprietary Android user space apps and libraries.

It's cool if you have a weekend's worth of time to burn on such a project and fine-tune everything to your liking. But I don't.

Is it not? Your entire post only argues "It is, but here's why it works for me...". Removing the "freedom to tinker" is taking two steps back from what a computer should be. And smartphones are growing to be the primary computing device for many, so in my mind it's ridiculous to argue them being locked-down a merit. Relying on apps from a walled-garden app store is not a solution even if it works for you or others. Many legitimate apps are banned from the Apple app store entirely, and users cannot install them even if they choose to because iOS prevents installs outside of the app store (unlike Android). I want to run my own code on my own device, freedom to do so is not "hugely overrated".

And as for privacy: what is privacy if its decided for the user and not the other way round? You cannot have true privacy without freedom, you only have Apple's definition of it. Tell Chinese Apple users about privacy, why Apple stores data in China.

And freedom extends to hardware, too. You purchase an iPhone and Apple tells you it's too dangerous for users to fix it themselves, and lobbies against right-to-repair [1]. Do you also consider freedom to repair your own devices overrated?

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19791438

Of course we should have the right to repair. And of course many Apple users aren't okay with everything Apple does -- or you thought we were all mindless worshipping drones? No. We buy Apple because it makes the most sense for our needs. That's all there is to it.

But tell me, what choice is there out there if we want alternatives? No, really. Don't give me theoreticals and "if we could only do X...". We have Android and iOS. Nothing else. Sailfish OS is very niche and not everybody likes Sony's 2-3 devices that the OS supports. W10 Mobile is dead. Google and all Android OEMS actively sabotaged any and all open-source efforts -- mostly the ROM community -- mainly by voiding warranties if you touch a single byte in the bootloader. Even the rootless unlocking techniques are attacked on a regular basis. It's a furious battle and the OEMs won.

So don't tell me Android is much better than iOS because it's very obviously not. Historical factual records show that Google is very keen on the walled garden idea as well -- and I hope you are aware of the Google Play Services situation and that "the vanilla Android" (AOSP) gets less and less useful with each release and that more and more functionality is sucked into the proprietary, closed-source, binary blob that's Google Play Services.

---

Again, what other choice of mobile ecosystems do we have?

Android's supposed increased freedom is periodically strangled away (normal file system is soon going to be a thing of the past, for example). Looks like a pretty classical bait and switch, don't you think?

Oh, and the ability to side-load apps is only useful for the 0.2% of the populace that are tech-savvy users. For everybody else it's a huge security risk.

I understand you're not OK with what Apple does -- trust me, I hate their guts for some of their policies as well. We really don't have a choice nowadays though. Apple just seems like the lesser evil compared to Google.

Now if you aimed your comment to be narrow then why broadly disregard the fact of Apple's ecosystem and related concerns as simply "supposedly" and freedom as "overrated"? There is nothing "supposed" about iOS being locked down, and "just find it on the App store" isn't viable alternative to the freedom Android offers. Neither is the contrast in the two platforms an "illusion" to merely adapt to.

> what choice is there out there if we want alternatives?

What Google does with Android remains a worry for the future, but the current-day choice simply from a matter of freedom and privacy is a LineageOS-supported device, preferably one requiring the least amount of blobs, alongside F-Droid. No Playstore and related frameworks installed. No accounts, no perpetual sign in and tracking, unlike Apple requiring you to be signed in with Apple ID even if you don't use their cloud services or just to install an app. If you must use apps that depend on Play Services, install MicroG and use Yalp. You have near full control of your device, which extends privacy since you can root, install low-level firewalls, and edit system-level files like hosts. Notice that this ecosystem is more Unix-like as opposed to just one big Apple ecosystem. You can decide yourself instead of Apple making choices for you.

With Apple, you only have one vendor, but with Android you have many choices you can make. Headphone jack? Too bad. Since iOS comes with Apple hardware, you have to discuss the two alongside each other. And for me, even ignoring the lock-down of iOS, I refuse to support Apple and vendor lock-in.

> For everybody else it's a huge security risk

Think-of-the-children fallacy. This always ignores the fact you can have the best of both - those none-the-wiser can continue using official means of installation. It also ignores the other side of the coin, developers wishing to offer programs but not interested in dealing with the Apple ecosystem - both them and users are out of luck in that case, and this can happen even if you're already on the app store if Apple decides to take down your app or developer account for whatever reason.

There is a counter argument which says that the only reason you can do those things is because the existence of open source Android forced Apple to do it or be uncompetitive with Android's features.

My primary objection to Apple is one of principle: giving up your right to code software that is hostile to the interests of a platform owner is massive loss of freedom. As Stallman put it, "Apple made it cool to go to jail".

While "deleted" might take a while (eventual consistency FTW), any company with a presence in the EU has a lot to lose if such a scheme (beyond what they declare, eg. "31 days to recover your account") ever sees the light of day.

edit: I've been subjected to Google's dark patterns for so many years that I doubt I will ever trust this company to be honest with me.

If they only use it for something where other factors affect the outcome (ad targeting, etc) they can still keep your data forever while hiding behind plausible deniability the other factors provide them (from outside, there’s no way to prove that a particular ad was served to you because of your data instead of another factor they use as input for the algorithm).

Create an account, use it to excessively look for tea pots until you predominantly get ads for tea pots. Store the cookie[0] that encodes your user id. Delete the account.

After the advertised account retention period, try the cookie again in an otherwise squeaky clean session that gives random ads without the cookie:

Tea pots? Something survived.

No tea pots? No targetting.

(and yes, the onus to demonstrate your accusation well enough to convince a DPA is on you, IMHO as it should be)

[0] or whatever bits of data are necessary: try to recreate the tea-pot session after a logout without logging in officially to determine what's necessary.

They've improved their model none the less even if you delete your data after the fact.

An anecdote: I stayed with relatives for a few days one time, and my two-year-old niece really liked one particular music video on YouTube, so it got played on their TV box 3-4 times during my visit. Not on my laptop, but I used said laptop on their wifi (not logged into Google products, as I never am). When I got home, YouTube highly recommended that video to me after I watched an unrelated video, when there was no other reason to recommend it (I didn't know the artist, almost never watch music videos, and it wasn't anything all that popular).

My IP seems to be permanently associated with my YouTube habits. They’re even being sneaky about it, as in they’ll give you a default homepage and generic recommendations first, but watching any video similar to the previous viewing habits will bring back not just videos related to that one, but the entire history they’ve collected over the years (some of the topics I watch are completely separate and would never intersect normally, so the only way for them to both come up in suggestions is from previous viewing history).

I didn’t create an account, didn’t agree to any privacy policies, and am blocking any and all cookies just like they advise in their own privacy policy and yet I am still being tracked.

"Personal data which have undergone pseudonymisation, which could be attributed to a natural person by the use of additional information should be considered to be information on an identifiable natural person" (Recital 26).

In which case you need a lawful basis for doing such processing (of which consent is just one possibility). Furthermore, that's considered "profiling" and is subject to extra rules if it can have strong impact on the person's life.

On the other hand, if the data is well mixed with other people's, preventing that recognition, then it has been anonymized, and therefore it's not longer subject to the GDPR (Recital 26). But note that you're still subject to it when you're capturing and using personal data to train that model, even if the model itself is anonymized.

Even if a company only does the bare minimum required under GDPR, total deletion of data on request is part of that.

IMO the corporate board of directors will coast on the situation for as long as possible and only then will we see some changes, don't you agree?

There are a few cases already with fines around 2.8% of revenue, and those fines don't mean the DPA will go away. The expectation is that these fines are paid _and_ the reason for the fine is resolved.

Turnover in the 2.8% case (Taxa 4x35 in Denmark) was from Fall 2018 (start of investigation) to March 2019 (when the DPA reported the incident to the police and "recommended" that fine). Sadly the only follow-ups on the case that I could find are behind paywalls (so I can't read them), but apparently the DPA isn't done with them yet.

It's all a matter of exercising pressure, and it seems that the authorities are willing to do that.

"The GDPR is open to interpretation, so we asked an EU Member State supervisory authority (CNIL in France) for clarification. CNIL confirmed that you’ll have one month to answer to a removal request, and that you don’t need to delete a backup set in order to remove an individual from it. Organizations will have to clearly explain to the data subject (using clear and plain language) that his or her personal data has been removed from production systems, but a backup copy may remain, but will expire after a certain amount of time (indicate the retention time in your communication with the data subject). Backups should only be used for restoring a technical environment, and data subject personal data should not be processed again after restore (and deleted again). While this adds some complexity, it allows organizations to have some time to re-engineer their data protection processes." https://blog.quantum.com/backup-administrators-the-1-advice-...

You are absolutely correct that following the intent of the GDPR (we don't have access to the user data once they file the request) is of utmost importance. But the prior poster is correct that the data still exists.

Edit: All opinions my own and not that of my employer, etc. etc.

GDPR covers any interaction of people or organizations in the EU.

So non-EU consumers are covered once they're visiting the EU (citizen of a member state or not), and potentially (untested, not spelled out explicitly) when they use a VPN with an endpoint in the EU (because they're then likely talking to data centers under the control of the European subsidiary).

> they don't have to afford the same protection to non-EU users

Given that "EU user" is murky like that, I'm not sure if any company goes through the trouble of differentiating which action happened from inside or outside the EU beyond raw GDPR blocking that refuse service entirely for accesses from within the EU.

If it pans out, you may want to wait for the Librem 5[1], that's definitely my next phone.

1 - https://puri.sm/products/librem-5

This came many times before and it is incorrect. If you delete your data from google, it is deleted permanently. Deletion of multiple backups takes longer, but eventually it is gone, forever.

Disclaimer: Googler.

I ordered a new old-stock Nexus 5X to run KDE Plasma on. Fuck both Google and Apple. I hope the Purism and Pinephone actually get released as well so we have more real Linux options.

I hate we live in a world with totally non-standard mobile hardware. Back in the day you could wipe Windows and run Linux on nearly anything. Maybe you would only get VESA graphics or text, but it would at least boot.

PostmarketOS is trying to make a dent in it, but we still have huge gaps in hardware support.

Sure, it's not up to the level of Android and iOS in most respects, but it takes effort to get something like this going. Also from the users. Like Linux 20 years ago.

Developing for it is not a nightmare either.

And it's running Linux so there's advantages as well.

I used it as my daily driver years ago and I've been using it as my daily driver again since six months or so.

What I meant to indicate is that it is a viable alternative to iOS and Android, available right now. (Except it's hard to get outside Europe, China, Russia and India apparently. I missed that.)

I'm seriously considering my next phone to be one I build.

The hardware is available - cheap 4G LTE modules that plug right into a Raspberry Pi Zero exist; that and a cheap touchscreen will get you around 90% of the functionality most of us need, hardware-wise. You won't have a camera, or motion sensors. You will have GPS, voice, data, a screen, storage...

Basically everything you need for most purposes. And adding a camera and an IMU isn't that difficult, either.

The difficult part is - as always - the software. But people out there are building those pieces. Quite a bit can be done using plain-old Raspbian and Python on top, because the cellular module is essentially a virtual serial port device, and everything else has simple drivers or is otherwise easy to interface to.

Where I'll probably start, though, is with the idea of a custom "cyberdeck"; I already have most if not all of the parts, I just need to find the time to do it. It's form factor will be close to what the TRS-80 Model 100 was, though the screen will be...well, different. I'm considering a few options; probably a standard 800x600 HDMI screen along with a secondary 128x64 monochrome serial GLCD.

The ultimate thing about the whole project is independence (well, as independent as I can get - still have to pay some piper - aka T-Mobile - but maybe voip over wifi could be done in the future?) - and customization.

I may not have everything I want in the beginning, but what I want may only be a bit of extra coding, a tad bit of soldering, or likely a bit (or a bunch!) of both. I'm honestly tired of the games Google and pals are playing; kicking them to the curb may be the best thing to do.

It's made by people who care about software freedom. It doesn't use the common ARM-based SoCs which require proprietary drivers and will be unusable with modern software in a few years. Everything except the cell modem (on a replaceable M.2 card connected over USB) runs 100% free software. The device as a whole runs Linux with Gnome, and Plasma Mobile + others also developing for it. The company contributes back to the OSS software they use/improve.

It doesn't have the form factor of the TRS-80 Model 100, but basically the deal you get with it is that you pay the price of a decently high end smartphone in exchange for a midrange smartphone which is completely controllable by you, as much as a normal Linux desktop, but still offers a 'pretty good' UI out of the box for normal phone usage.

[0]: https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/

How do I know that?

The first I saw about Librem was their original laptop that made clearly overstated claims about its openness. (e.g. claiming a device that used intel CPUs would have completely open firmware). After that I paid no further attention to them.

https://puri.sm/learn/freedom-roadmap/

For instance, all the firmware is completely open. The BIOS can be flashed by the user. What openness do you feel is lacking?

There must be some kind of way outta here.

How about carving out a Google-free chunk of the web, and then only visiting sites for which you're somehow certain there's zero Google in them (no Google Analytics, no DoubleClick, no fonts, none of the other junk they use to track you). Otherwise you'd be slapped in the face by a dire warning akin to those for the expired SSL certificates.

Would that be crazy?

> I'd rather just try to block the Google domains themselves.

This works to some extent but falls short of really penalizing the site owner for installing the trackers (of course, they probably lose some revenue but that's not enough).

If sites had a rating reflecting how "tracky" they are, then, given a choice, people who care would tend to pick the less tracky one. Benevolent browsers, search engines, and other tools can enable them to make this choice.

This is the key point. Google came of age during the GWB administration, when the folly of trusting government was more clear than it had been for decades, and under Schmidt's leadership Google became a major defense contractor.

It's impossible to know how much unlawful surveillance has already been done thanks to Google's collaboration/complicity.

How can Google earn back some trust? Implement warrant canaries at the google account level, decline to do business with the Pentagon, and come forward and reveal all of the shady and unethical things the firm has done, and simply ask the public for forgiveness.

A lot of the secure applications I use have a linux app of some sort (DEB, AppImage, Docker) but I fail to see how any of that is going to work on a phone.

I certainly don't see how a docker container would be good for battery life on a phone either

ProtonMail - for example - on Linux, requires a bridge application in order to talk to a IMAP capable email client.

Etesync requires a bridge in the form of a docker image.

Wire has an AppImage that I'm certain won't work well on a mobile screen. Signal has a DEB for Debian based environments and I doubt that'll play nice on mobile too.

The only real way to do a Libre phone is for me to invest entirely in the Libre ecosystem for mail, chat, VPN, everything.

if you've spent time moving your stuff into more secure and diverse sets of applications and services, and what's more - convincing friends and family to communicate with you over those very things, you'll have to migrate once more in order to use this phone.

I would bet money that Firefox doesn't even work on it in a mobile/phone-mode. You'll have to use their stock browser which will probably be based on Epiphany.

Frankly, a container-based app model sounds kinda nice!

People can't simply get rid of their cell phones. At minimum, I need one for work.

instead: https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/ (i know it's not ready, but it's coming) or https://lineageos.org/

> I loathe the notch.

To be fair, each of these either already is or is becoming the norm on Android phones as well (at least, ones at a similar price point iPhones). Several of the top end phones have notches and no headphone jack, and I haven't had an Android phone with an SD card slot for about five years now.

[edits: formatting/typos]

My DAP has 2 slots. (android based)

And it's a god send when your phone decides to boot loop and you can no longer actually get into your phone.

Oh they say - use their cloud services for the low low price of whatever. F- that.

Do you really intend this statement in regards to pure AOSP/LineageOS (ie microg)?

Yes Android will always be a product of a surveillance company, rather than being focused on user-centric security. But I would think that microg should be enough to deprivilege Google's backdoors, and generally avoiding stuff from the Play (Yalp) store should shield you from the bulk of OS-facilitated commercial surveillance. If you have information to the contrary, please share!

Obviously given the choice I'd rather run an OS not designed by a surveillance company, but it's awfully hard to find a pocket-sized computer that can. I look forward to PostmarketOS, but I don't think we're anywhere close there.

there is https://wiki.galliumos.org/Hardware_Compatibility for ChromeOS devices but on many phones, it is currently not possible to install a 3rd party OS, unless you figure out how to root them yourself... and even then, some of its hardware will probably not be compatible because they don't release drivers

I wish a Librem 4 was available (a lot cheaper then the Librem 5)

Loathe is a strong word. And I loathe everything about Apple and the iPhone.

But I think I'll get an iPhone next. And it's not even because I hate Google or because I don't like Android. I just believe in voting with my dollars. And Apple at least is masquerading as a company that makes a product and wants to sell that. I like the idea of the transaction. I buy my phone and then I own it; I'm done.

With Google, I buy the phone, and the phone owns me.