I want a computer that I own

Re:I want a computer that I own by superkuh on Monday March 08, 2021 @09:57PM (#26394916)

You will never own your smartphone. That would require you to be the licensed operator for the radio transmission. Instead the radio is licensed to the telco (or related) and the telcos have every regulatory and monetary incentive to prevent users from being able to access or control the radio. The government regulators demand the user not have control and the baseband modem manufacturer(s) demand their licensed intellectual property is not exposed.

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Re:I want a computer that I own by taneq on Monday March 08, 2021 @10:56PM (#26395259)

Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. There are valid reasons to lock down the radio, that doesn't mean we have to accept every smartphone vendor, app author and cloud service provider violating your privacy in every possible way they can think of.

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Re:I want a computer that I own by superkuh on Tuesday March 09, 2021 @11:39AM (#26400515)

Don't let good be the enemy of change. Don't use smart phones except when you literally are mobile. Use a real computer for computing.

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Re:I want a computer that I own by p1necone on Monday March 08, 2021 @09:58PM (#26394923)

You can buy a usb cellphone modem for a PC, the rest of the system still belongs to you.

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Re:I want a computer that I own by mceachen on Monday March 08, 2021 @10:54PM (#26395248)

While this may seem terribly ungainly, Nokia had a debian-based, smartphone-sized touchscreen tablet 18 months before the iPhone was released. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_770_Internet_Tablet

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Re:I want a computer that I own by rsync on Tuesday March 09, 2021 @10:42AM (#26399850)

This isn’t the slam dunk that people think it is, unfortunately.

You see, in addition to controlling the cellular radio and all of those details, the bass band processor also does real time noise cancellation and a variety of other call quality functions that you would immediately miss if they were not there.

That processor is actually doing a lot of different things and is difficult to remove from a phone and maintain what most people would consider an acceptable user experience.

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Re:I want a computer that I own by lupire on Wednesday March 10, 2021 @02:17PM (#26414947)

I guess, but VOIP and wifi calling works.

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Re:I want a computer that I own by superkuh on Monday March 08, 2021 @10:00PM (#26394937)

I agree. That's the best way to go. But it is not mutually exclusive with never being able to own your smartphone.

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Re:I want a computer that I own by p1necone on Tuesday March 09, 2021 @05:56PM (#26405604)

My point was more that if you can have a fully free PC except for the cellphone modem, then you can also have a fully free cellphone except for the modem. There's nothing about the rest of the cellphone that's any different from any other computing device.

As another commenter pointed out - the Pinephone is device attempting to do that.

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Re:I want a computer that I own by SilverRed on Monday March 08, 2021 @10:21PM (#26395060)

There is no reason we can't have a proprietary radio chip connected to an open source phone.

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Re:I want a computer that I own by mPReDiToR on Tuesday March 09, 2021 @07:11AM (#26398062)

As sibling comment says, PinePhone works like this FOR NOW. OSS version is being built, but like a few things on PP "not quite ready".

When they are ready, get one. They'll be amazing no matter which OS you end up with.

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Re:I want a computer that I own by frosted-flakes on Monday March 08, 2021 @11:00PM (#26395284)

I think that's how the Pine phone works. All of the components and software are open source, except the cellular radio.

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Re:I want a computer that I own by Scene_Cast2 on Monday March 08, 2021 @11:38PM (#26395454)

With regular phones, the radio stuff is pretty darn separate, too (and in case of Snapdragon 865, on a separate chip).

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Re:I want a computer that I own by skizm on Monday March 08, 2021 @10:06PM (#26394970)

Can I just have a wifi only phone and then have a separate wifi hotspot that actually does the connecting to the cell network? The hotspot wouldn't be "owned" but the phone could be.

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Re:I want a computer that I own by xnyan on Monday March 08, 2021 @10:22PM (#26395066)

You’ve drilled down to the critical issue - batteries. For better or worse, we have observed there’s a limit as to how much stuff people will willingly carry on the regular. Current phones barely fit in that space envelope. Make a phone twice as big or require a separate device, and for most users this is equivalent to not carrying a cellphone.

I don’t think the current dominance of the big two can end until the hardware and software requirements of making a good phone are much much more accessible to normal developers/engineers than they are today.

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Re:I want a computer that I own by GoOnThenDoTell on Tuesday March 09, 2021 @01:43AM (#26396111)

You can make the phone 5 times thicker though, I remember the late 90s and it was still carried everywhere

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Re:I want a computer that I own by fsflover on Tuesday March 09, 2021 @03:46AM (#26396698)

That's what Purism did with Librem 5. Wifi and cellular modem are both removable.

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Re:I want a computer that I own by taneq on Monday March 08, 2021 @10:57PM (#26395263)

You could essentially do just that using a small tablet or other device (Raspberry Pi?) and VOIP calling through a WiFi hotspot.

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Re:I want a computer that I own by hakfoo on Tuesday March 09, 2021 @12:37AM (#26395769)

I never understood why they don't sealed box the wireless stuff then.

I could imagine a family of cellular and Wi-Fi devices that present as Ethernet bridges. They'd offer a configuration interface reminiscent of home routers (go to a magic IP either with a REST API or a browser-controllable menu). This eliminates a lot of the delicate, externally facing configuration options and has the side benefit of eliminating a lot of driver development hassle, especially on low-popularity OSs.

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Re:I want a computer that I own by detaro on Tuesday March 09, 2021 @12:42AM (#26395801)

It is an isolated peripheral in many smartphones. Whatever you do, there is of course a risk malicious code could break out of the isolation, true for your Ethernet proposal too.

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Re:I want a computer that I own by a1369209993 on Tuesday March 09, 2021 @02:57AM (#26396453)

Having a malicious device on the other other end of a Ethernet connection is much less of a problem than having a malicious device that can DMA into main memory, which is something the baseband in Apple/Android phones at least allegedly can do.

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Re:I want a computer that I own by saagarjha on Tuesday March 09, 2021 @05:21AM (#26397314)

This hasn't been true on iOS devices for a while, and I would expect that Android device manufactures have been making improvements here as well.

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Re:I want a computer that I own by mPReDiToR on Tuesday March 09, 2021 @07:13AM (#26398068)

On PinePhone it's a USB attached modem.

They do do this.

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Re:I want a computer that I own by jrm4 on Monday March 08, 2021 @11:30PM (#26395417)

Except we have very literal and clear precedent for changing this, e.g. AT&T and the Carter Hush-a-Phone.

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