Privacy

31859 readers

139 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
Don't promote proprietary software
Try to keep things on topic
If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
Be nice :)

Related communities

Chat rooms

[Matrix/Element]Dead
Discord

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Next smartphone I buy, which one do you recommend? (lemmy.world)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

155 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Things that make me angry about my current smartphone Samsung Galaxy S21Ultra on a Verizon plan is the mandatory software updates in which they install WITHOUT MY PERMISSION stupid apps like Netflix and addictive gambling games and stacking block games and Candy crush. God knows what else they install without my permission. I don't want any of it!

Next phone I buy I want to start with a clean slate, I'm not going to affiliate with any conglomerate like Verizon or AT&T or Sprint or T-Mobile etc, I prefer to go rogue somehow,

which smartphone do you recommend that has no bloatware and it's customizable?

(page 3) 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (4 children)

PInephone! A bit of work, requiring to not being shy opening the hood of a linux system. but totally worth it, the reward is freedom and its continuous cycle of collective learning...

(although the Pinephone is not really a "smartphone" in the sense most people use that word: a restricted computer that allows to run wallgarden applications.... a pinephone doesnt natively run "smartphone apps" and is more like a full-blown, general purpose computer running GNU/linux that also contains a modem enabling calls, sms and data...)

load more comments (4 replies)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

Murena phones are basically Fairphone with /e/OS https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki//e/_(operating_system) with IMHO compare to GrapheneOS.

Their privacy features are really good. It replace Google Services with an open source equivalent. Not sure I can deploy Google applications.

The result is a smartphone mostly degoogled, a good UX and you 'feel' the privacy features without being annoyed by them.

EDIT: changed "completely degoogled" to "mostly degoogled".

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The Smartphone is not completely degoogled. Please check before posting such statements. It can not be compared to Graphene. Graphene is far ahead.

See: https://divestos.org/misc/e.txt for a list of issues

/e/ is very slow in terms of security updates and they rely on some google services.

The only point you can make: If you want it easy and you don't care about security and less google but not degoogled is okay for you, /e/ is your choice.

But please stay away from Fairphone. They have several hardware issues even in more than one generation (for example ghost inputs in 3 and 4) but they do not accept them and try to solve with software update which surprisingly did not work. And if you use /e/ you don't geht support from FP side.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago

Thank you for sharing your insights and valuable information. I appreciate the effort you put into your response. However, I sense a potential bias in your answer, particularly concerning the original question posed by the OP.

The OP was seeking advice on a smartphone without bloatware and with a high level of customizability, which I believe is the central focus of the discussion.

While I understand that security updates may be a concern for some users, it's worth noting that as of the October release notes (https://gitlab.e.foundation/e/os/releases/-/releases/v1.16-s), the integration of security fixes extends up to September.

Regarding support, I recommended the Murena phone, which comes with /e/OS out of the box and is based on the Fairphone + /e/OS combination. It's important to clarify that Murena is a commercial French company, meaning that support comes from them rather than directly from Fairphone. However, this arrangement offers the benefit of commercial protection, including a 2-year warranty. I also feel a little bit unfair the comment about support, as I think that installing GrapheneOS on any device will probably cut you from support from hardware and you will rely one GrapheneOS, that I'm sure has a very good support, but doesn't have any obligation to replace the device is a problem occur.

I also want to express my gratitude for the link you provided (https://divestos.org/misc/e.txt). Additionally, based on my personal experience, none of the mentioned bugs have affected me. This could be attributed to my use of the F-Droid store, allowing me to benefit from updates available there as well.

Once again, thank you for your input, and I hope this further clarifies the points discussed. I know that I have a specific usage of my phone, but I think the value of my proposal remains.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Murena phones are basically Fairphone with /e/OS

One of the main features of Fairphones is that they are easily repairable - it doesn't look like Murena has done anything to make it easier to fix.

load more comments (2 replies)

load more comments