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posted by martyb on Monday November 13 2017, @03:39PM   Printer-friendly
from the taking-off-your-hat dept.

It's time to upgrade my phone. I'm paying $80 a year on Page Plus (Verizon) with a Window 6.x phone (before tiles, has a start menu). I'm trying to find a phone which will keep my data safe and that seems far more difficult and expensive than it should, so I'm asking you, my fellow purple people eaters Soylentils, to aid me in my mundane quest. My primary use will be GPS/navigation, listening to podcasts, and making phone calls. A secondary use is managing email from multiple accounts. I do require the Google Voice app as I have a couple phone numbers from two side businesses. I'd like to be able to toggle between a VPN connection and a normal connection, but that's not a requirement. I prefer longer battery life. My Win phone can go over a week without charging if I all I do on it is make phone calls. I'm going to be living on a college campus so WiFi will normally be available. I don't want to be buying a new phone every couple years. I've had the Win phone for perhaps 6 years.

IPhones have been in the news for being difficult for state-actors to hack into, but app permissions and data can't be faked nor do I know of any OSS movement on the iOS platform. I assume Androids can be instantly cracked by state-actors, but they have some end-user programs to help prevent apps from spying on you. I'd like it if my address book, location, and media was secure from data mining apps. Do I really need to make the choice between data privacy and state privacy? Though since companies have no issue selling data to the state, is my only choice data privacy?

My ideal choice would be a pocket sized piece of hardware that runs Debian, makes phone calls, lets me install standard Linux programs, and doesn't cost more than a laptop. Though if I can connect a screen and keyboard to it and do Python/Java/C++ development then perhaps I'll pay high-end laptop prices. I've seen failed attempts at creating such a device but no successful ones.

Help me dear readers, you're not my only hope.


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  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday November 13 2017, @05:25PM

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Monday November 13 2017, @05:25PM (#596323) Journal

    I have to agree with mhajicek. The laptops in your price range are adequate for Grandma, who only does Facefook. My son (the mathemmatician) quickly found that the cheaper laptops are only adequate to transfer work between real computers. He eventually purchased a Gen 7 Intel in the $3000 to $3500 price range. He actually does real work on that machine, within reasonable time frames.

    Another segment of the population would strongly disagree with you as well. Gamers would never consider a laptop priced in the hundreds of dollars range. They insist on powerful, fast CPU's as well as the latest generation GPU's for much the same reason my son needed that hardware. CUDA and the GTX 1080 changes everything.

    And, it has been true for as long as RAM has existed, that more memory makes everything run better. Those budget laptops never have enough memory. Never. Not even if the mainboard is capable of supporting a lot of memory, is it installed.

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