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PinePhone Linux Smartphone Priced at $149 to Arrive This Year

posted by takyon on Friday February 01 2019, @10:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the pining-for-the-torvalds dept.

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd

Smartphone users are usually torn between the two choice — Android or iOS. Their dominance is such that other competing OS like Windows, BlackBerry OS, or Symbian have almost been abandoned.Those who don't want either of them can opt for Pine64's Linux phone dubbed the PinePhone which offers good hardware and software at an affordable rate of $149.

The phone's specs aren't great, but it does include a headphone jack (I wonder if it's capable of using the JACK audio system?) and the article notes that it may provide physical switches for disabling various components. The company behind it, Pine64, also produce the PineBook Linux laptop, which also use an ARM processor.

Source: https://fossbytes.com/pinephone-linux-smartphone-149/

Related: Kickstarter: Pine A64, Cheaper and More Powerful than Raspberry Pi 2 Model B

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Saturday February 02 2019, @03:58AM (6 children)

    by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Saturday February 02 2019, @03:58AM (#795311) Journal

    TFA mentions switches for wireless, cameras, and speaker (I'm going to assume they meant the microphone). I don't know of any precedent for having the ability to physically disable all these on a smartphone, without doing some serious surgery on the device. Considering how tightly integrated SoCs are, the claim may need to be thoroughly fact checked.

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by TheRaven on Saturday February 02 2019, @01:03PM (5 children)

    by TheRaven (270) on Saturday February 02 2019, @01:03PM (#795377) Journal
    Disabling the wireless typically means disconnecting the antenna. The WiFi chip may still be powered, but it can't communicate with anything. Similarly, disconnecting the camera is usually done by cutting the power line. The microphone is usually a single signal wire (plus return), so cutting that can turn it off. You don't need to disable anything in the SoC to render these components unusable.
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    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday February 02 2019, @01:06PM (1 child)

      by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Saturday February 02 2019, @01:06PM (#795378) Journal

      The point of the switch being that you can turn it back on!

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      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 03 2019, @05:53AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 03 2019, @05:53AM (#795609)

        Sure you can 'turn it back on'.

        Get a hole punch, and put a hole in the right place and it will 'disable' the swipe to pay functionality. The antenna is literally disconnected.

        Turning it back on may involve a bit of work, but hey, you could install a dip switch while you're there. You know, for, next time.

        Or just buy one of those aluminium wallets.

    • (Score: 2) by Arik on Sunday February 03 2019, @12:19AM (2 children)

      by Arik (4543) on Sunday February 03 2019, @12:19AM (#795505) Journal
      "Disabling the wireless typically means disconnecting the antenna. The WiFi chip may still be powered, but it can't communicate with anything."

      Not true. The wifi on these things are hostile computers running their own blobs. If it's powered on, it can communicate with anything on the bus. It needs to be powered off and/or disconnected from the bus; preferably both.
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      • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Sunday February 03 2019, @06:26PM

        by FatPhil (863) <reversethis-{if.fdsa} {ta} {tnelyos-cp}> on Sunday February 03 2019, @06:26PM (#795751) Homepage
        The wifi (often combined wifi and bluetooth) cores typically communicate with the AP on their own dedicated bus. If the wifi core wants to do evil, the OS running on the AP has to also be evil enough to cooperate. And why the AP/radio wouldn't be a master/slave setup is a mystery - the wifi saying "i have data for you" when the wifi is supposed to be off should be reason for the driver to just disable that interrupt, and possibly power down the chip - it's clearly misbehaving.
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      • (Score: 2) by TheRaven on Tuesday February 05 2019, @06:17PM

        by TheRaven (270) on Tuesday February 05 2019, @06:17PM (#796805) Journal
        That depends a bit on the SoC. Often they communicate via a high-speed serial link, rather than the memory bus. On at least some iPhones, the radio controller can only address a small amount of physical memory, which the kernel uses for DMA buffers and keeps away from any sensitive information. A lot of recent ARM cores also support an IOMMU (which ARM calls a SMMU), which can be configured to dynamically limit the range of memory that the device can access, even if it's malicious / compromised.
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