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Phones can only last so long and my admittedly ancient BlackBerry Curve took one-too-many tumbles and now needs to be replaced. Thanks to recent changes in the cell-phone market, I'm looking to purchase a phone, outright, and get a month-to-month plan for it.
I am very privacy conscious and have, so far, avoided Apple (walled garden - blegh) or Android (tell Google everything). I suspect there are fellow Soylentils who hold a similar perspective. (My current cell provider is US Cellular. I'm open to change, but would like to avoid AT&T and Verizon --- have heard too many horror stories.)
Background: I've been programming computers since the 1970s. I've tried using Apple products, but it seems they are user-friendly to the extent that you want to do what they have already decided is okay. They seem to expose a bare minimum of controls to allow customization. That would frustrate me to no end.
So, that leaves me with Android as the other major alternative. I am leery about giving any more info to Google than necessary -- given a choice, I regularly choose an alternative over a Google product (i.e. DuckDuckGo for search, openstreetmap, etc.)
My thoughts, at the moment, are to get a phone and load cyanogenmod on it. I've read good things about the privacy capabilities it provides; especially fine-grained allow/deny access permissions. Added bonus is ability to apply updates more frequently than a telco-branded phone would provide. I have no experience with rooting/flashing a phone, so I need this process to be as idiot-proof as possible. Also, I'm leery of getting a phone only to see support for it dropped shortly thereafter.
[Continues...]
Must-have: SOLID cellular reception (my apartment seems to have plaster walls - the BB still got great reception), removable battery, removable storage (micro-SD card), WiFi, LTE (USA), good camera, and fine-grained permissions control.
Nice-to-have: hardware keyboard, tethering (i.e. use my phone to get an internet connection that I'd share with my laptop), FM Radio.
REALLY nice to have: Ability to bring up a terminal window and have full CLI ability (e.g. bash) where I could edit/run custom scripts/programs.
Size/specs: I do not want or need a phablet or the latest/greatest processors. I'm reminded of the adage to buy last-year's top-of-the-line model. For some degree of future-proofing, would like to be able to view 1080p content on it.
Other: What did I forget? What things do you wish you knew that you only found out after you got your phone?
My main system runs Win 7 Pro but I could also run a live CD with some Linux distro.
What have your experiences been? Both positive and negative? Please save me from making a mistake that you have already learned from!
I'm looking to replace my phone within the next day or so. I've been impressed with the shared knowledge of this community -- please help!
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 20 2016, @01:26PM
I've been happy running a VZW M8 on Cyanogen. It's been running it for almost two years and I did have to pay for the initial exploit kit that allowed me to flash an unlocked bootloader.
In general, start with a phone that has specs you like that Cyanogen supports. Then read the xda-developers.com forums for your chosen model of phone to see if it is currently possible to get the bootloader unlocked and what it entails. If forums say phone still good and locked down, pick another Cyanogen supported model and try again.
I must note there are two levels of gaining control of a phone or tab. There is mere rooting and there is having the bootloader unlocked. It will often be the case that a phone has only had root achieved and pretty much only has heavily customized variants of the stock oem load available. Some of these aren't bad. I ran a VZW 4G LTE Incredible with such a load and avoiding "Google Play Services" is at least possible in that they have to be flashed after the fact anyway.
Sometimes a clever dev will figure out how to bootstrap another room entirely using the stock loader to load some kind of "rom launcher". The gold standard is an unlocked bootloader because that lets you flash any firmware that will capably run the phone.
(Score: 1) by mmlj4 on Wednesday April 20 2016, @01:59PM
HTC is/was notorious for hamstringing the bluetooth stack, such that I was unable to use a fold-up keyboard I'd paid $100 for. Does cyanogen alleviate that problem?
Need a Linux consultant [joeykelly.net] in New Orleans?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 20 2016, @05:08PM
Good question. I never used one with it. It is quite likely a gimped driver so if Cyanogen supplies a kernel compatible with the blobs the phone needs to run then ... maybe it fixes your problem. OTG cables are something else that are commonly gimped but replacement kernel packages for the phone can fix.