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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: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 20 2016, @01:28PM
I had to recently get a new phone and was satisified previously with my Android experience. Unfortunately this one likes to automatically turn on the wifi and waste my battery all the time. This should not be possible, even if it is due to some preeinstalled crapware. The OS should be preventing this, and if it is due to the OS itself... thats even worse.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Wednesday April 20 2016, @03:53PM
Use the supplied tools (look around setup/about/battery/battery use) and see if it will tell you what your piggie is, otherwise get something like wakelock detector. Once you know what the problem is make a decision, keep it or toss it. I assume you have root so system apps should not be a problem, right? Sometimes you have to accept a half solution, like Walmart's out of control batteryhog where it works to force quit it when done using it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 20 2016, @05:40PM
No, I haven't messed with the phone very much yet. Eventually it looks like I will have to install cyanogenmod or something else.
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Wednesday April 20 2016, @05:20PM
I've never had an android phone that turned on wifi after I turned it off. If yours does, there is something wrong in your settings.
And, just for the record, if you are at home/office with your own WIFI, using wifi SAVES battery, and it saves quite a bit of battery at that.
(its a lot easier to transmit a few packets to check mail thirty feet to your wifi router than three miles to the nearest tower).
Even out running errands, having wifi on, but not used is not the battery hog it used to be.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 20 2016, @05:26PM
I turn the data off too unless I am using it at the moment. As long as the wifi does not turn itself back on my battery can last for weeks. My point is, that if I choose a setting to "turn off wifi", then it should stay off. The fact that something is going on in the background despite me doing that (by default too, since this happened with all factory settings), is very bad.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday April 20 2016, @07:30PM
He didn't say what model. It might be some vendor installed package, and there might be no user controls. As such it wouldn't be an Android feature, but the feature of some particular vendor. And it might not be uninstallable without re-installing an OS.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Wednesday April 20 2016, @08:43PM
But I've had MANY different model from many different manufacturers and I've never ever not once found any android device that would force wifi back on when it was set to off.
Its highly suspicious.
As is his claim that it will run for weeks as long as all of his data connections are turned off. Screens burn way way more battery than radios. And I don't know a single person owning a smartphone that never looks at it, and for whom week long battery runtimes are important. People who need week long battery, and never have a need to look at a screen don't buy smartphones.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 20 2016, @09:09PM
Many people report this:
http://androidforums.com/threads/what-keeps-turning-my-wifi-back-on.754155/ [androidforums.com]
Also, I don't really want a smartphone but that is what came free with the plan. It does come in useful for 2FA though.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday April 20 2016, @09:48PM
Many people report this:
And all of them get it solved.
The thread is from 2013 for christ sake, and all recent posters were nubes.
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/android-marshmallow-app-permissions,review-3287.html [tomsguide.com]
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 20 2016, @10:55PM
Either way, I cannot rely on that device to respect the settings I choose.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 20 2016, @10:53PM
Recent versions of Android do want to periodically power up the WiFi radio and scan for nearby APs for location-guessing purposes. There's a setting whether to allow this even though WiFi is disabled (although in that cases, it's not really disabled, right?!); I'm not sure whether this setting was opt-in or opt-out. However, this scanning is done behind the scenes, while WiFi still appears disabled to the user, so it doesn't sound quite like your problem...