SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Fishscene on Monday November 13 2017, @04:03PM (21 children)
Requirements:
- keep my data safe (iPhone is probably best for keeping on-device data safe)
- GPS/navigation (Any Android and iPhone will do this)
- listening to podcasts (Any Android and iPhone will do this)
- making phone calls. (Any Android and iPhone will do this)
- multiple email accounts (Any Android (gmail app) and iPhone (mail app) will do this)
- Google Voice (Any Android and iPhone will do this)
- Toggle between VPN and no VPN (Any Android and iPhone will do this)
- Long battery life (~1 week). (I know of no solutions that have this long of a battery life, but I've been out of the Android game for some time now)
I get about 1.5 days of battery life on my iPhone 6, and I carefully manage the power usage.
Ideal:
- Runs Debian (Maybe: Upcoming phone: https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=17/11/12/1250234) [soylentnews.org]
- Install standard Linux programs (Maybe: Upcoming phone: https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=17/11/12/1250234) [soylentnews.org]
- doesn't cost more than a laptop (Depends on the laptop you're interested in. Me personally? I wouldn't pay less than $1500 for a laptop)
- Ability to code in Python, JAVA, C++ (Maybe: Upcoming phone: https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=17/11/12/1250234) [soylentnews.org]
So really, you're not bad off with either of the major 2 platforms, Android and iOS. Just be careful with the apps you install (for example, don't install apps or disable permissions of apps that harvest your data and sync your contacts with them (I'm looking at you, Facebook and Linkedin).
The upcoming phone seems to be heading in a direction I feel phones are eventually going to end up being - straight up computers.
I know I am not God, because every time I pray to Him, it's because I'm not perfect and thankful for what He's done.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 13 2017, @04:16PM (6 children)
One the one hand, you say things like this:
And on the other, you list the following requirements:
Those two sets are not compatible. Google Voice listens to you ALL the time and will harvest every single piece of info it gets its hands on and the GMail app will do the same.
As sad as it is, right now, iPhones are the safest devices (and I seriously dislike those).
I've been keeping an eye out for the purism phone they've bee promising and going as far as giving them money. We'll see if my excitement about it is misplaced...
(Score: 2) by Kilo110 on Monday November 13 2017, @04:28PM (1 child)
Well those appear to be the OP's requirements, not the person you were replying to.
Although I do agree about iphone currently being the most safest. I begrudgingly switched from android to iphone for this reason after apple held their ground after the San Bernardino attack.
For all I know, Apple did privately cave to the US gov. But even that is a major step up from every other company that rolls over for Uncle Sam at the slightest sign of trouble.
(Score: 3, Informative) by urza9814 on Tuesday November 14 2017, @06:37PM
As usual, I'm going to throw a mention of LineageOS in here.
Particularly with the multiple recent cases of phones coming with spyware pre-installed, I'd say it's not a bad idea to dump the stock firmware no matter what you buy. And you've got no alternatives on an iPhone, so those are out of the question unless you have a lot of trust in Apple, which I personally do not. You've also gotta consider updates...you won't get six years of support from any stock Android; and while Apple might *technically* support their old hardware, the new OSes usually just get slower and slower. But LineageOS is open source so it'll support old hardware indefinitely. If anything happens to the project it'll get forked and keep going (already happened once -- it used to be Cyanogenmod) and it's very customizable with no bloatware included which keeps it responsive even on slow or old devices.
So grab a compatible Android phone (which is pretty much anything that's reasonably popular) and install an open-source rom like LineageOS. If you don't trust Google you can skip ALL the Goog components (although OP probably would want at least the play store since he's already got GVoice.) You can get full Debian in an app already, the only thing Samsung's new app is bringing is "official support." If you search the app store for "Debian" there's several options available, and I've used those successfully in the past. You'd probably want a keyboard and mouse though at least, it's not a *great* experience but it works.
I've currently done all of that with a Galaxy S5 which I'm quite happy with, although my next one will probably be a Oneplus. Wouldn't trust the stock Samsung rom very much (and certainly not a stock oneplus rom!), but it's great hardware once you put LineageOS on it. Battery life is a bit lacking, particularly now that it's over 3 years old, but the battery is accessible and replaceable at least. That's going to be the biggest issue with the OP's requirements I think...but you can always get a good battery bank; I've got an Anker one for around $30 with a 10 amp capacity that easily fits in my pocket with my phone (it's about the same size as the phone) so if you get used to carrying that you could run for a week even with pretty heavy usage. You could also look into getting a battery case perhaps but I prefer a nice big Otterbox...any time someone asks about the case I pick up my phone and whip it across the room...that thing is excellent :)
So yeah, OP is going to need to buy components rather than a single device...look into the last generation flagship phones and see if the savings are worthwhile (Galaxys usually drop fast; the Oneplus looks like they might not); put LineageOS on it and get a Debian app; add a nice case (if you want to keep it six years, get something sturdy!) and a battery bank; and probably add a bluetooth keyboard and mouse too. And maybe an HDMI cable if you want to connect the thing to a screen to get the best use from having Debian there. You can probably put that together for $500-$700, more if you get the latest and greatest phone, possibly less if you find a cheap phone...but if you're intending to make it last six years I'd stick with something fairly high end.
(Score: 2) by Fishscene on Monday November 13 2017, @10:29PM (1 child)
That might be the behavior on Android, but I use iPhone with the Google Voice app and the default mail app and this is not the behavior at all. I wasn't aware this was occurring on Android. Sorry about that. Thanks for posting!
I know I am not God, because every time I pray to Him, it's because I'm not perfect and thankful for what He's done.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 14 2017, @01:46AM
It doesn't occur on Android either as far as I can tell and I've been running google voice for years. Unless he has some concrete evidence to back that up I think its bullshit. Personally I think he's conflating Google Voice with Android's "Ok Google" features which DOES listen all the time but can be easily disabled.
Also for the OP, I would question the idea that android's encryption can be cracked "instantly" but its moot anyway. Android has a plethora of apps which can encrypt individual files or provide encrypted "containers" that can be reencrypted at will and which are device agnostic. The app EDS specifically supports TrueCrypt, VeraCrypt, LUKS, and EncFs container formats (I'm not affiliated with EDS in any way, just using it as an example).
I think as far as the OP is concerned, both Android and iOS will provide most of what he is looking for. Newer Samsung phones can even run linux distros with a full display and keyboard using their Dex dock attachment and the Linux on Galaxy app. A caveat here is that the kernel underlying any Linux os you run will be the same kernel the Android OS is running on.
In general however you can install linux on an Android phone as long as you have an unlocked bootloader. People have been doing this for years, its nothing new. Unfortunately an unlocked bootloader is becoming something of a rarity in the US market.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 13 2017, @11:31PM (1 child)
iPhones are the safest in what sense? They are completely proprietary walled gardens, which means you can't verify how "safe" they really are. However, Android is only marginally better, since it includes many proprietary blobs.
(Score: 2) by Demena on Tuesday November 14 2017, @06:40AM
You know by now this is false. Get thee to thy leaky bridge.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Monday November 13 2017, @04:20PM (3 children)
After $700-1000 (on-sale prices) you are throwing away money. Build quality, screen resolution, and CPU/GPU should be good enough in that range, and you can add your own RAM or SSD.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday November 13 2017, @04:57PM
Depends on your requirements. Some people just need more horsepower. My work laptop was around $3600, with a Quaddro card.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday November 13 2017, @05:25PM
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.
(Score: 2) by Fishscene on Monday November 13 2017, @10:34PM
I did a poor job of elaborating on this. Basically, laptop price ranges can be quite subjective and very dependent on each person's use-case. For me, I play games and run multiple virtualmachines (although not both games and VM's at the same time) plus a little bit of "future proofing". So $1500 for me personally is the lowest I'd consider spending. For a lot of folks, $500 would be more than enough for a laptop that meets their needs.
Thanks for chiming in!
I know I am not God, because every time I pray to Him, it's because I'm not perfect and thankful for what He's done.
(Score: 4, Informative) by WizardFusion on Monday November 13 2017, @04:27PM (5 children)
At least with modern Android (7.0+) you can say which apps have access to what. For example, that shiny new game, you can disable access to your contacts.
Installing NoRootFilewall (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.greyshirts.firewall/ [google.com]) will also allow you to stop apps from accessing the internet and sending your data somewhere.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday November 13 2017, @04:59PM (1 child)
I'm getting an error on your link.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by WizardFusion on Monday November 13 2017, @05:25PM
There is an extra slash at the end. I can't get the hang of the sites URL format.!
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday November 13 2017, @05:05PM
Found it by searching on the store. Thanks!
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by Demena on Tuesday November 14 2017, @06:44AM
Been doing that on my obsolete iPhone for years. Is that really new on android? I sorta doubt that. Too many people have bought android for security
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 14 2017, @01:40PM
Did you mean NoRootFirewall instead of NoRootFileWall? Also, why doesn't the description page contain a link to the dependencies? We all know the games that get played with giving apps similar names. There are all sorts of results with "no root" in the name...
(Score: 2) by cosurgi on Monday November 13 2017, @04:53PM (1 child)
The OP has a great question. And I so much hope that sometime it would have a better answer than it has currently. I look forward very much towards https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=17/11/12/1250234 [soylentnews.org] and it is very saddening right now that the options are so little right now and the open source way is so difficult to follow. The worst though is a battery life. And none of the producers seem to be aware of that! I have iphone 5s right now, and battery hardly lasts 10hours, and that's normal - it was even replaced on warranty (twice) due to "battery issues", but that didn't help. Routinely I have to enable "battery conservation mode" and have most apps denied the right to run in backgroud, especially siri must be disabled. Sometimes it discharges before I get back home from work. Before I switched to those fancy smartphones I had some super old brickphone nokia 33?? and its battery lasted roughly two weeks.
The "walled garden" hurts. But I prefer that iOS has every app sandboxed. Sure there are vulnerabilities, and due diligence applies, though they are not as widespread as on android. Also it's nearly impossible to update android phone to the latest version of OS. Seriously I tried, and my relative is stuck with an android 5.1.2 or something (don't remember now, but there was soylentnews article about this vulnerability a month back), the latest one with that unpatched serious kernel vulnerability. And there's nothing I could do about that without wasting about 50hours. The iOS updates sure have their own problems, but usually they don't require 50hours, 1hour tops, just like aptitude update; aptitude dist-upgrade takes 2hours tops. Yeah, hacking android is good, but I have limited time on my hands - so I prefer debian over android. And sure I look forward towards a debian based phone.
Regarding privacy, you can block every app separately in settings->privacy to not have access to anything. You just have to deny by default everytime an app asks for permissions (thankfully they have to ask, the OS denies access otherwise). So apps can get really confused without having access to some stuff, this can get funny sometimes, then the app gets uninstalled ;)
About email client - I recommend "Spark" it's a good one. You can configure it to connect to your own email server which you could have configured at home (maybe squirrelmail or roundcube on debian ;)), then you are more private than with usual email clients. Because it doesn't "send telemetry data" like all other email clients do. Also they have a decent support, they might even help with configuring your stuff. If you go this way, then still spark is a good email client, with which just like with any other email client your privacy goes out of the window. I wish that weren't true.
#
#\ @ ? [adom.de] Colonize Mars [kozicki.pl]
#
(Score: 2) by cosurgi on Monday November 13 2017, @04:57PM
lol, forgot a "not" i critical place ;) Should be "If you do NOT go this way (of privacy), then still spark is a good email client"
#
#\ @ ? [adom.de] Colonize Mars [kozicki.pl]
#
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 13 2017, @06:15PM
Want to run Linux on your phone? Wait and see whether Samsung's "concept demo" is vaporware, or get a Nokia N9 or N900 today.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by vux984 on Tuesday November 14 2017, @12:16AM
For me, the larger 'threat' is the crap from corporations and android gives you more control over that. And more flexibility in general, and alternate app stores for humblebundle, and f-droid etc. So for me, android wins.
I can't really see a scenario where iphone is really better. If you want to store stuff on your phone and be more secure from state actors, I think it has the definite edge. Has anyone played with the latest samsung knox? How does it compare?
But in my opinion if you have anything you really want private don't put it on your phone in the first place. Period. setup a VPN to a server you control, and store your stuff there; send your messages from there, etc. Don't use an 'app' that leaves a footprint on your phone.
For example, setup a vpn, ssh into a PC you control, and use IRC or telegram-cli (command line) from there. No trace on your phone, not even if they compromise it.
Iphone or Android can both do that. Its more inconvenient of course... but that's the price of security.