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 ilsa on Monday November 13 2017, @04:47PM (1 child)
You're going to have to compromise. The fact of the matter is that there is *nothing* in the entire industry that is ideal. Android is very flexible, and is about as secure as swiss cheese. iPhones are very secure, but are also very locked down, have poorer compatibility with other devices (Their bluetooth connectivity with cars is particularly hit or miss).
What I ended up doing was making a list of requirements, and marking them as essential, nice-to-have, etc, and make your decision based on that.
For me, flexibility in the device ended up being secondary to a device that I could trust was going to work each and every time I picked it up. I also wanted a manufacturer that "had my back" and not only provided regular, timely updates, but did so for the reasonable life of the phone. That's why I went with iPhone. Yeah, it's locked down. Yeah, Apple's politics and financial shenanigans leave a lot to be desired. But at the end of the day I was never concerned that the phone would suddenly stop working.
Contrast that with my last Samsung. An errant app installed a background service which drained my battery in a couple hours, or their bullshit touchwiz UI that made the phone harder to use, unstable, and drained additional power as well. They put out one, may be two updates, and that was it. Certainly no OS update. I ended up having to root my device and install cyanogenmod just so my phone would be halfway decent.
Fast forward to today: Google has put a lot of effort into not letting developers run roughshod over the OS. The major android manufacturers now promise to provide 2 years worth of updates (still a joke compared to Apple's avg of 5) but it's a hell of a lot better than before. I understand that they've large abandoned those idiotic UIs they shoveled in order to 'differentiate' themselves. And Apple has really screwed the pooch with iOS11. Barely 2 months old and they've already had to rush out at least 4 patch releases. Hey Siri no longer works with my car, when it had worked fine with iOS10. So for my particular use cases, the factors don't weigh overwhelmingly in Apple's favor anymore. Unfortunately my iPhone 7 is too recent to justify replacing so soon, but when the time comes, I will definitely be taking a more closer look at the available android options.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 14 2017, @03:44AM
Apparently he is willing to compromise quite a bit. From the summary: