I got a pixel 4a and put grapheneOS on it with a bunch of FOSS apps sourced from recommendations of the awesome people here. Actually remarkably little hassle, although transferring contacts was a pain in the arse. I always find with privacy/FOSS/non-mainstream computer stuff its all well and good at the start when I still have the energy for it but six months down the line shit breaks and needs weird manual updates and I really can't be bothered so it becomes increasingly unusable, but this seems remarkably streamlined so I guess it's kinda a good balance?
Felt suuuuuuuuuper dirty giving money to google but I'd rather that than giving them all my data
But it works well, and its pretty much the only phone available that isnt ridiculously oversized
I know nothing about the pinephone, but there's my experience anyway fwiw
Consider getting a used Pixel and check CalyxOS 'cause more user friendly (can use microg for example)
Yeah Graphene doesn't support microg. I don't know about microg using proprietary code but at least it'll be there if you need it. Also I hear Calyx is faster
Yeah. I'd say either the 4a or the 5. I have the Pinephone and as much as I love the idea of a Linux based phone, its just not anywhere close to being a viable daily driver. There was a recent custom kernel that was put out (that I've been meaning to try) that is supposed to improve the battery life, which would help a lot.
Definitely the pixel. The pinephone, while being a very cool piece of technology, is simply not suitable for use as a smartphone daily. Imagine telling your friends, family, or work if you're on call, that you can't join their WhatsApp, telegram or signal group/reply to their messages/recieve phone calls on certain networks/etc, because your phone can't reliably do that. Get the pixel, if you're concerned about privacy and that sort of thing install a reliable custom ROM and microg if you want to use Google apps and services (otherwise just use some FOSS alternatives).
Hey I actually use a pinephone as my daily driver AMA
...aaaand I would not recommend it lmao... it works great for me, but most of the distros for it just aren't going to be able to be as "useful" as an android phone. In the last year or so I've realized I don't really need or want a phone so I moved my sim card from my LG v20 to my pinephone (braveheart edition).
Texting, calling, and using data actually works pretty well, but mms seems broken for me at the moment. I mostly use it just so I have a phone number and can sign up for shit that needs one. I also use fractal on it for matrix (friends and family use matrix), but it doesn't support encrypted messages yet which is annoying. The battery life isn't great and I don't really have any way to use maps for it. Like I said I basically don't need a phone, I don't even bring it with me most days unless I'm hiking. I keep music and podcasts on it and it works fine for that, but yea if you're looking for a normal smartphone experience get an old android phone (I'd still suggest the lg v20 996 on ebay since it's got a replaceable battery, but it relatively new and fast).
Someone on the GOS matrix chat completely poopooed the idea of radio switches. Not sure what that tells you but there you go. I think it's the idea that if you trust your OS, why rely on switches
The modem in every cell phone has proprietary drivers. You might know what every line of your OS does but that modem is doing it's own thing outside of your control and can receive new updates and instructions from cell towers.
Yeah ok, seems like a lot of paranoia over drivers that are likely to be simple but I get it
Depending on how the phone is designed the radios have equal or greater precedence to your own CPUs protections so knowing what it’s running is valuable.
There was bullshit youtube Eceleb drama where this channel Techlore started shitting on Daniel Micay, the creator of graphene because Daniel didn't want to affiliate with any youtube channel. Now that's all over the internet, how 'toxic' the community is and AFAIK it's nonsense. The Matrix chat has some mods who are nerds and antagonistic towards ignorant questions but it's nothing out of the ordinary for nerdy internet stuff. Shouldn't turn you off of graphene tho, installation is very easy, chat isn't even necessary. If you don't need microg you should definitely do graphene
that's funny, the GOS people actually insist that apple has really good security, which I trust is true but the tradeoff obviously is that everything you do is fingerprinted by your Apple ID and why on earth would we trust apple with all of that information
that's true about privacy, certainly. GOS people also say that windows/apple are much more secure than linux, which might be true but again that's unhelpful to the average person who is not a High-Value Target, Literally Edward Snowden type of person, and is much more likely to be passively tracked by these corporations than actively targeted and attacked by a hacker
i just don't understand security without privacy, why care at all then
and apple have poured a lot of money into their privacy advertising campaigns, so people fall for that too
Apple is basically the Democratic Party of phone manufacturers. All they need to do is say "AT LEAST WE'RE NOT
TRUMPGOOGLE!" and everyone acts like the bIdenPhone has single-handedly rescued society from the brink of tech dystopia.
Pixel 4a has massive screen issues. Avoid it
https://www.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/klas5q/pinch_to_zoom_not_working_on_4a_after_update/
That's my post lol. You might be fine but I literally went through 3 screens on my pixel before I ditched it. Two of those were incidents where the glass wasn't broken but the screen was completely unresponsive. According to the repair guy I talked to the screen is super thin
I've been using the Zenfone 6 for about a year and a half now and it's pretty solid. Also doesn't have a front facing camera if that's something that weirds you out.
They released an official bootloader unlocking tool too, but I haven't used it because it's still getting OTA updates the the latest Android
Edit: looks like the 7 is out and they aren't making the 6 anymore
