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News, news analysis, and commentary on the latest trends in cybersecurity technology.
Smartphones That Help You Bust Out of the Android/iOS Ecosystem
If you are in the market for a smartphone but want to break away from the Apple-Google duopoly, look no further: These alternative smartphones are based on various Linux variants and custom hardware.
December 16, 2023
![South Georgia, St. Andrew's Bay. King penguins (Aptenodytes patagonica) looking at cell phone on a tripod South Georgia, St. Andrew's Bay. King penguins (Aptenodytes patagonica) looking at cell phone on a tripod](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt6d90778a997de1cd/blteca0d42ecb7c2fd1/65711d52f2f046040a64427b/penguins-Cindy_Hopkins-alamy.jpg?width=700&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale)
Source: Cindy Hopkins via Alamy Stock Photo
Purism makes an entire line of devices and its own open source operating system, PureOS, that it says is not based on Android or iOS. (You can download the OS separately, to try on your own devices.) That's technically true, although some might consider it a touch misleading because both Android and PureOS are based on Linux. PureOS runs on most of the devices Purism sells, from the Librem 11 tablet to the Librem Mini desktop. It's not specifically a mobile OS, which means if you learn how to use the phone, you'll be able to use any other products from the company.
The company also sells SIMs and cellular services based on the T-Mobile backbone, with the promise of not selling your information to data brokers. This alone might be a selling point, and, indeed, you can subscribe to the AweSIM, SIMple, or SIMple Plus plans for any unlocked 4G-LTE/5G-LTE GSM phone.
The kill switches to let users turn off Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, cellular connections — along with the camera and microphone — are easy-to-access physical switches on the side of the phone. The Librem 5 also comes with schematics and X-rays so that you can confirm that nobody's tucked a listening device into the board.
A user on Mastodon noted one of the challenges of moving away from established Android and iOS ecosystems: "The boot chain can be subverted pretty easily, there are fewer compatible OS choices, and it's bulky."
Purism promises "security updates, privacy improvements, bug fixes, and new features ... for the lifetime of your device." In contrast, Google provides operating system updates for only three years and security updates for five, and Apple provides updates for five years. Five years sounds like a long time, but people still use iPhone 6, which is seven years old.
A final thing I appreciate is that the company runs its own Mastodon instance, and its employees seem to respond to reported issues in much the same way that you used to tweet at a company and get a response more quickly than the company's website. For example, a user posted about a specific GPS issue on Mastodon and heard back from a Purism developer the same day.
$999 on Purism
Fairphone's main emphasis is on environmental issues, but you can get its Fairphone 4 with /e/OS — an open source operating system created by Murena — installed instead of Android.
/e/OS is an Android fork that says it improves privacy by swapping in microG for Google Services, replacing the Google search engine and shunning Google servers, in general. A feature that may help pry users out of the Google ecosystem is Murena's cloud service, which gives users a gigabyte of free backup storage, as well as paid plans that provide more room. The operating system also bypasses Google servers in another important aspect: It includes default apps written for /e/OS that cover email, calendaring, chat, and other common tasks. Instead of Google Play, apps are available through the App Lounge, which encompasses open source apps from F-Droid, progressive Web apps, and Android apps from Google Play.
And if you do install Android apps, Advanced Privacy lets you block trackers and obscure your physical location and IP address.
The idea behind the Fairphone is to build smartphones more ethically by using what the company calls "fair materials," by paying its factory workers better wages and reducing waste through encouraging users to repair their phones rather than replace them. Like the Librem, it has a replaceable battery; the Fairphone also has user-replaceable front and back camera modules, screen, USB port, earpiece, and loudspeaker. The one downside is that the design does not appear to be user-upgradeable; you can't replace the USB port with a headphone jack, for example, or swap in a more advanced camera.
One minor downside is the length of software support. Murena says it "aim[s] to support with at least 5 years of software updates and security patches," but "aim to support" sounds like an intention, not a guarantee. If you keep your Fairphone going for longer than that, however, you could conceivably just install another operating system that keeps the patches coming.
The latest Volla Phone, the X23, is particularly beautiful, with a glossy shell that just looks like it should be a flagship device. It ships with your choice of operating system: its own AOSP-based Volla OS, which runs most Android apps, or Ubuntu Touch OS, a GNU/Linux-based mobile OS with its own app ecosystem. The X23 also has some convenient hardware features, like a user-replaceable battery, a headphone jack, and a microSD slot. But it's what it doesn't have — Google trackers — that makes it stand out from the pretty phones you can get through your mobile network provider.
The Volla OS, another de-Googled version of Android, installs F-Droid for downloading open source apps, as well as the Aurora app store for Android, which promises not to include any apps with telemetry services or ads. From Volla's FAQ, it seems like Aurora creates an anonymous way to download apps from Google Play without logging into a Google account or installing Google Mobile Services, which could violate the Google Play terms of service.
€524 from Volla (If you live outside of Europe, you're out of luck — unless you happen into one of the company's Indiegogo campaigns.)
Find me on Mastodon to see what I think of this phone, once it arrives.
In case you didn't notice the name of this phone model, the PinePhone Beta Edition is meant for early adopters and Linux users. You can also get the Pro Explorer Edition for $399, but its warnings are even more dire — that model is for developers, and it's pre-beta.
The operating system is a flavor of Linux, specifically Manjaro with Plasma Mobile OS build. It comes with some apps preinstalled, such as a calendar and a photo app. You can search for more apps on sites such as Linux Phone Apps, F-Droid, or Flathub. Flatpak, which hosts Flathub, isolates apps from other apps by running them in a sandbox.
Like the Librem, the PinePhone has physical kill switches — although somewhat inconveniently, you have to pop the face off the phone to get to them. Even so, it isn't so bad: I found the handset easy to open, and the parts inside are easy to get to and service, as you'd expect from an enthusiast device.
In short, you can set up the PinePhone to be pretty secure, and it also benefits from obscurity, but it's hackable, like all the Linux-based phones here (and really, just about everything, including your smart fridge).
$199 from Pine64
Find me on Mastodon to read more about what I think of this phone, which is on my sewing table right now.
In case you didn't notice the name of this phone model, the PinePhone Beta Edition is meant for early adopters and Linux users. You can also get the Pro Explorer Edition for $399, but its warnings are even more dire — that model is for developers, and it's pre-beta.
The operating system is a flavor of Linux, specifically Manjaro with Plasma Mobile OS build. It comes with some apps preinstalled, such as a calendar and a photo app. You can search for more apps on sites such as Linux Phone Apps, F-Droid, or Flathub. Flatpak, which hosts Flathub, isolates apps from other apps by running them in a sandbox.
Like the Librem, the PinePhone has physical kill switches — although somewhat inconveniently, you have to pop the face off the phone to get to them. Even so, it isn't so bad: I found the handset easy to open, and the parts inside are easy to get to and service, as you'd expect from an enthusiast device.
In short, you can set up the PinePhone to be pretty secure, and it also benefits from obscurity, but it's hackable, like all the Linux-based phones here (and really, just about everything, including your smart fridge).
$199 from Pine64
Find me on Mastodon to read more about what I think of this phone, which is on my sewing table right now.
Smartphones go pretty much everywhere and are used for almost everything. But as is the case for anything that becomes a ubiquitous part of our daily experience, these mobile devices are capable of leaking a lot of information about our online activities, personal preferences, and physical movements.
You can take steps to reduce your risk, but you might need to take more extreme measures to protect your privacy — say, if you're an Android user fed up with Google's ad-blocker blocking or an iOS user concerned about Apple's data collection activities. So one solution to consider is picking a phone from outside the Android-iOS duopoly.
Moving away from Apple-Google isn't easy, but it is possible with a little work. A number of makers sell "de-Googled" phones that emphasize security features, like anti-tracking software, sandboxing, and hardware kill switches, that can disable network or camera access with a flick.
Check out these handsets that keep you off the ad-tracking radar, with nerd cred preinstalled.
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