Privacy

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Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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102

What phone should I buy for privacy? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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My current phone is 7 years old, does not support recent android versions, and battery life is becoming atrocious. This feels like right time to change my phone.

Currently, I know of & am considering 3 options:

Google Pixel
iPhone
Samsung Galaxy

I heard that Pixel is the best choice for privacy, despite it being Google^TM. Should I go with it, and install Graphene OS or similar options? The very fact that the name "Google" is attached makes me nervous. Also, I don't think I can trust android, so I would have to install Graphene OS or the like. In the case, app support would be lacking, though.

I am considering iPhone as well, since it has "reputation" of being secure. Of course, Apple can access my data, but that might be a good enough compromise? Honestly, I don't know. It's the best supported option as well - lots of apps support iPhone.

Galaxy is just the one that I am the most familiar with (my current one is Galaxy S8). I don't trust it, though. Do they even make good hardware nowadays?

EDIT: Turns out, Pixel phones are poorly supported by local telecomm companies. It is relatively cheap though. Still worth it?

EDIT2: I heard that data & message is fine, but the call quality is impacted by lack of VoLTE compatibility.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 19 hours ago (3 children)

I've been rocking a Pixel 8 pro with Graphene OS for a year and change and it was a great experience after being an iPhone user for 8 years aproximately.

The install process is great, automatic and foolproof, you just need the phone, usb cable (probably came with your phone) and a computer with a Chromium-based browser.

App support hasn't been a problem for me, you can reach for Aurora Store (anonymous Play Store client) if you really need something from there. Otherwise you have F-droid and the usual suspects and also Accrescent, which Graphene offers through its own app store, but barely has anything as of today.

I setup Shelter to have some apps more isolated and being able to just not see them if I want, namely some Microsoft apps I need for work and some that depend o Google's services. Shelter is recommended by privacyguides.org, so you should be fine using it.

I think Pixel/Graphene is probably your best option for security if you need it. Privacy I guess you can achieve many other ways.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

Any inconveniences you've noticed with Graphene? For example I've heard tap to pay functionality doesn't work.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

I guess there are some tradeoffs, for sure. I've encountered a couple things:

Bad location functionality. The phone is most likely to blame for this, but I can't say with certainty. GOS uses a custom proxy server for location related operations, so maybe that's the reason, or maybe I fiddled too much with settings and messed something up.
Very ocasional crashes due to exploit protection. This almost never happens, but can be annoying. Some app may have a bug that would be overlooked by another OS or try to access some feature that is considered exploitable and the system will kill it, letting you know why with a notification. You can fine-tune these protections at the system or app level to make it work for you though (at your own risk).
If "tap to pay" refers to NFC payments through some app like Google Pay, I think they do work. You just have to enable NFC (you can even enable it only if the device is unlocked, which is cool), and configure contactless payments with your payment app. I don't use this feature though, so I'm not speaking from personal experience.

I think that's it, really. I found the actual user experience to be quite breezy.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 hours ago

The location functionality has significantly improved recently since it no longer relies solely on GPS, but yeah, it could still be improved.
Generally, I've found the apps that tend to have problems with exploit protection are games, VPNs, and banking apps (which is probably the sort of app you'd most want exploit protection on...). I'm not sure if I've ever had an actual problem with other apps honestly.
While NFC works, Google Pay does not. Google needs to basically certify the OS for it to work, and they refuse to do so (monopoly gonna monopoly). Basically, this means if you're in the US or some other country where Google Pay is pretty much the only payment option on Android, NFC payments don't work. Some places in Europe at least have NFC payments available through banking apps though, so if you happen to reside in one of those countries and your bank has one of those apps with payment support, you should be fine.