Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

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

submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day 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] 4 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Also, I don't think I can trust android,

Yes. Google's framework service seems to be spyware.

so I would have to install Graphene OS or the like.

GrapheneOS does seem to be the best way to address the privacy concerns with Android. There's also LineageOS and others.

In the case, app support would be lacking, though.

Uh...Android is the single most popular operating system in the history of operating systems. The app support is quite good.

If you mean because many apps require Google Farmwork Services, and GrapheneOS replaces it - I find that to be a largely solved problem. The GrapheneOS neutered rebuild of Google Framework Services now fools most apps into working.

It's been years since I encountered an app that actually couldn't run on GrapheneOS, unless the app was aggressively trying to spy on me.

The remaining issue tends to be bank and credit union apps, which aggressively spy on their users "for security". I work around this by using my credit union's mobile website, instead. It has all of the same features without the spying, anyway.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

Just for clarity, Graphene doesn't provide a "neutered" version of play services - the version of play services which runs is the same code as provided by Google, with the only difference being that it runs in a sandbox which only grants it the same level of permission as normal apps (which you can choose to grant or not) rather than running as effectively root on your device like it does on most android phones.

Docs: https://grapheneos.org/usage#sandboxed-google-play