Privacy

31859 readers

186 users here now

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.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
Don't promote proprietary software
Try to keep things on topic
If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
Be nice :)

Related communities

Chat rooms

[Matrix/Element]Dead
Discord

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Google Pixel alternatives? (lemmy.giftedmc.com)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

100 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'm thinking of getting a second phone to ease off iOS. It has been good for productivity stuff but the closed off nature of the device keeps disrupting my plans. Everything is either expensive or ad ridden. (Except floccus, floccus is awesome)

So far I have read about graphene OS and am quite interested. I really despise google though. Any chance to use another device and put some linux flavor on it? I was playing with the idea of a pinephone but it seems to be nowhere near daily drivable, fairphone is starting at 580 €, volla phone (german) 450 €...

Some people said xiaomi should be rootable. But the amount of different phones is huge. The price range is awesome though. I was thinking sub 300 €/$ would be awesome so tinkering doesnt hurt me financially.

Disclaimer: I dont want to go full hermit mode with no sim and a faraday bag. I respect the opinion but thats not what I'm trying to do. I want to write some small apps for my phone and use it as a computer if needed. Calling, matrix and browser should work flawlessly.

Any ideas or suggestions? :)

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 51 points 7 months ago (4 children)

I think you could reconsider your position re Pixel/Google phones. It is the one major maker that allows you to deploy an OS securely on their phone and GrapheneOS is grand. I have used it on a secondary phone for years.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago

Seconded.

I have calyx os running on my pixel 4 as my daily driver, with microG so I can still use banking app and M$ apps I need for work.

As you can unlock and relock the bootloader, the device security will still attest to the OS validity so security sensitive apps will still work. You can also put the stock Google OS back on easily at a later date if you so choose.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

I could, for sure. It may even be a great idea. I'll just have to solve that by myself since I'm very disillusioned by google. Its like if the devil made a good product.

But I get your point. Graphene is probably a lot more mature than others OSs.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

This is the ONLY reason I got a pixel, alternate os support. The data they get from me is not worth much in the end as I already know what I will buy from reading on reviews etc. ads, even when I watched TV, don't really work on me and the ones that do catch my eye usually make a sale for another co than the one advertising. Being ND has its benefits

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Google dont manage to get data phoned back with GrapheneOS i seem to recall. I may be wrong

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Graphene has researched this, and there's one little thing one of the Blobs does - kind of a DNS lookup thing (not actually DNS), I forget exactly what it is.

There was a discussion of it about a year ago.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago

Graphene gang gang