undefined

points

[-]

This probably falls under "capabilities", but another consideration worth strong consideration is mobile network support. With the past phase-outs of 2G/GSM, ongoing 3G phase out, converstion to LTE and VoLTE, and expansion of 5G networks, as well as differing network and frequency standards around the world, finding a device which will work with your preferred mobile provider(s) is a challenge.

This is one of my strikes against the Punkt mp02: it doesn't work with most of my carrier options. I was hoping that either that device's capabilities would be extended, or its replacement would follow a similar ethic and expand bandwidth / protocols, but neither occurred. Further reading on Punkt's offerings has further cooled my interest (bugs, fragile HW, spendy).

RCS and group chat support seems to be another sticker, though with a small-form-factor laptop or tablet you should be able to work around that.

The other sticker for me (mentioned in my original post) is voice/SMS/messaging filtering options. The increase in spam / unsolicited contacts across the comms spectrum is immensely frustrating, and few devices / OSs / apps really address the situation adequately and in a privacy-respecting manner. That's still giving me a lot of hesitency on what really ought not to be this complex a decision, though for now I'm thinking it's a good thing to spend the time.

by microtonal12 hours ago|

prev|

[-]

If you want full freedom / maximal privacy, and are prepared to make compromises on capabilities and battery life, look at one of the Linux-based, non-Android options. I've heard of quite a few bugs with these.

Most of them also have really bad security, for various reasons, including:

- Since virtually no hardware vendor (outside Jolla) supports non-Android phones, they typically use phones that were made by their ODMs as Android phones and rely on kernel/firmware/device trees made available for those Android builds. Sadly, nobody outside Google (PixelOS) and Samsung really cares about giving their kernels and firmware timely updates. So usually the kernel and firmware are full of known holes (Qualcomm and others do monthly bulletins).

- For many reasons, Linux systems have never really focused on proper security isolation and sandboxing. So most of these phones have really poor isolation and you are only one browser/image parsing/... vulnerability away from full phone compromise.

- Unlocked bootloaders or otherwise compromised boot chain. So, it's easy for persistent malware to compromise a phone and there is no way to attest that the system runs unmodified binaries (as you can e.g. can with GrapheneOS' auditor or Android phones with fully verified boot and Strongbox).

Let's say, if I was a bank, I can understand why I would want to block such devices.

by fsflover7 hours ago|

parent|

[-]

> Let's say, if I was a bank, I can understand why I would want to block such devices.

So as a bank, you would be forcing your customers into the duopoly of the American megacorps. Thankfully, there are banks that do not do this.

by microtonal7 hours ago|

parent|

[-]

Nice strawmanning!

Obviously I want banks to support alternatives, but I can understand if they only want to support secure OSes. Some banks support GrapheneOS remote attestation besides Google Play Integrity at the strong level.

by fsflover4 hours ago|

parent|

[-]

By your reasoning, 99.9% of people use awfully insecure OSes on desktop and servers. And yet, the world hasn't collapsed. My bank account is not hacked regularly, too (actually, not at all).

by skorp011 hours ago|

parent|

[-]

This is a personal anecdote and you are making up an absurd conclusion. No one said things would collapse. Security can be evaluated objectively, and the better the security, leads to fewer instances of exploitation. I'm certain the actual data around InfoSec would support that idea.