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Linux PinePhone has physical kill switches for its cameras, mic, data, BT, Wi-Fi

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Re: Linux PinePhone has physical kill switches for its cameras, mic, data, BT, Wi-Fi

#11

Post by blihp »

prox wrote: post #3

Is anyone usimg a linux phone? Love to hear use cases. I know about the PinePhone and the Librem, don’t know if there are others.

I've got a Pinephone (the UBports CE, though I'm mainly running Mobian right now) Short term, the use cases are as hacker mobile Linux devices with most of the mobile hardware working (device drivers are still a WIP, Linux text/server software works flawlessly, GUI software is hit-or-miss right now) Long term, I'm expecting them to be perfectly serviceable basic mobile handsets. But they are still a ways off from being 'daily driver ready' (i.e. power management isn't in the same league as other mobile devices and quite a bit of flaky/missing functionality) Another area still needing work is that there are only a handful of desktop apps that have been reworked to have a scalable UI for mobile.

Generally things are still sluggish and battery life is not great yet, which is to be expected since no mobile devices really existed out in the wild for raw Linux until very recently. Now that they do exist, things are improving rapidly. For example: a month ago battery life was atrocious. Today it's merely bad (compared to what you're used to on iOS/Android)

So what does this feel like in terms of real world usage?

1) Want to use it to place/receive phone calls/text messages... it will work, to a degree... some/most (depending on distro) of the time.

2) Want to run a web server or open a terminal and ssh over to a server... pretty flawless.

3) Want to run a GUI app designed for or adapted to mobile... the list is growing weekly, if not daily.

4) Want to run a GUI app designed for desktops (i.e. no work has been done to adapt for mobile)... prepare to be disappointed, if you can use it at all.

5) Want to run your favorite iOS app? No.

6) Want to run your favorite Android app? If it's open source, probably will be possible soon-ish. Proprietary apps? Probably not if they rely on proprietary Android/Google services.

Re: Linux PinePhone has physical kill switches for its cameras, mic, data, BT, Wi-Fi

#13

Post by lilSebastian »

m0zg wrote: post #2

Too bad the battery "kill switch" seems to be turned on permanently. I don't blame them - it's a hard problem to solve. Todays higher end phones go as far as to turn off parts of the chips on the fly, dynamically, on demand. But until it is solved, the device is more or less a curiosity rather than something useful in practice.

You have to remove the back cover to access the dip kill switches, at which point you could just life the battery out

Re: Linux PinePhone has physical kill switches for its cameras, mic, data, BT, Wi-Fi

#14

Post by hoseja »

fsflover wrote: post #8
m0zg wrote: post #2

Too bad the battery "kill switch" seems to be turned on permanently. I don't blame them - it's a hard problem to solve. Todays higher end phones go as far as to turn off parts of the chips on the fly, dynamically, on demand. But until it is solved, the device is more or less a curiosity rather than something useful in practice.

Why do you need it? You can simply remove the battery (without any tools).

Looks like sarcasm. (Your sarcasm kill switch might be toggled on.)

Re: Linux PinePhone has physical kill switches for its cameras, mic, data, BT, Wi-Fi

#15

Post by Cantbekhan »

Off-topic but IMHO what is really needed these days is a privacy feature allowing all the UIDs to be changed freely by the user (without the need for rooting and firmware thinkering).

Including randomized IMEIs and randomized Android ID (In addition to the already offered randomized MAC and Ad tracking ID changes). Especially IMEIs which are commonly used by many applications and law enforcement to track users (see Banking apps for instance that all require your phone permissions to read such IDs).

Nor Librem nor Pinephone offer this functionality from what I know.

And no, it's not (yet) illegal (but might be against some ToS) in many countries to change your IMEI including the US (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Mobile_Equipment...).

Re: Linux PinePhone has physical kill switches for its cameras, mic, data, BT, Wi-Fi

#16

Post by supernova87a »

If you're this worried about leakage from signals, cameras, etc. what about the tradeoff of security where now you need to patch and monitor for any attacks on your device, now that you're off of any normal OEM's support?

What's the risk of that being done poorly by you, versus having better control over these physical switches?

Re: Linux PinePhone has physical kill switches for its cameras, mic, data, BT, Wi-Fi

#17

Post by renw0rp »

supernova87a wrote: post #16

If you're this worried about leakage from signals, cameras, etc. what about the tradeoff of security where now you need to patch and monitor for any attacks on your device, now that you're off of any normal OEM's support? What's the risk of that being done poorly by you, versus having better control over these physical switches?

That's only assuming that OEMs and their employees are competent

Re: Linux PinePhone has physical kill switches for its cameras, mic, data, BT, Wi-Fi

#18

Post by input_sh »

Y_Y wrote: post #12
fsflover wrote: post #6

GNU/Linux Librem 5 phone not just has the kill switches, but they are easily accessible and therefore more useful: https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/

The librem phone is $750 and the pinephone is $150.

Also a crucial difference: You can get your hands on a Pine Phone, while Librem has yet to ship a phone.

Re: Linux PinePhone has physical kill switches for its cameras, mic, data, BT, Wi-Fi

#19

Post by fsflover »

input_sh wrote: post #18
Y_Y wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The librem phone is $750 and the pinephone is $150.

Also a crucial difference: You can get your hands on a Pine Phone, while Librem has yet to ship a phone.

There are nevertheless reasons to consider Librem 5: https://forums.puri.sm/t/comparing-specs-of-upcoming-linux-p...

Re: Linux PinePhone has physical kill switches for its cameras, mic, data, BT, Wi-Fi

#20

Post by fsflover »

Cantbekhan wrote: post #15

Off-topic but IMHO what is really needed these days is a privacy feature allowing all the UIDs to be changed freely by the user (without the need for rooting and firmware thinkering). Including randomized IMEIs and randomized Android ID (In addition to the already offered randomized MAC and Ad tracking ID changes). Especially IMEIs which are commonly used by many applications and law enforcement to track users (see B…

> to change your IMEI

Not exactly the same, but in Librem 5 you can at least replace the whole modem.

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