All those fancy physical switches, and none simply for silent mode? My most-missed physical switch on Android devices.
Linux PinePhone has physical kill switches for its cameras, mic, data, BT, Wi-Fi
101–110 of 149 posts
Re: Linux PinePhone has physical kill switches for its cameras, mic, data, BT, Wi-Fi
#102I get the point of low cost phone to keep the price low. I also know that there is a group that, rightfully, enjoys hacking on low-powered hardware to push it to limits. However, I wonder if there is also an opportunity to also sell high spec hardware, maybe in limited quantity. These phones are not for the masses anyway and I'm sure there is a Linux enthusiasts segment with pockets deep enough to afford the hardware…
The iPhone 1.0 came out in 2007 and it ran on a single core arm cpu under clocked at 412mhz and with 120MB of ram and the scrolling was butter smooth. I remember being shocked at how responsive the touch screen was compared to other smartphones at the time. The PinePhone contains an AllWinner A64 Quad Core CPU with 2GB of Ram. Sure, its a crappy 5 year old Soc but it is MUCH faster than the original iphone. I know, m…
During Librem 5 development, they considered using GNOME but, after talking with the upstream devs, they abandoned the idea.
Gnome is slow even on laptops, it was made for X and later ported to Wayland, it uses Clutter/Mutter, JavaScript, etc. So here yes definitively it's layers upon layers.
On the other hand, Posh is based on Wlroots and there is no layers. It's pure C code talking directly to EGL/DRM/KMS (And in the future Vulkan) stack.
Even more interesting, Wlroots allows the use of hardware layers and with that you directly write to the screen and compositing is done in hardware. You can't go more optimised than that.
With this kind of approach you can totally write a convergent, both phone & desktop, environment which is butter smooth on low spec mobile.
But of course then the whole question is which apps you run on that environment, the typical Electron app won't run smoothly (but it wouldn't either on a IPhone 1).
On the other hand, GTK 4 should be GPU accelerated and Qt too so those could run pretty smoothly
Re: Linux PinePhone has physical kill switches for its cameras, mic, data, BT, Wi-Fi
#103All those fancy physical switches, and none simply for silent mode? My most-missed physical switch on Android devices.
These are all behind the back cover, and are (from what I understand) pretty tiny, so I wouldn't imagine 'em to be all that convenient for toggling silent mode.
But yeah, my PinePhone's supposed to ship on the 25th and I expect I'll be missing that feature.
Re: Linux PinePhone has physical kill switches for its cameras, mic, data, BT, Wi-Fi
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple’s average full support for iPhone is trending to around 4-5 years since launch. Several times they’ve issued critical security updates years after ending official support.
To be fair, they are an outlier, so not really normal in that sense.
Not even mentioning that after 4-5 years iphones turn into a brick with no possibility to install or update anything.
Re: Linux PinePhone has physical kill switches for its cameras, mic, data, BT, Wi-Fi
#105Off-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…
In Germany it's punishable by law indirectly ( https://tipps.computerbild.de/hardware/firmware/imei-nummer-... ), in UK it is a direct crime that may yield 5 years of jail time ( https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2002/31/notes?view=plai... ). Be fucking careful when you are traveling with a phone that has an IMEI in the software that does not match the one on the sticker.
The german link has no source.
Re: Linux PinePhone has physical kill switches for its cameras, mic, data, BT, Wi-Fi
#106That’s cool, but hardware kill switches don’t help your privacy. Why? Because nobody is ever going to want to turn off that functionality. I don’t know anyone who turns off the software switches, why would they turn off hardware ones? A smartphone without a camera, mic, Bluetooth, cellular data, and WiFi is basically useless. What we need is a way to make these technologies more private while they’re in use. Also, th…
Not to mention that whenever you finally enable the mic it is because you are probably going to say something interesting to it, which is exactly what whichever rootkit you're afraid of is going to be interested in. Not silence.
Re: Linux PinePhone has physical kill switches for its cameras, mic, data, BT, Wi-Fi
#107Is 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 am using Sailfish OS on a Sony Xperia XA2. I am using it now for about 1 year. Before that I used Sailfish OS on the original Jolla 1 for 5 years. I have also used a Nokia N9 with Meego Linux, which can be considered a forerunner of Jolla/Sailfish. It uses Qt, Wayland, Systemd. The original Jolla 1 even used Btrfs, which was deemed a mistake. Sailfish OS is available on more devices, like the Pinephone, Fxtec, Cosm…
I got my Jolla 1 linux phone in 2013 and I'm still using as my daily driver. And I still love it!
The reason I'm keeping my Jolla 1 phone is that it still gets security updates after 7 years. I also have an Android phone for testing purposes (I sometimes write Android apps and web pages for work), but it only got updates for few years. I don't want to buy a new Android phone if it doesn't get updates after few years. I'll keep my Jolla.
Re: Linux PinePhone has physical kill switches for its cameras, mic, data, BT, Wi-Fi
#108Off-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…
I was almost certain changing your IMEI was a serious federal crime in the US.
That is a persistent myth, because it is blanket illegal in other countries. In the US, it is only illegal to change an IMEI in furtherance of some other crime - eg theft or unauthorized access.
Re: Linux PinePhone has physical kill switches for its cameras, mic, data, BT, Wi-Fi
#109That’s cool, but hardware kill switches don’t help your privacy. Why? Because nobody is ever going to want to turn off that functionality. I don’t know anyone who turns off the software switches, why would they turn off hardware ones? A smartphone without a camera, mic, Bluetooth, cellular data, and WiFi is basically useless. What we need is a way to make these technologies more private while they’re in use. Also, th…
That is a huge, and incorrect, assertion. If I could hard-off my mic, I would. I don't use it but once a day, maybe, while I use others frequently. I turn off location manually whenever I am not using an app that requires it. I leave bluetooth on because I use it frequently enough, but if it were an easy hardware switch, I could get in the habit of shutting it off.
> I turn off location manually whenever I am not using an app that requires it
Which is almost equivalent to teather from a security point of view. Either you trust the system, in which case you can trust that you can deny location to the programs that according to you "don't require it"; or you don't trust the system, in which case it will just broadcast the position whenever you enable the killswitch to everyone who could be even remotely interested. And again when you enable it is usually when you are most likely going to leak something interesting. There is here some usefulness in terms of having "another layer", but academically this is really debatable.
Re: Linux PinePhone has physical kill switches for its cameras, mic, data, BT, Wi-Fi
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
The iPhone 1.0 came out in 2007 and it ran on a single core arm cpu under clocked at 412mhz and with 120MB of ram and the scrolling was butter smooth. I remember being shocked at how responsive the touch screen was compared to other smartphones at the time. The PinePhone contains an AllWinner A64 Quad Core CPU with 2GB of Ram. Sure, its a crappy 5 year old Soc but it is MUCH faster than the original iphone. I know, m…
During Librem 5 development, they considered using GNOME but, after talking with the upstream devs, they abandoned the idea. Gnome is slow even on laptops, it was made for X and later ported to Wayland, it uses Clutter/Mutter, JavaScript, etc. So here yes definitively it's layers upon layers. On the other hand, Posh is based on Wlroots and there is no layers. It's pure C code talking directly to EGL/DRM/KMS (And in t…
> You can't go more optimised than that.
Phosh uses GTK, right? That's a pretty thick layer right there. You used to be able to put pixels on screen with a handful of ASM instructions https://www.cprogramming.com/tutorial/tut8.html