All those fancy physical switches, and none simply for silent mode? My most-missed physical switch on Android devices.
That's why people love OnePlus.
Linux PinePhone has physical kill switches for its cameras, mic, data, BT, Wi-Fi
111–120 of 149 posts
Re: Linux PinePhone has physical kill switches for its cameras, mic, data, BT, Wi-Fi
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 bei…
How is the battery life? On UBPorts a few weeks ago I got about 8 hours standby, which truly is atrocious. I would probably switch to it being my daily driver if I can get 3 days standby on a distro.
A huge recent improvement is support for Crust firmware (https://github.com/crust-firmware/crust) which should get you 12-40 hours of standby (the low end is with wifi and cellular on, the high end is with them turned off. A day to a day and a half is the best I'm seeing) That just happened in the past month on most distros. Even with that installed and enabled, there is still significant room for improvement on power management of wifi and cellular. Mobian still has issues with things like random wakeups and not turning off the screen digitizer. I'll be very surprised if we can't see the standby time increasing to 3-7 days depending on what's enabled, but it will take time.
Re: Linux PinePhone has physical kill switches for its cameras, mic, data, BT, Wi-Fi
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be clear, this when the phone is allowed to be in a sort of 'deep sleep' mode, this probably isn't representative of day-to-day use. The point remains though that more and more power management is working and things are improving quickly.
Can it receive calls/SMSs in this mode?
Yes... theoretically. (i.e. still a work in progress: it's buggy)
Re: Linux PinePhone has physical kill switches for its cameras, mic, data, BT, Wi-Fi
#114Re: Linux PinePhone has physical kill switches for its cameras, mic, data, BT, Wi-Fi
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Changing the IMEI is illegal in the UK FYI and has been since 2002. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2002/31/introduction Perhaps this legislation gives you a clue about how on the ball some Govt's are when it comes to security matters? What you are suggesting is a phone that changes its obvious identifiers, but the problem with that is some services may not work, maybe an app purchased from an app store, or the…
But wait, is that changing the on-device IMEI, or just spoofing it when communicating with some random app? I assume changing the device IMEI would have the same affect of directly spoofing it when connecting to mobile networks, which may be illegal; but If I leave all that alone, and only give a false IMEI to some random app, while connecting to mobile networks with the legitimate one, then what's the issue?
This is the way to do it for legally mandated identifiers like that. Only the baseband knows the actually IMEI, otherwise the OS just blanks it out or randomizes it, down to kernel calls.
Still isn't a very good solution, since you need to have a consistent identifier for some parts of networking to work, such as MAC addresses, IPs, bluetooth MACs, etc.
Re: Linux PinePhone has physical kill switches for its cameras, mic, data, BT, Wi-Fi
#116If 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?
> any normal OEM's support? What "normal OEM support" (like which company, for example?) has been good at regularly releasing security patches and keeping on top of various vulnerabilities? Especially past the 1-2 years after the release date of the device? Especially if you consider those companies that without any real consent from you install dozens of their own adware and spyware on each update that you can't eve…
I was surprised that my company issued Samsung S7 only stopped receiving updates earlier this year. It was released in 2016.
Re: Linux PinePhone has physical kill switches for its cameras, mic, data, BT, Wi-Fi
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
This. I am fine with Pine hardware. On the surface it should be sufficient. Oddly, my experience with Ubuntu OS is just plain awful. It made me miss Android almost instantly. I genuinely expected more. The physical switches are nice, but you still need to have some decent functionality to make it a daily driver. Sadly, it is not there yet. Since we are talking about it, if someone can recommend good alternative to Ub…
You cannot easily brick your phone. You just use dd to write any image to the microSD and the phone just boots from it. Also see here concerning the internal memory: https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=9444 Many people like Mobian. It has a very nice UI (Purism's Phosh) and the full GNU/Linux under the hood. I personally would recommend to try Sxmo: https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=9913 . It is unb…
Fwiw, I've tried UBports, pmOS, and Mobian on mine, and Mobian is definitely my favorite and the one I'm sticking with for now. And as you've said, installation is just like most other computers/SBCs, by flashing the uSD card.
Re: Linux PinePhone has physical kill switches for its cameras, mic, data, BT, Wi-Fi
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
??? They have shipped a number of phones? Or do you mean they haven't entered production?
Yes, "shipped" refers to in the hands of customers.
I mean, I am holding one right now, and I am a customer (Well technically it's next to my laptop, typing with one hand is hard). So I don't understand what you mean.
Re: Linux PinePhone has physical kill switches for its cameras, mic, data, BT, Wi-Fi
#119Off-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…
You're mixing a few different concerns together. With a properly designed permission system, applications do not get access to identifiers such as IMEI and MAC addresses. If an application demands some information as a condition of running, a proper permissions system should return appropriate mocked data.
The only place the actual IMEI should remain a concern is when talking to the cell network. Mitigating this is an unsolved problem, and it needs to be worked on. Some ideas - staying in contact mostly via Wifi (and only turning on the cell radio for dire situations), or a carrier that deployed sims that periodically rotate IMSI.
Re: Linux PinePhone has physical kill switches for its cameras, mic, data, BT, Wi-Fi
#120Off-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…
Changing the IMEI is illegal in the UK FYI and has been since 2002. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2002/31/introduction Perhaps this legislation gives you a clue about how on the ball some Govt's are when it comes to security matters? What you are suggesting is a phone that changes its obvious identifiers, but the problem with that is some services may not work, maybe an app purchased from an app store, or the…
You can use software crypto keys to prove your identity.