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Android phones will soon reboot themselves after sitting unused for three days

arstechnica.com

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Re: Android phones will soon reboot themselves after sitting unused for three days

#331

Post by jamespo »

londons_explore wrote: post #273
yellowapple wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably a good time as any to replace it with something purpose-built anyway. A Raspberry Pi with a directional microphone and a custom app feeding said microphone data to a service like AudD or ACRCloud could readily do the trick without any of Android's extra baggage - though I do wonder how effective those services would be at detecting songs amid a bunch of background noise like Bop Spotter does via Shazam.

Phone cameras are better than anything else you can get in the same form factor. The very expensive patents behind image processing algorithms keep good cameras out of the hobbyist world. Same for 5G modems. A $50 phone will give you gigabit 5G, but you'll pay $500 to get that in non-phone form factor, mostly because on patents on the 5G tech which are charged differently for phones vs dedicated modems.

$50 ?

Re: Android phones will soon reboot themselves after sitting unused for three days

#332

Post by Spoom »

nickslaughter02 wrote: post #327
greatgib wrote: post #34

It's good to have an option like that, even being a default, but there definitively need a switch to disable that if it is your own will. It's not even necessarily that good enough against cops, because in a lot of shitty countries, even some pretending to be democratics, not disclosing or at least inputting your password might be a crime severely punished. If I'm not wrong, there was a guy that had to stay years in…

> in a lot of shitty countries In December 2024 all UN member countries voted in favor of "UN Cybercrime Treaty" which binds signatories to adopt a legislation to force you to give cops your passwords and other credentials. https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/n24/426/74/pdf/n24426...

Eh, I see the language "urges" in there regarding putting it into force. It would still need to pass Congress etc. and my guess is that such a provision would face massive domestic pushback.

Re: Android phones will soon reboot themselves after sitting unused for three days

#333

Post by gf000 »

67593874748 wrote: post #78
devrandoom wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not against it, but I'm genuinely curious what the use case would be for that?

Could be useful in a scenario where you won't be using your phone often and really want to maximize battery life.

A reboot will eat a lot more energy than a proper suspend.

Re: Android phones will soon reboot themselves after sitting unused for three days

#334

Post by vkou »

nickslaughter02 wrote: post #327
greatgib wrote: post #34

It's good to have an option like that, even being a default, but there definitively need a switch to disable that if it is your own will. It's not even necessarily that good enough against cops, because in a lot of shitty countries, even some pretending to be democratics, not disclosing or at least inputting your password might be a crime severely punished. If I'm not wrong, there was a guy that had to stay years in…

> in a lot of shitty countries In December 2024 all UN member countries voted in favor of "UN Cybercrime Treaty" which binds signatories to adopt a legislation to force you to give cops your passwords and other credentials. https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/n24/426/74/pdf/n24426...

The UN isn't a world government, it has no power to affect your nation's laws. If your legislature legislates this into existence, it's on them.

Re: Android phones will soon reboot themselves after sitting unused for three days

#335

Post by jajko »

izacus wrote: post #271
epolanski wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've visited 45 countries in my life and I've never ever been even asked once to even show the contents of my bag, let alone access to my phone.

That doesn't change the fact that once you will be asked about that, your refusal will mean a flight back home at best.

The point is, no normal country globally asks those from any normal tourist. Adding ever for those in the back.

Re: Android phones will soon reboot themselves after sitting unused for three days

#336

Post by gf000 »

LinuxBender wrote: post #314
mapkkk wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been fantasizing about building an iPXE netbooting phone for a while now, glad to see that I'm not the only one. Mine was sparked by seeing some journalists in my country getting arrested recently. I think it should be doable _technically_, but I think getting the mobile radios working before the OS boots would be challenging.

If the phone can boot off a thumb-drive then people could have a keychain thumb-drive that serves the sole purpose of a minimal OS that can iPXE, boot the real OS and pull down the users contacts, apps, etc... maybe?

Without a verified boot chain, security would be greatly compromised.

Like I could just grab your thumb drive, and put a new system on there that looks the same, and steals your password.

Re: Android phones will soon reboot themselves after sitting unused for three days

#337

Post by daneel_w »

rahen wrote: post #306
daneel_w wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The feature is not enabled by default. Also, the boot doesn't wait for you indefinitely - it just gives you a few seconds to glance the checksum and halt it, before it proceeds automatically.

It's enabled on mine, at least. By default, it reboots after 18 hours without being unlocked.

Perhaps it's a recent change. My install of GrapheneOS is from August last year.

Re: Android phones will soon reboot themselves after sitting unused for three days

#338

Post by hilbert42 »

crazygringo wrote: post #111
hilbert42 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"How do you do anything during that weekend, …?" Easy, do what we did before mobile phones—civilization existed for thousands years and worked quite well without them (Rome built an empire sans mobile phones, so did the English). We even ran and coordinated the largest and most organized event in human history—WWII—without them! Some of us have not yet succumbed to phone addiction (I often go for quite some days with…

Hey, if you want to go back to life in Ancient Rome, with the disease and lack of medicine, the slavery, the dictatorship... I'm not going to stop you. When you say civilization worked quite well for thousands of years, as an argument against mobile phones, I'm not sure you've quite thought your argument through... unless it's always been your dream to be a Russian serf, or an Egyptian slave?

There's no point further arguing about this matter with someone who hasn't lived through both pre and post mobile phone eras.

I'll just add this, I was amongst the first to ever own a cellular mobile phone. I owned several Motorola 'bricks' (DynaTAC) if you're old enough to know what that is, and before that I owned a mobile car phone in pre-cellular times, the nature of that tech was such that very few phone numbers were available—simply it was damed expensive and one had to be very keen to own one.

What I'm taking about is a lot more complex than your understanding (or that which you wish to admit to).

Re: Android phones will soon reboot themselves after sitting unused for three days

#339

Post by gxs »

AnonC wrote: post #286
gxs wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW on iPhone you can just create a shortcut to restart the phone One click for me and it restarts fyi

One click where? Have you mapped it to the Action button on the newer phone models? Or do you launch the shortcut by tapping somewhere (widget on Control Center or elsewhere)?

Just create a shortcut and select an icon

It appears as an “app” like any other

Open it, will ask you to confirm, hit yes and it will restart

Re: Android phones will soon reboot themselves after sitting unused for three days

#340

Post by genewitch »

Spooky23 wrote: post #301
7bit wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't spread misinformation. The difference is that in Italy it is not against the law to not hand out the password to your phone -- or anything else for that matter.

In the United States, you have a fundamental right to not testify against yourself, including providing a password. You can be compelled to provide a biometric. The UK has taken a different approach and my understanding is that you can be jailed for refusing to provide a password. Most countries recognize very different limits at a customs boundary. Is this appropriate in an age where a tiny device gives you access t…

> Most countries recognize very different limits at a customs boundary.

In the US I've heard that boundary (the "border") encompasses ~75% of everyone living inside. It's like "within X miles of a border" and includes rivers and airports as well as the entire coastline.

I'm not up to date on these rules and who's been caught out by them, but I have repeatedly heard the claim above.

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