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Essential Phone, available now

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Re: Essential Phone, available now

#551

Post by thaumasiotes »

colordrops wrote: post #540
thaumasiotes wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The other problem is that the screen is not flat, so you need to buy a curved screen protector. Huh? The phone ships with the screen protector already applied.

It's a low quality plastic on that loses its adhesiveness and starts peeling off in less than a month. I was referring to tempered glass protectors. I didn't realize that people still use plastic ones.

> It's a low quality plastic on that loses its adhesiveness and starts peeling off in less than a month.

Again, I can assure you from personal experience that this isn't true.

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#552

Post by exikyut »

trapperkeeper74 wrote: post #531
zanny wrote: post #483

Since no one else has, I'll take the piss out of this "hollier than thou" bullshit. > Devices are your personal property. We won’t force you to have anything you don’t want. Devices are your personal property. The SoC is still a proprietary trade secret, the baseband is still spying on you for the NSA, the GPU is still a closed blob piece of shit. No mainline driver support, bootloader is closed source, firmware is c…

Open ASIC IP cores and firmwares are a must-have. Without independently-verifiable silicon, there's no telling was is or isn't there.

Totally agree. My question is, how do you verify the fabs are trustworthy?

Genuinely curious - I'm actually trying to answer this myself at the moment. The best I've come up with is, go to >2 fabs, have them deliver wafers but not saw them, scan and compare the wafers using trusted equipment, then take the wafers back to the fab for sawing.

The last step is the biggest issue; you could be bait-and-switched. Sawing doesn't sound as expensive as actual photolithography/etching kit, but I suspect it would still be prohibitive for most.

Thing is, you could tamper with a small number of chips on the wafer image in such a way that a quick but unlikely interaction with the end device would easily spot the tampered units. Then it would be a simple matter to insert a "picker" into somewhere in the manufacturing/shipping logistics to find the tampered device(s) and reroute them.

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#554

Post by exikyut »

boondaburrah wrote: post #435
toastking wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also have great screen tech from their tv business. So if that's been transferred to their phone business it's gotta be great.

Can confirm, the Sharp phone I owned in Japan had an absolutely fabulous screen, 1080p in 4.5" (I long for compact flagships), vivid colour with customisable profiles, including an electronically switchable privacy filter (using the toggle buttons in the notification shade) with 3 designs! The OS had been optimised to run smooth as butter, even with crapware. Too bad it also had to have all the docomo apps.

What do you mean by switchable privacy filter? Something that reduced the viewing angle, perhaps by adjusting the color profile?

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#555

Post by qu4z-2 »

jgtrosh wrote: post #339
afandian wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just can't type on screens. I have tried so many times. My current phone is a Blackberry Passport, previous one was an HTC Desire Z, and my next one (fingers crossed) will be this: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/gemini-pda-android-linux-... I'd like to ssh sometimes, but mostly I want to send text and emails like everyone else. Shame that few companies have the guts to break the monoculture. It is vaguely ridic…

Have you tried swiping keyboards ? I don't think it's for everyone, there's only a few that do it well, and afaik none open-source which does it all (though I believe the functionality is in development for ASK); however I find that the GBoard with swiping and multiple languages is a very decent way to type text for most usage. If you have a heavy use of the symbols we find on common keyboards, sure a physical keyboa…

In my experience swiping keyboards don't really work for unix command strings. Which reminds me, I should buy a Passport. They're probably cheapish now...

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#556

Post by busterarm »

hueving wrote: post #488
busterarm wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it? I need my phone to do three things: 1) Make and receive calls & texts. 2) Run a small number of ubiquitous apps (maps, ride hailing) 3) Not get hacked at DEFCON. Phones with the Apple logo on the back do this job best. Their security posture is just so much better and you don't have carrier-enforced forced obsolescence from the software side. You literally can always run the latest iOS until the hardware _just…

>I'm an open source guy only as much as it makes sense. That means you're not really an open source guy. You're just using whatever is best on the market at the time.

When the open source option is significantly less secure, I'm not going to use it, sorry. I'll take the fundamentalist approach where I can...for example, Purism laptops or Raptor Talos hardware running BSD.

That kind of option doesn't really exist with phones because of market forces. This idea that Android is some better moral choice is a delusion.

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#557

Post by rand005 »

tomaskafka wrote: post #544
zanny wrote: post #483

Since no one else has, I'll take the piss out of this "hollier than thou" bullshit. > Devices are your personal property. We won’t force you to have anything you don’t want. Devices are your personal property. The SoC is still a proprietary trade secret, the baseband is still spying on you for the NSA, the GPU is still a closed blob piece of shit. No mainline driver support, bootloader is closed source, firmware is c…

> Technology should be trustable, and a device where you cannot tell if or when the microphone and/or camera are recording and being remotely accessed is anything but. Yes. This means no Google services.

It doesn't. You can have hardware indicators.

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#558

Post by qu4z-2 »

91bananas wrote: post #413
onli wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not either or. The optimal solution is a phone that has a touchscreen and a keyboard. I had a HP Veer, and that one was way better for typing than all smartphones I ever had. Touchscreens suck for typing. A smooth glass surface without haptic feedback can never be an optimal solution for that. It is only better for pure media consumption, if having only a touchscreen means having a bigger display.

Have you ever considered that maybe you're just bad at typing on a touchscreen, and some practice could help? I can type on my iPhone without looking at it, quite quickly, the OS's autocorrect fills in for my slight inaccuracies with pretty damn good accuracy. The size a device must be to have both a keyboard and usable touchscreen puts it squarely out of the optimal solution category.

> The size a device must be to have both a keyboard and usable touchscreen puts it squarely out of the optimal solution category.

The Motorola Droid managed to do it, and fit in my pocket. Scale it up a little to keep pace with modern phones, and you get screenspace and an even roomier keyboard.

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#559

Post by busterarm »

dijit wrote: post #490
busterarm wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it? I need my phone to do three things: 1) Make and receive calls & texts. 2) Run a small number of ubiquitous apps (maps, ride hailing) 3) Not get hacked at DEFCON. Phones with the Apple logo on the back do this job best. Their security posture is just so much better and you don't have carrier-enforced forced obsolescence from the software side. You literally can always run the latest iOS until the hardware _just…

I have been having difficulty finding a good android phone that could replace the iPhone 5SE. If I go apple again, I no longer have the ability to sync my phone, since my Mac died under a glass of wine and I "replaced" it with a Dell Precision 5520 running Arch because the MacBook Pro lineup was untenable. I'd go apple again if I could actually backup,sync,etc my phone. It's a good device in isolation. But don't dare…

Windows & iTunes in a VM?

Re: Essential Phone, available now

#560

Post by busterarm »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #527
hueving wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm an open source guy only as much as it makes sense. That means you're not really an open source guy. You're just using whatever is best on the market at the time.

Then that would mean no one except for Richard Stallman are open source guys

And even he used to begrudgingly use non-free blobs while he didn't have an alternative.
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