Results 1 to 6 of 6

Thread: Pinephone Pro introduced

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Mar 2011
    Location
    19th Hole
    Beans
    Hidden!
    Distro
    Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish

    Pinephone Pro introduced

    I've been anticipating this announcement for some time, and this news comes as a real treat: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2021/10/...ro-specs-price

    For those of us fed up with the tracking, privacy-destroying, app-trap ecosystems of the proprietary commercial cartels, the ability to run a pure Linux environment on our phones has been like a quest for the holy grail. And while other Linux phone initiatives exist, I believe that PinePhone has come closest to being the ones with the most advanced development. I think they've reached an inflection point with this phone that makes it truly usable and therefore a realistic alternative to the proprietary cartels.

    I'm not naïve about this offering: it will remain a niche player that appeals almost exclusively to the geek crowd whose overriding concerns are privacy and anonymity over the latest and greatest app of the week. Its lack of apps will be a deal breaker for most. But, for me at least, it is the answer to a long suffering dream.

    I will likely purchase once they release their geek end-user Explorer model. Can barely wait.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Oct 2009
    Beans
    Hidden!
    Distro
    Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish

    Re: Pinephone Pro introduced

    That's the first I've heard of that phone, but I like the concept.

    The lack of apps would probably be a deal killer for me, though.
    Come to #ubuntuforums! We have cookies! | Basic Ubuntu Security Guide

    Tomorrow's an illusion and yesterday's a dream, today is a solution...

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Jul 2007
    Location
    Tāmaki Makau-rau, NZ
    Beans
    Hidden!
    Distro
    Ubuntu Development Release

    Re: Pinephone Pro introduced

    If it runs postmarketOS, which is a variant of Alpine Linux, then there are plenty of apps, though not all of them run that well on mobile devices. And if it doesn't come with pmOS, you could almost certainly install it.

    I've been thinking about having a basic phone to do, well, things you need a phone for, and doing other small-portable-computer stuff on Raspberry Pi or similar.
    BACKUPS are unsexy — until you discover you should have done one yesterday.
    Spare your nerves and do one before you upgrade or install.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Mar 2011
    Location
    19th Hole
    Beans
    Hidden!
    Distro
    Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish

    Re: Pinephone Pro introduced

    Quote Originally Posted by CharlesA View Post
    That's the first I've heard of that phone, but I like the concept.

    The lack of apps would probably be a deal killer for me, though.
    A couple of years ago, I installed an F-Droid app called ClassyShark3xodus. It's a tracker scanner—it scans the apps on your phone and reports back on how many trackers the app contains. To say that the results were terrifying would be an understatement.

    Examples: TripAdvisor had 13 trackers. Booking.com had 16. I don't know about Whatsapp but, knowing Facebook's toxic value system, I wouldn't be surprised if it comes in at around a dozen. Uber turned out to be one of the better ones—it only had 6 trackers. In contrast, the typical F-Droid app has zero.

    In light of this, I embarked on a single‑minded campaign to detoxify my phone by doing the following:

    1. Replaced as many Google playstore apps as I could with F-Droid equivalents. This proved to be easier than I feared. I could find privacy respecting alternatives for everything from e-mail clients to calendars to task managers to maps to office suites. The F-Droid ecosystem is surprisingly complete, at least for the basics anyway.
    2. Where I could not find an F-Droid equivalent, I was able to work around the playstore app by adding that vendor's webpage to my home screen. Most vendors have very good mobile websites these days. There was almost no app that couldn't be functionally replaced with its equivalent web page. Even Uber rides can be summoned using their website. I was able to recreate almost every function in this way, from banking to travel to newspapers to media.
    3. By carefully circumscribing websites using NoScript, Privacy Badger and Ghostery, I was also able to reduce webtrackers to almost nothing.
    4. More recently, I replaced all of my old cloud services with NextCloud.
    5. This left only two apps (out of 150) that I could not replace with some form of workaround. One of them acts as an external control for my hearing aids (just gave away my age and decrepitude). I've just learned to live without it and adjust my hearing aids using the physical controls on the hearing aid itself. I consider it a small price to pay for my privacy and data integrity.

    The whole experience has been immensely liberating, sobering and educational. We are not nearly as dependent on an app ecosystem as the trillion dollar data vampires want us to believe. It does take a bit more work, but practically every function that I used to rely on an app for has been replaced with a workaround that is more private, anonymous, data‑respecting and safe. And I did all of this without having to sacrifice almost any functionality

    I'm pretty sure that I can do the same with a purely Linux phone. So long as I can install a web browser on the thing and some basic apps like a calendar, task manager and some media apps, I can work around the lack of apps through the above strategies.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Apr 2021
    Beans
    4

    Re: Pinephone Pro introduced

    This is the first I've heard of this phone but I definitely want to look into this more.

    I'm not a fan of all the privacy issues on apps nowadays either.

    Thanks for the tip!

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Mar 2011
    Location
    19th Hole
    Beans
    Hidden!
    Distro
    Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish

    Re: Pinephone Pro introduced

    Quote Originally Posted by geekykhan View Post
    This is the first I've heard of this phone but I definitely want to look into this more.

    I'm not a fan of all the privacy issues on apps nowadays either.

    Thanks for the tip!
    As already noted, you don't have to spring for a Pinephone to detoxify. It can be done on a regular Android phone. It's been years since I've worked with an iPhone, so can't comment there.

    I find that the problem is not the lack of access to knowledge or the even the lack of consumer will; it's the nasty addictive ecosystem that has been foisted on us by the data vampires. To me, it hearkens back to the worst days of the tobacco conglomerates when they successfully and maliciously hooked society on a toxic debilitation that they knew to be harmful and addictive but that, for those very selfsame reasons, would be endlessly lucrative to them. It's rather depressing that we leave ourselves open to the same old vulnerabilities over and over again.

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •