My old phone’s battery has given up the ghost. Can someone recommend a current generation smartphone, preferably Android, that strikes a good balance between usability and privacy? I’m also fine with an Android phone that’s not that great with privacy out of the box, but has good support for third party ROMs like Lineage or Copperhead. Even better if the phone’s chassis and battery can just unscrew so I can replace it myself.
I’ve looked into the Pinephone and other Linux-only phones, but I’d like to wait until the app ecosystem is more mature. At least with Android I can use the F-droid apps for privacy consciousness.
Lineage phones home to Google, I could say that’s supporting Google, too, right? I don’t think the world is so black and white.
“As Android comes from Google, everything you do with it is going to contribute to its support, so don’t try to get a minimum impact because you will be contributing to it, so there is no problem with contributing more to Google.”
It is the simplified version of what my teachers say when I speak about promoting FLOSS alternatives to certain services.
To be exact, can be applied to any ethical thing as I see this sentence a lot in other forms. It is like dis-promoting the aspiration to do more ethical things and I do not accept the idea that for “implementing security and privacy” everything is valid and can be applied (again) to everything that wants to be done.
GrapheneOS, maybe, could support other cheaper phones by not supporting certain features but adding part of the changes that are not implemented in LineageOS which do not depend of these extra features only specific of certain devices. However, it is stated that they are not being for it and it is not like people without knowledge (or possibility to get that knowledge) for it like me is going to be able to fork the OS and try easily just to get the same.