Debian based phone, hardware kill switches, $550, slow loading product page at https://furilabs.com/shop/flx1s/ (makes me not believe their claim of a fast UI). Phone has an SD slot but no mention of a headphone jack or swappable battery. The phone hardware looks mostly conventional (Mediatek CPU etc). For me personally, this is a yawner, but maybe there is some attraction for some users.
I don’t need cutting edge, but removable battery and headphone jack were big selling points of the original that they’ve abruptly yanked in favor of this. I’d only learned of them recently, and was planning to buy the original. Now I may get a Fairphone instead.
It really doesn’t seem like a winnable situation. A ton of phone functionality that people rely on (always-on internet everywhere you go) is fundamentally invasive no matter how the phone is built. All you can do is decrease your reliance. There have been a couple of threads about POCSAG pagers but you have to be pretty dedicated to pay for one of those, and they are still just one way. Anyway trying to be really paranoid about this stuff warps your mind.
I don’t see what any of that has to do with my issues regarding the new model. Yeah, I’m interested in their OS and the hardware switches for better privacy control, but I’m not hardcore enough that I’ll ignore my other hardware preferences in order to have them.
I’m just not anywhere near important enough a person to need more protection than I already achieve via the official privacy options combined with a VPN blocking most of the more obnoxious stuff. The additional privacy they’re offering is “nice to have” for me, not a “must have.”
The old fashioned belt pagers that copier technicians used to wear. You could call a phone number and send a numeric or sometimes text message to the person’s pager. They were one-way, receive only, so the message would normally be your phone number and the person would go to a landline phone and call you. That was before everyone had mobile phones.
You can still get those pagers and the privacy attraction is that they don’t send anything like your location back to the phone carrier. Instead they are basically broadcast receivers, and the message is broadcast to your whole reception zone, typically the size of a city but potentially bigger on the fancier plans.
Service appears to start around $15/month per a quick search I just did. That’s more than I pay for unlimited voice and text plus a GB of data on my crappy MVNO cellular plan. So they aren’t that good a value for most of us in this day and age. But they do still exist.
Debian based phone, hardware kill switches, $550, slow loading product page at https://furilabs.com/shop/flx1s/ (makes me not believe their claim of a fast UI). Phone has an SD slot but no mention of a headphone jack or swappable battery. The phone hardware looks mostly conventional (Mediatek CPU etc). For me personally, this is a yawner, but maybe there is some attraction for some users.
I don’t need cutting edge, but removable battery and headphone jack were big selling points of the original that they’ve abruptly yanked in favor of this. I’d only learned of them recently, and was planning to buy the original. Now I may get a Fairphone instead.
It really doesn’t seem like a winnable situation. A ton of phone functionality that people rely on (always-on internet everywhere you go) is fundamentally invasive no matter how the phone is built. All you can do is decrease your reliance. There have been a couple of threads about POCSAG pagers but you have to be pretty dedicated to pay for one of those, and they are still just one way. Anyway trying to be really paranoid about this stuff warps your mind.
I don’t see what any of that has to do with my issues regarding the new model. Yeah, I’m interested in their OS and the hardware switches for better privacy control, but I’m not hardcore enough that I’ll ignore my other hardware preferences in order to have them.
I’m just not anywhere near important enough a person to need more protection than I already achieve via the official privacy options combined with a VPN blocking most of the more obnoxious stuff. The additional privacy they’re offering is “nice to have” for me, not a “must have.”
Assessing your threat model and planning accordingly is the best way to approach it.
POCSAG?
The old fashioned belt pagers that copier technicians used to wear. You could call a phone number and send a numeric or sometimes text message to the person’s pager. They were one-way, receive only, so the message would normally be your phone number and the person would go to a landline phone and call you. That was before everyone had mobile phones.
You can still get those pagers and the privacy attraction is that they don’t send anything like your location back to the phone carrier. Instead they are basically broadcast receivers, and the message is broadcast to your whole reception zone, typically the size of a city but potentially bigger on the fancier plans.
Service appears to start around $15/month per a quick search I just did. That’s more than I pay for unlimited voice and text plus a GB of data on my crappy MVNO cellular plan. So they aren’t that good a value for most of us in this day and age. But they do still exist.
More info available by web search.
Huh interesting. Thank you!