iOS is what I currently use because they seem marginally better than google for privacy lately, but I don’t trust any of it anymore with how easy all government orgs seem to be able to obtain methods of accessing things that they should have no way to do unless the user provides credentials or biometrics. The pre-ios-26 vulnerability is pretty bad and just requires visiting a website iirc too so probably be careful with those older devices if you’re still using them.
The biggest problem with android alternatives is google play attestation driving MDM, I do a lot of work with MDMs lately so I can’t really go that route. This style of lockdown where big brother (big tech companies) monitors everything about your phone seems to be where we’re going in the US with mandating identification to be proven to use devices, sign up for services, or otherwise interact with the internet. The noose is around our necks but the stools we’re standing on haven’t yet been kicked away.
Thanks for going into details about it. I wasn’t really thinking about vulnerabilities with the older devices. It’s weird as when I think about it now, it’s quite obvious.
But if we’d take me personally, I don’t remember last time I opened browser with them. They, old devices, are some utilities for me. Say, old iPhone, I only record voice memos with it. Old iPad, only serves YouTube, and so on. What I rather meant about iOS 9 feature parity is having a simple barebones OS that works, but the browser is updated. That’s what my Linux laptops (and, well, desktop too) are: I use sway wm with quite minimal set of software, but the browser is obviously updated. I used to run Firefox Nightly for years, but at some point I’ve got lazy about it, and use just a regular Firefox. I own an old Android 8 phone, with no Google services (microG is there, however) and F-Droid. I have no idea whether that’s okay for today’s, but I don’t use it much either. It’s too slow to casually use it daily with comfort.
I have a couple of Windows tablets (Surface 3 and Lenovo Miix 2) that run Linux, and it’s close to what I’d like to have on a smartphone. But they’re far from being reliable. Hardware quality is very bad, and I use them out of experiment rather than I truly enjoy them. I have no idea how we can get the mobile market back, too little of us care, and even if the number would grow, it’s quite difficult to assemble your own hardware, I assume. Perhaps Graphene OS’ new hardware partner would improve anything… but I don’t believe it.
iOS is what I currently use because they seem marginally better than google for privacy lately, but I don’t trust any of it anymore with how easy all government orgs seem to be able to obtain methods of accessing things that they should have no way to do unless the user provides credentials or biometrics. The pre-ios-26 vulnerability is pretty bad and just requires visiting a website iirc too so probably be careful with those older devices if you’re still using them.
The biggest problem with android alternatives is google play attestation driving MDM, I do a lot of work with MDMs lately so I can’t really go that route. This style of lockdown where big brother (big tech companies) monitors everything about your phone seems to be where we’re going in the US with mandating identification to be proven to use devices, sign up for services, or otherwise interact with the internet. The noose is around our necks but the stools we’re standing on haven’t yet been kicked away.
Thanks for going into details about it. I wasn’t really thinking about vulnerabilities with the older devices. It’s weird as when I think about it now, it’s quite obvious.
But if we’d take me personally, I don’t remember last time I opened browser with them. They, old devices, are some utilities for me. Say, old iPhone, I only record voice memos with it. Old iPad, only serves YouTube, and so on. What I rather meant about iOS 9 feature parity is having a simple barebones OS that works, but the browser is updated. That’s what my Linux laptops (and, well, desktop too) are: I use sway wm with quite minimal set of software, but the browser is obviously updated. I used to run Firefox Nightly for years, but at some point I’ve got lazy about it, and use just a regular Firefox. I own an old Android 8 phone, with no Google services (microG is there, however) and F-Droid. I have no idea whether that’s okay for today’s, but I don’t use it much either. It’s too slow to casually use it daily with comfort.
I have a couple of Windows tablets (Surface 3 and Lenovo Miix 2) that run Linux, and it’s close to what I’d like to have on a smartphone. But they’re far from being reliable. Hardware quality is very bad, and I use them out of experiment rather than I truly enjoy them. I have no idea how we can get the mobile market back, too little of us care, and even if the number would grow, it’s quite difficult to assemble your own hardware, I assume. Perhaps Graphene OS’ new hardware partner would improve anything… but I don’t believe it.