You can do NFC payments on degoogled Roms using an app called Curve.

/e/OS on Fairphone allows locking the bootloader.

I even installed it two years after purchase on my own phone, and relocked the bootloader, of course with the same caveat.

NFC payments are possible with Curve.

I use Arch, BTW.

So, I use a FP4 with /e/OS and I like it.

First things first: some things will break. Not many, and not often, but it happens. Mostly Google stuff, but on Android a lot of stuff is Google stuff.

Recently GMaps wasn’t working for a little longer than a week. I was still able to use HERE WeGo (my current favorite) and others even with Android Auto, so it was no problem for me, but still.

Banking apps and such almost always work, but there is a non-zero chance that one of those will break, even for a short while. I have three banking apps and they work flawlessly, plus itsme (Belgian gov app) and a German health insurance (this one refuses to login with fingerprint, but pass works).

Android Auto works, but I don’t think I ever managed to get Chromecast to do anything.

You do get something in exchange. The privacy improvements are there, and the OS-level adblocking as well.

But you have to accept that occasionally there will be a nonzero level of discomfort.

You could keep the old phone around for the apps that don’t behave, or you could use the old phone to test /e/OS before ordering.

The Google Maps issue is fixed. I always kept a judicious distance from Google Home and Pixel Watch, so I can’t comment on that.

Assuming the technical implementation is sound (I’m techy but that’s still way over my head), there is something missing from the explanations I’ve been seeing so far.

The state is of course the one who should be proving my identity, and the website has (usually) no business knowing who I am or holding a copy of my documents. The state however has no business knowing what I’m browsing, and a pinky promise is not enough.

I can’t understand whether this is something that the proposed system offers, or whether it’s a property of zero-proof systems in general.

Obviously something like this must necessarily be Free and Open Source if any trust at all must be put into it.

Well, kinda. You can have access tiers. For instance no access for age<13, limited access for 13<age<18, full access for age>18.

Needless to say, I think this is (in most circumstances) the wrong approach.

We are talking about products that are often deliberately harmful and hostile to all users, and then we expect to have a child-safe version of these. Shouldn’t we try to get an adult safe version too? It would be way easier to protect children then.

As a physicist, my favorite referee comment ever was [That my claim was wrong] “should be obvious to anyone who has ever sat through an elementary electromagnetism course.” He was wrong BTW, and the paper was finally published in a different journal.

I am from a decidedly different field, so I don’t know if I can vouch for you in any meaningful way.

This! If you have good hardware that works, it’s good to keep it if possible.

My smartwatch/activity tracker is indeed a Garmin Instinct 2s with Gadgetbridge. It really does most of what the proprietary app does, and gives you near absolute control over your data.

Can’t really anyone read? Poster above said Portugal or Poland cost 1/10th of the budget above.

And plainly no. In Poland you might get away with spending half.

Yes, that’s reasonable. That’s what e.g. mailbox.org does. And they publish periodic reports on how many requests they receive, how many they successfully reject, and how many they have to follow.

15000€/year gross? In Portugal that’s slightly above minimum wage. Might be okay in the middle of the countryside. There should be plenty of skilled programmers racing to live there, right?

The cost of living in cities is quite inflated by digital nomads and wealthy retirees and is starting to be unaffordable for Portuguese.

Edit: 15000 USD is 12800 EUR, that’s a few cents an hour above minimum wage. And Poland costs already more than that BTW.

Bifteki!

First a technical thing which is not obvious to me.

I understand that the general, non-proprietary Android system service would uses a privacy preserving service like BeaconDB. From what I understand, Google offers an alternative, proprietary, location API in its Play Services. Is that one also prevented from giving your location to Google of you’re using Sandboxed Google Play?

It’s an honest question. I assumed that the provider option I had in MicroG was exactly for that purpose, but I could be wrong.

Next, a small rant.

Bloody hell, I really do appreciate your politeness, but how is it that every damn article about privacy starts with threat modeling, but every discussion about privacy ends with “yeah but if your threat model does not require QubesOS you’re doing it wrong”?

(I use Arch BTW)

I use Arch, BTW.

GrapheneOS requires I think a few other things, like the possibility to completely disable the data lines in the USB port, and a bunch of others.

The problem with Fairphone is that they have rather high demands (e.g. long term support for hardware, better production practices) but they are a rather small outfit, so the default answer from parts manufacturers is “talk to the hand”.

As they grow they’ll become more interesting

I would argue that Fairphone with /e/OS is a combination of a committed/sustainable manufacturer with a trustworthy OS. It does not actively spy or screw with you, and it tries to prevent snooping in many places.

Of course it’s not nearly as security hardened as GrapheneOS, so that may be an unacceptable compromise to some.

I wouldn’t say that it’s pretty similar.

They have rather different goals and feature sets.

Sent from my FP4 with /e/OS.

If you want to convince GOS users to occasionally drop their sense of superiority, it looks like you have your work cut out for you.

My wife’s previous phone was a Moto One Hyper. Pretty well made device, especially for the price.