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(SECURITY) Getting Closer to a SECURE Phone
PinePhone: An inexpensive, (real) Linux phone
by @admin, april 20, 2021, 05:53pm utc

With all of the personal data collection and outright censoring being done on the Android and iOS phone platforms; a full LINUX phone that is actually affordable(!) now comes into play in the form of the PinePhone, from Pine64.

The PinePhone has been customized to run several interesting Linux variants, such as Manjaro running Plasma Mobile; Mobian (a Debian phone port); UBPorts (a user base port of UBUNTU Touch), postmarketOS (Alpine Linux) and KDE Plasma; with others on the way. By way of comparison, Android "uses" Linux, but it is only an older stub of the Linux kernel, with a lot of proprietary Google code lumped on top and around it. One example of this is the Google Play Store.

BUT BEST OF ALL there are switches to turn off front & back camera, the modem (cell/GPS), Wifi & Bluetooth, the microphone and even the headphone. These are physical hardware switches, not software ones that can be over-ridden ... by others.

You do not have to provide an email or other identifying information to use the PinePhone, as you would on Android and iOS.

It has a removable Li-Po 2750 mAh battery and charges with a USB type-C cable that is provided.

Cost is $149 USD, or $199 USD for a convergence kit, which is twice the memory and a (little) device to let you hook up a monitor and a mouse easily. This allows you to try the PinePhone out as a "desktop" as well.

For more info, see:
PinePhone.
Mobian.
UBports.
KDE Plasma.
Mobian PinePhone wiki.

tags: All users, Security related
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