Just curious, what did you switch to? All the truly open source phones still have a lot of work that needs doing, which means the only real competitors are android devices with a custom rom, and that doesn't really fix privacy either.
I started using open source apps and limited the closed source ones to Google's (which can do what it wants with my phone anyway), WhatsApp (or I won't be in touch with anybody), Messenger Lite (I can almost uninstall it, it's a desert here), car sharing, banks.
Oh, my apologies then for assuming the intent of your question.
My current phone is somewhat open-source (cyanogenmod), though I think Google's version of "open-source, but you totally need to rely on our stuff to get basic functionality" is fairly bullshit.
I can compile my own OS and additional software
I can put tools on my phone that severely limit it's contact with Google's servers, although I suspect that there is an underlying system that ignores those tools.
As for my computers, I use Linux. I typically run them on Thinkpads, but I've tried a few other systems as well. My next computer will be a Purism or System76 laptop.
All in all, I'm not happy with any phone that I've seen. I can't think of any that I believe has taken legitimate action to show that they care about my privacy.
As far as computer OS's, I think Linux has strongly taken action to ensure my privacy.
It's true for smartphones. If you choose privacy AND open source then you're either making sacrifices or doing something "hacky". Most people want to have their mainstream apps available and don't want to learn how to install a new OS on an Android phone.
> openness in phones is decreasing, not increasing - each new generation of Android devices seems to contain more and more locked-down proprietry code.
"openness in phones" took a huge leap forward with Android. 5 years ago, the idea of a widely deployed, almost completely open phone system would have seemed like science fiction. Just because some companies are adding crap doesn't take anything away from the core system, which continues to be free and continues to improve.
> the open source community is getting sucked in to supporting this solution that is dragging us away from what would truly be an open platform.
Which is, pray tell? Google has poured millions of dollars into Android, and we get that under a very free license. The "open source community" isn't some magical thing: it takes real work to make stuff happen, and Google is doing it with Android, including stuff like usability and GUI work that the "open source community" hasn't been so strong at in the past. So I don't really see some magical solution just wafting down from the heavens... it's simply not on the radar at this point. The only other remote possibilities are Meego and perhaps Symbian, but I don't really see much going on there.
Umm what phone are you using? I hope you realize that contrary to what you think Android isn't completely open source and some of the most key parts are owned by probably the biggest enemy of privacy on Earth.
I don't know how representative I am, but I just want something that respects my privacy and doesn't try to monetize my every interaction, while being open enough that I can run what I want on it (apps, not OS). Android fails at the first and iOS fails at the second.
I like in principle that Android is open source (minus all the proprietary junk getting jammed into Play Services). I or someone could verify that it's not sending my data to a sketchy third party, but only to a point. Unless the OS and all apps are completely open source, any closed source component could be secretly betray me. Ironically, though, I trust Apple a lot more to write privacy-respecting code even though it's all proprietary. But on Android I do what I can to mitigate these issues, by running as much tracking- and ad-blocking software as I can (a thing that isn't really possible on iOS, at least not to the same extent). And I do have some apps sideloaded that I'd miss if I had an iPhone. But I still assume that Google is not being a good steward of any data it gleans from my Android usage, and that sucks.
I don't care too much about the ability to make modifications. The hurdle to jump to go from a stock to custom ROM is pretty high nowadays, as I expect most financial apps (and probably some others) to aggressively detect enabled root access and refuse to run. And the process of building your own OS images to make tweaks is not particularly fun, and can be a mess to clean up if you make a mistake. It's critical to me that my phone doesn't have downtime, so I'm less likely to mess around with it.
The problem with the current crop of "Linux phones" is that (while they do respect privacy, don't try to monetize every interaction, and are open enough to run what I want on them) they don't have anywhere near the polish of iOS or Android, and are (understandably) missing key applications that I use daily. So anything I use will have trade offs. For better or worse (probably worse) I've chosen the easier path of Android, at least for now.
Having said that, I do think I want to get a PinePhone, not to use as my primary mobile device, but as something to tinker around with. Maybe it's something that eventually could be a primary device, at least for some situations, but I don't see that as being the case without a lot of work, and a lot of customization that I have to do myself, which I don't really care to do all that much.
I personally think that the effort to create open source phones is the single most important technology project going on out there. We have open source browsers, we have open source social apps, but we definitely do not have open source phones. Phones that can be truly owned and controlled by users will reshape the privacy discourse, from one of complaining and legal coercion, to one of choices and markets.
Symbian was open sourced at one point and before that, available for others to make phones with, SonyEricsson had a couple, I think there were one or two others as well. The Nokia linux phones were open sourceish as well, in partnership with Intel.
Very interesting, thank you for the post! I will say that from our perspective on the outside, we (as in techies, app developers, etc) were pretty damned excited for open source. Its why I ditched my iphone and have been android ever since. Pure android is a much better experience, imho, than iphone will ever be or has been in the past.. the problem with android is that you get a nice new android phone and its riddled with crap ware you can't get rid of unless you know how to root and install a nice AOSP rom and the phone is even popular enough to warrant someone figuring out how to root it... which is great for me but not for a lot of other people who don't even know what root is.
I also don't understand why the nexus phone line got cut. I guess it wasn't selling well? I can't understand why though. My wife has a nexus 6p and its a great phone that was well priced.
I was involved with a open source phone OS and things went great - until we tried to take it to market. In order to launch the OS we decided to partner with telecom providers, and it was their requirements which threatened the project’s integrity. I fear this barrier will be present for other phones in the future. Open source hardware is really important. The closed source baseband blob compromises the security of the device. We were unable to audit it, so we could not trust it.
Nobody sells a 100% open source phone. Everyone uses broadcom, motorola, TI, etc. chips which have propriety firmware. (I'm aware there are a few obscure phones that claim to be 100% open, but not many people use them, not available, etc.)
I have a lot of privacy concerns with Google. But they have also enabled my phone to run on mostly Open Source code, both OS and applications. This is important to me, and for that reason I bunch them apart from Apple and MS.
The primary issue here though isn't open source vs not, it's how updates and changes are rolled out.
What you're actually looking for is a phone where you manually initiate updates, and where it's guaranteed that change in behavior (e.g. theough experiments) can only be controlled through the device and not remotely.
With OS it's more likely to get that, but not guaranteed.
All I ever wanted was pure linux on a phone, so I could do what I wanted to with it, including securing it. Instead what we got was a half open half proprietary peice of crap that even google bent over backwards to let the carriers fuck up with their custom ROMs on top of stock droid.
What we need is an open source phone, metal to screen, so to speak. Oh wait, the cell radio firmwares are all proprietary too?
I blame carriers and their bullshit first, google for not allowing more granular ACL's natively, and consumers for accepting android because they were so ready for anything different.
I kinda feel you on this. I am attached to the Android ecosystem. I know two people who have attempted to use open source phones (a rom without gapps + fdroid). They're not _really_ open source as your still have binary blog drivers, but that's as close as you're going to get really. I will give it to them, they were dedicated. One of them had done this for nearly a year, but she started to give up when she found herself writing several apps to replace stuff in that was already available in the play store.
At the same time, I would really love an alternative to Android/eyeOS. I wonder if we'd have more open source mobile tools had the Ubuntu Edge succeeded in getting funding?
One of the biggest reasons we don't see a Linux explosion on Android in the same way we saw developers using it on their desktops in the late 90s/early 2000s is because you can't just install a base Linux distribution on any phone. Unlike the PC which is a full platform, ARM devices are SoCs where every manufacture attaches random shit to random pins and creates non-upstreamable Kernels:
Almost every rom we see out there has to have a customized build for each specific phone. Maybe some of this will start to change with Oreo, but I think a bigger barrier to alternative OSes on phones is simply a standard platform.
All I want is a fully open source phone from the radio firmware up. Android has been such a disappointment for me as a security conscious person, between googles questionable open source policies to the carrier hell it gets forced into and into the blackbox of radio protocols like GSM that far too often have DMA to the same segments of the CPU.
The whole point of FOSS is to be able to see what's going on, for freedom and control to the user. At this point I barely see Android as any better than IOS, aka, a very pretty jail for the user.
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