I’m having some conflicts when it comes to lineage and similar OS. While, yes, they might be better from a privacy perspective (if you put the effort into it) and allow you to keep your phone longer, I simply do not trust that the OS can’t be tampered with. For many devices, there is a single person maintaining that version of lineage. Who guarantees that they don’t pipe important information to some server in a more or less clever way?
This should not be misunderstood as an argument for closed source. The problems I’m having with this type of open source is that the code differs from device to device, it is (at least as far as I know) possible to change enough of the code to become malicious while adapting it to another device, I don’t have the capacities to make sure that the code is actually safe, and they are not regularly audited. Hell, in some cases they are even provided without checksums.
So you trade the spying eyes against a possible barn door of insecurities.
Therefore, I much rather use audited ROMs like Graphene or Calyx, but they (mostly) require a device from the company that I am trying to avoid. It’s such a weird situation…
Think of it this way. Google pulls in 300 billion USD a year and 80% of that is advertising revenue, not leaving a whole lot of the pie for Pixel phones once you take out subscriptions, Chromebooks, GCP, etc etc.
Sure, they’re probably making some money on every pixel sale but the point of them making mobile phones is to support their advertising business.
I’m not a Graphene user, but that’s the way I see it. At the end of the day if you get the phone secondhand you’re not giving them any money at all.
I’m on Lineage OS
I love my phone and I’m planning on keeping it until it dies. Lineage OS allows me to have the latest version of Android that is patched.
I’m having some conflicts when it comes to lineage and similar OS. While, yes, they might be better from a privacy perspective (if you put the effort into it) and allow you to keep your phone longer, I simply do not trust that the OS can’t be tampered with. For many devices, there is a single person maintaining that version of lineage. Who guarantees that they don’t pipe important information to some server in a more or less clever way? This should not be misunderstood as an argument for closed source. The problems I’m having with this type of open source is that the code differs from device to device, it is (at least as far as I know) possible to change enough of the code to become malicious while adapting it to another device, I don’t have the capacities to make sure that the code is actually safe, and they are not regularly audited. Hell, in some cases they are even provided without checksums. So you trade the spying eyes against a possible barn door of insecurities.
Therefore, I much rather use audited ROMs like Graphene or Calyx, but they (mostly) require a device from the company that I am trying to avoid. It’s such a weird situation…
Re: your last paragraph -
Think of it this way. Google pulls in 300 billion USD a year and 80% of that is advertising revenue, not leaving a whole lot of the pie for Pixel phones once you take out subscriptions, Chromebooks, GCP, etc etc.
Sure, they’re probably making some money on every pixel sale but the point of them making mobile phones is to support their advertising business.
I’m not a Graphene user, but that’s the way I see it. At the end of the day if you get the phone secondhand you’re not giving them any money at all.