- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
cross-posted from: https://thelemmy.club/post/43094801
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Does it track and sell personal data?
Itself? I wouldn’t think so. But like almost all Android phones it comes with Google services so there’s that. They said the Bootloader will be unlockable to that should be able to be mitigated…
I’d say less than a mainstream flagship.
AI slop trash article.
I too would call anything slop that I don’t like!
Already preordered mine
Risky move, but I hope you’ll enjoy it.
Why risky? The company is not new, they’ve been selling cases with keyboard to a few years.
It’s their first phone indeed but it’s quite cheap so wor ty giving a try imo
I saw this kickstarter alternative the other day. IMO if it becomes a reality it would be better simply due to the fact that it fully supports linux instead of android.
I’m gonna keep an eye on it and see if it ends up becoming reality after the kickstarter.
Yeah that looks mega cool but it’s not a cellular device, so I’d still need a phone. I’m really not interested in carrying more devices.
I really want a Linux phone but I e played with them and they are just not to the point of being able to use as a sole device yet.
18hr of battery with the display off is a killer, and even if you could get an m.2 modem working in it m.2 modems tend to be far less efficient than the ones integrated to cell phone hardware. At least it my experience with Quectel and Sierra m.2 modems is representative of other brands.
I miss Palm and WebOS.
Can it do Linux touch and ditch android?
Seriously. This would be a sweet Linux phone.
Ditto
this device is designed to be your secondary smartphone
In this economy?
lol imagine having two phones, takes years to save up just to buy one!
In 2017 I bought a refurbished lenovo p2 for 300 that lasted me until 2024. Out of boredom, non because i needed it to change, i bought a refurbished s20 ultra for 350, still my daily driver.
No one is forcing anyone to buy a top gamma phone every year for 1400€
Have you tried being rich? I highly recommend it.
Could also try being frugal, there are plenty of smart phones for 200-300$ that will do everything your $1200 iPhone will do with a longer battery life. Most people I know spend more on a phone annually than I spend on my last car! And no u don’t need a new phone every year or two. Currently typing from my Moto G I got for 200$ new.
I don’t buy a new phone more often than probably one every five or six, so I don’t really mind buying an expensive flagship.
The problem tends to be though that people buy an expensive phone and then later have financial difficulties. And people criticise them for having an expensive phone as if they could have known that that would be an issue a year or so down the line.
The other part of the equation here is not every body has 200$ to buy a cash phone, but these days you have to have a phone. So if ur poor what do you do? Spend 200$ you don’t have on a cheap phone or walk out of verizon for 0$ with a brand new iPhone that retails for 1400$ but only cost u an extra 20$ a month for the rest of your life? It’s the same reason a lot of poor people buy new Nissans (read about how they made money on subprime loans if ur interested) and it brings into perspective how expensive it is to be poor!
Legit sound advice, I use the cheaper android phones so I never spend more than £120 on one. Only issue I ever have is the lacking RAM, otherwise they’re great.
I paid 70€ on my current phone, and it has 8GB of RAM, and even a headphone jack. Buying used is great
Damn, I need to start buying used then.
Work often issues work phones. They’re likely to be quite swayed by something focused on communication.
That’s their marketing pitch but it has every feature you’d need to make it your only phone, which is my plan.
It’s such a weird marketing pitch though…
Can Communicator be used as my primary phone? Yes! Absolutely. Communicator is a fully standalone smartphone that runs Android 16, with all the apps, 5G connectivity and Wi-fi. We think many people will use this as their primary phone while others will use it as a complement to a flagship iPhone, Galaxy, Pixel, etc.
Maybe a way for them to be able to say one day: “yes, it’s not selling in big numbers, but we aren’t competing against the others anyway, ours is a second phone, so it’s not a failure!” I mean, I don’t even know if that makes sense, but it’s the only spin I can give to it.
If it had an unlocked bootloader where i could install ubuntu touch i’d buy it. Otherwise naw.
Do you currently daily Ubuntu touch? How is it?
It’s good, no annoying UI gotchas, never had a problem with calling/receiving/texts. Waydroid works great using F-Droid/Aurora store.
I am very uneducated on the topic so bear with me here, can you run android apps on Linux mobile? Thinking banking apps here- thats the main thing holding me back. Not that I really NEED to do mobile banking mobile most days but it has saved my hide a couple times lol. Been thinking about changing the os on my Motorola, my buddy told me to try graphene but it’s pixel only. Not sure where to start but would love to de Google my phone a bit, tired of having to go and disable “features” (Gemini, assistant etc). Android these days is so bloated and sheisty it makes windows look good FFS. If the next update adds one more bs “feature” that might be the last push I need lmfao.
I have Ubuntu touch installed on my pixel 3a xl. On the phone i can install waydroid with gapps which will allow you to install googleplay store. You should be able to run those apps, i don’t use googleplay store though so your experiences may vary, just installed it to see if i could… All i can say is give it a go. There are some other phones on the market you could buy and try it out.
On Ubuntu Touch i installed waydroid through the openstore then in terminal i had to use this command to run waydroid with gapps. sudo waydroid init -f -s GAPPS good resource on waydroid https://docs.waydro.id/
Thanks a ton! Saved this comment as I do have a couple old phones kicking around I could try to experiment on that aren’t terribly outdated. If I can get a bank app to work on one I’ll run it as my daily ! Ive been hesitant about Ubuntu touch because it seemed adoptions low and I worried about lack of features, but I would like to get out of dooms rolling as much so something’s probably just as well without …
The bootloader will be unlockable, what ROMs will be installable is going to depend on the community
Someone said with the SOC it has third party ROM’s will be questionable. I haven’t taken the time to check that out but it would be great to have one device out there that still be tailored to the individual.
I miss Blackberry a lot but this ain’t it.
What’s wrong with it?
Probably a purist complaining it’s not the fabled mythical Linux phone.
Can it run Linux? Because if it runs any fascism-tech from Google it’s a non-starter
If you want to use it as your primary device, you may be locked out of using specific security focused apps such as banking apps.
Mobile banking is probably the only reason I’m still on Android
you may be locked out of using specific security focused apps such as banking apps.
they locked me out already, so it does not matter. they can’t play the same card twice.
I’ve yet to try a Linux Touch distro on a phone, but couldn’t you just save a shortcut to the website?
What are you using right now because every Linux phone I’ve ever seen has been an unfinished working program that isn’t commercially ready.
Isn’t Android Linux? That was the trench defended when I last checked a few years ago.
when people say linux phones, the point is not the kernel but believing it could have the same open ecosystem as the linux PC. no forced lockdown, no spyware, open source and in turn extensible system software, where its not the oligarchs who dictate. other then the first point these can be told about mostly none of the current phones, and even the first point is going away recently, despite that being the only way to get rid of the preinstalled, google mandated (and sometimes additional) malware.
Android uses a modified version of the Linux kernel.
The Spacebar has a built-in fingerprint sensor, which could be handy for unlocking the phone quickly. The keypad is touch-sensitive, which means that you can slide your fingers over it to scroll through messages. And before you ask, yes, it also has a 4.03-inch OLED touchscreen display for those of us who like scrolling on a smoother surface.
Some of you may also be pleased to know that the Clicks Communicator has a 3.5mm headphone jack and that it supports microSD cards for storage expansion. It ships with 256GB storage and you can add a microSD card with up to 2TB of capacity.
The device runs Android 16, supports Qi2 wireless charging, has a USB-C port, and has a 50-MP rear camera with optical image stabilization, alongside a 24-MP front camera. It’s powered by a 4nm MediaTek chip that has 5G support. It’s a dual-SIM phone with one physical SIM slot and an eSIM
It also has NFC for mobile payment support. I’m not seeing many compromises here except perhaps the camera and processor. I’m gonna use this as my next phone.
The Clicks marketing team has been marketing this as a “second device”. I think that’s a miss-step. Very few people want to have two phones. They exist, but it seems like this device should be a completely capable phone on it’s own. It’ll be a niche device either way but I think the “people who want a small phone with physical buttons” niche is larger than the “people who want two phones of of which is small with physical buttons” crowd. And it causes confusion. Some people saw the announcement and didn’t realize it’s a full fledged independent phone…
Maybe they should reach out to the GrapheneOS team and see if there could be a partnership of some type there.
The hardware security measures graphene wants are very expensive. Plus, GOS wants quick android security patche
Unfortunately the GrapheneOS team said it doesn’t meet their requirements. Their requirements are suuuuuuper specific which is why it’s only on Pixel devices.
They have said that the bootloader can be unlocked, so some sort of ROM support is possible.
GrapheneOS complete requirements:
- Support for using alternate operating systems including full hardware security functionality
- Complete monthly Android Security Bulletin patches without any regular delays longer than a week for device support code (firmware, drivers and HALs)
- At least 5 years of updates from launch for device support code with phones (Pixels now have 7) and 7 years with tablets
- Device support code updated to new monthly, quarterly and yearly releases of AOSP within several months to provide new security improvements (Pixels receive these in the month they’re released)
- Linux 6.1, 6.6 or 6.12 Generic Kernel Image (GKI) support
- Hardware accelerated virtualization usable by GrapheneOS (ideally pKVM to match Pixels but another usable implementation may be acceptable)
- Hardware memory tagging (ARM MTE or equivalent)
- Hardware-based coarse grained Control Flow Integrity (CFI) for baseline coverage where type-based CFI isn’t used or can’t be deployed (BTI/PAC, CET IBT or equivalent)
- PXN, SMEP or equivalent
- PAN, SMAP or equivalent
- Isolated radios (cellular, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, NFC, etc.), GPU, SSD, media encode / decode, image processor and other components
- Support for A/B updates of both the firmware and OS images with automatic rollback if the initial boot fails one or more times
- Verified boot with rollback protection for firmware
- Verified boot with rollback protection for the OS (Android Verified Boot)
- Verified boot key fingerprint for yellow boot state displayed with a secure hash (non-truncated SHA-256 or better)
- StrongBox keystore provided by secure element
- Hardware key attestation support for the StrongBox keystore
- Attest key support for hardware key attestation to provide pinning support
- Weaver disk encryption key derivation throttling provided by secure element
- Insider attack resistance for updates to the secure element (Owner user authentication required before updates are accepted)
- Inline disk encryption acceleration with wrapped key support
- 64-bit-only device support code
- Wi-Fi anonymity support including MAC address randomization, probe sequence number randomization and no other leaked identifiers
- Support for disabling USB data and also USB as a whole at a hardware level in the USB controller
- Reset attack mitigation for firmware-based boot modes such as fastboot mode zeroing memory left over from the OS and delaying opening up attack surface such as USB functionality until that’s completed
- Debugging features such as JTAG or serial debugging must be inaccessible while the device is locked
I really hope GOS does find an OEM willing to throw the kitchen sink at this.
They already have. They won’t say who it is but it’s in the works.
Yeah, I’ve been following that up closely. Really looking forward to this.
Even LineageOS would be amazing.
This could be my next phone.
But, but, though. Will the OS be non-proprietary? Will I be able to actually use all the apps I would ideally want? Because, much as I love my Samsung Galaxy, I really do wish I could remove a lot of its bloatware off the phone that I know I won’t ever use.
You can, without root even! Take a look at uad-ng (universal android debloater). Comes with a community-curated list which sorts APKs into 5 tiers from “recommended to uninstall” to “yeah don’t, your phone needs this to boot”. Apps disabled through this do not come back after updates.
Removed 140+ apps from my Xiaomi, 120+ from my GFs Samsung S24, and 90+ from my brothers Motorola Edge something.
Wow, very interesting. But being able to root it is pretty much a must, for me. I wonder if this will give users that freedom.
They have confirmed that you can unlock the bootloader to you’ll be able to root it yes.
Very nice!
Haha haha h haha h haha haha…but also: no. Of course not.
I’d eat one if they offer root options. Or a firmware. Or a major update. Or anything else beside a pricetag and the wish to never hear from you again.
They have confirmed that you can unlock the bootloader, and are claiming 5 years of updates.
They have shipped hardware before and seem like a somewhat reputable company. They haven’t made a phone before though so we shall see.
Aren’t the 5 yrs now mandatory in the EU? And unlocking the BL I can do on most phones. Doesn’t help a lot though unless you do it all yourself. So I’d still wonder if root will be possible. I like to own the devices I buy 😊
Unless you do it all yourself? What more do you need? An unlocked bootloader means custom roms and rooting are possible, right?
possible, yes. But usually noone does those things for these smaller fringe devices that are not mainstream. So, it’s either do it yourself or be happy you unlocked a bootloader to…have an unlocked bootloader :) And with each iteration of android it became harder and more frustrating. Hence I’m done with android.
I might actually use this as my primary phone (I agree with others who say marketing this as a 2nd phone was a mistake) if it gets e/os/ or grapheneos support
We need two phones now?!
Some people do that, most commonly with one being a “work” phone. But I think the idea is insane for the majority of people.
