19 ms·

>but I don't think most people who buy a Linux phone actually want a Linux phone. They want an open-source phone. Both of those are missing the point IMO. What

• rlayton2 6y ago
  Yes, this is the point. For example, I want a phone where I can send faked GPS data to apps that request GPS permissions (and so on).
  • hellisothers 6y ago
    As a developer I don’t want people sending my app spoofed data.
    • abraae 6y ago
      As a user I want a way to bypass your overly intrusive data collection on me.
    • hulahoof 6y ago
      Agreed, but as a user I do want this option and so the parent post point stands - the device should be on the owners side, not the app developers.
    • belval 6y ago
      I am the one paying for the phone so I should get to pick what information it will tell you.
    • rnotaro 6y ago
      As a user you're not entitled to the GPS Data of my phone and i'm allowed to send any data that I want to.
    • polishdude20 6y ago
      It's not your app anymore. The user has bought it remember?
    • andolanra 6y ago
      Well then, you should make sure that you're providing a useful service with that data, or allow data collection to be turned off. Think of it like this: if I'm actively using an app that's giving me turn-by-turn directions, then of course I'm not going to want to spoof GPS, since it would make the app useless to me. But if your app demands GPS data just for ad analytics, then yes, I would absolutely and without any remorse spoof GPS data for that app. In that latter case, I don't care that a developer might be unhappy with it, because as a user I'm unhappy that the developer is slurping up data they don't need!
      • duxup 6y ago
        What about games like say Pokemon Go where accurate location data is part of the game and spoofing is a problem that can impact other user's?
        • vincnetas 6y ago
          Good question. I still think that its up to user to decide what data he shares with app. If its crucial for app to know that gps position is not faked, app could do some heuristic. Check if user is not moving faster than some limit, does not stop moving for extended periods of time etc. Basically anticheat engine. Only area where this whould be relevant i think is online multiplayer games. Otherwise, if user is faking gps he is messing up his own experience.
          • duxup 6y ago
            >Only area where this whould be relevant i think is online multiplayer games. That's the issue with augmented reality games like Pokemon Go.
            • chii 6y ago
              i argue it's not an issue. If the user decides to spoof to cheat in the game, there are other ways to detect it (such as speed limiting - which, as i understand, pokemon go already does). If the app wants to force a user to not modify their phone just so they have a secure enclave for which they can implement DRM, then i can't agree to it. This includes things like spoofing, but also things like memory edits or hacking save files, or anything else client side. If the app needs secure storage that's unchangeable, they can save it on their servers.
    • matheusmoreira 6y ago
      As a user I don't really care about what you want or need. You're not supposed to get any data at all unless it's strictly necessary. You're also supposed to delete any data that you do get after you're done using it in a way that benefits me and me alone.
    • whateveracct 6y ago
      too bad!
    • stirfish 6y ago
      Why not? As a developer, I can't think of any downsides.
    • theodric 6y ago
      As a user I say "too bad, I paid for the app, I do what I want with it"
    • jjav 6y ago
      I'm a developer too, but no, sorry, the user comes first. They're paying the bills and your salary. If your app needs to get info that benefits the user (as the mapping app GPS example), nobody will deny it because it makes sense. If your app wants to get info that benefits you but not the user, it only makes sense for that data to be denied (preferably) or faked (as a backup plan). You have no right to it.
      • jcelerier 6y ago
        > They're paying the bills and your salary That's the whole issue - it's not the case anymorez now it's the ads that pay
  • rjzzleep 6y ago
    Android had plenty tools in the past to allow that. Xprivacy even used to allow you to select which Contacts you want to allow for which app. So you could use WhatsApp but only allow a handful of contacts to be read. One of the frustrations people have with Google is that they're making it increasingly closed and problematic to make modifications. Given that nowadays some banks for example are mobile only and everyone is waiting for Google to completely shut down modified boot systems(probably in response to Qualcomm TrustZone being untrustworthy), people are re evaluating whether it makes sense to invest in the Android ecosystem. EDIT: google could have capitalized on this and made it a part of their offering.
    • inquirerGeneral 6y ago
      That's because you're trying to use apps that use the services of Google. Pixel phones are still the best to use to wipe and put other operating systems on
    • heavyset_go 6y ago
      Apps can detect when you're mocking GPS on Android.
  • fn1 6y ago
    That is because of Androids stupid permissions-system where you have to give all requested permissions to an app before being able to install it. On iOS the app installs and works and THEN it might ask you for GPS permission and you can deny that and the app keeps working, just without the feature that needs GPS. I just installed Mi Home, a chinese app which requested every permission there is. I just denied all of them, could still use the app and am 0 afraid that the app somehow accessed my data.
    • dreamer7 6y ago
      Just to clarify, Android has had the ability to request permissions ad hoc in the user journey since Android 6.0. But it is true that Android won't reject apps that refuse to work without a permission while iOS mandates that basic functionalities of an app work even when permission is denied.
    • yarcob 6y ago
      > you can deny that and the app keeps working, just without the feature that needs GPS A phone that would truly value the user would allow the user to provide a fake GPS location. Then you could use features that need GPS and not give up your privacy. But Apple doesn't allow that since it would make the phone less useful for companies who want to use phones for tracking. A phone that truly valued the user would allow users to install multiple copies of an app, and allow the user to log in with different accounts. But Apple doesn't allow that, because they don't want people to share devices.
      • cletus 6y ago
        Yeah, your GPS example doesn’t hold up. How is denying an app location info consistent with your position that Apple wanting to enable companies to track users? So you, I suspect, don’t want to “avoid tracking” so much as you want to avoid geo-gating of apps and content. Content distributors rely on such features to satisfy legal obligations about what content they can show where. If the OS started adding features like “pretend I’m in location X” or “download movie regardless of app restrictions” (as an example of another feature that could be argued is pro-user) then at some point you’ll have a platform that isn’t commercially supported or viable. Honestly, Apple is by far the most pro-user company in this field and there are countless examples of this. But a very small minority chafe against the restrictions that are actually in most users interests (eg not allowing side loading of apps, which for most people would simply be an attack vector).
  • a0-prw 6y ago
    On Android phones, if you enable "developer" in settings, the app "fake GPS settings" can do that. Caveat: It's been almost 4 or 5 years since I used it. I used to prank colleagues on Facebook by posting from a local prison or other weird places. Have had no use for it since I deleted my fb account. So I don't know if it can still do what you want.
    • matkoniecz 6y ago
      You are unable to do it for specific apps, it is a global setting.
      • eqvinox 6y ago
        Also I think the apps can check for this. It's also been several years for me but I remember using an external Bluetooth GPS receiver needed this setting to allow an app to read the BT data and feed it into Android & some Apps just refused to work.
• matheusmoreira 6y ago
  > a phone that is on their side > What people really want is a phone that they can trust to be on their side implicitly. Absolutely! These days our computers only do things that align with big company interests. I want a phone that will obey me even if it means ruin for its maker.
• nickysielicki 6y ago
  I like this phrasing a lot. It’s easy to feel that iOS isn’t on your side when you can’t use a non-WebKit browser and can’t use an adblocker.
  • bbreier 6y ago
    Not that this fundamentally changes your claim, but it's probably worth pointing out to someone reading that you can use an ad blocker on iOS.
    • nickysielicki 6y ago
      There exist adblockers but as far as I’m aware they all work at a network level and not at a script level, which means that 1. They suck and 2. You can’t use a VPN and an adblocker at the same time. (Am I misinformed?)
      • wruza 6y ago
        It’s the other way round actually. On iOS you can install an adblock ruleset provider that Safari can use natively. On Android it’s only VPN or an adblock-enabled browser (that is usually yet another set of issues) because Chrome is adblock’s enemy. At least that’s my experience after long research while using both OS (recently, mid '20-21).
        • ac29 6y ago
          You can do DNS based adblocking on Android as well using the built in "private DNS" support in combination with something like NextDNS. Doesnt need a VPN or special browser.
        • danShumway 6y ago
          Properly configured, you can get much better adblocking capabilities on an Android phone than you can on iOS. There's a weird situation with mobile phones where for most people who aren't going to go out of their way to make their devices private, Apple's ecosystem is the right choice; it has better defaults and better sandboxing. But once you do decide to go out of your way to make your device private, Apple's ecosystem stops being the right choice. On a rooted Android phone I have network-level adblocking on my device that directly works with the firewall. I also run Ublock Origin in my phone browser, which blows every single Safari adblocker out of the water. I can also cut off Internet access to specific apps and games, not just to domains. I also have access to a litany of Open Source apps that wouldn't be allowed on app stores like NewPipe that improve my privacy by replacing services. And LineageOS imposes additional sandboxing on top of Android's built-in features. But if a friend buys a phone, they're not going to do any of that. They can't get NewPipe because they're not using F-Droid. They're probably going to stick with Chrome, which has next to no adblocking or extra privacy controls. An iPhone will be more private and more secure for them in almost every way. So it's a weird situation where which device is more private depends a lot on who you are. For most average consumers, it's likely iOS. But it's not quite so simple to say that iOS has the best privacy overall.
• rapnie 6y ago
  > What people really want, is a phone that is on their side. This. No matter how convenient and useful current smartphones are in daily life, there's always the nagging discomfort by knowing you are carrying a half-nefarious spying device. One where even the so-called reputable vendors can't be trusted to not put in malicious adware, planned obsolecense, and do everything in their power to ensure you don't really own the thing.
  • skohan 6y ago
    Yes exactly. About a year ago I switched from Windows to Linux for my home media PC, and it's such a relaxing experience. My computer just does what I tell it to do, and nothing changes unless I want it to. By contrast, whenever I do have to boot into Windows to run some specific application, it's like I've invited a corporate representative from Microsoft into my home. Things are changed for me on updates. The OS suggests things to me I have no interest in. When I want to use Microsoft software, I have to log into accounts for some reason, which often means a round trip through email to reset the password. Once Windows even changed firmware settings without asking me which broke things in Linux. The best things about Linux are not what it does, but what it doesn't do. I want this for my phone as well.
    • hazaskull 6y ago
      Counter example. I switched from Linux to Windows because I find its desktop-experience to be superior. In my mind software and hardware is evolving at a rate that makes it impractical to support the notion that I could usefully modify it myself so it mostly comes down to trust. Do I trust Microsoft more to protect my long-term interest than some unknown group of open source maintainers? Looking at being able to access old data and run old programs I feel MS have been doing a great job. Now if they come up with a way for me to make sure that my data is in some standardized format AND protected in such a way that I could reasonably expect nobody (not even MS) to read it (but still be able to offload it elsewhere) I’d be entirely happy.
      • luckylion 6y ago
• jjav 6y ago
  This hits the nail in the head. For a phone, open source doesn't matter and Linux doesn't matter. It's all about for who's benefit the product is built. I like the phrasing of having a phone "on my side". In a recent thread here on obsolete hardware I was commenting how up to the fairly recent past products were built with the idea of competing on features the user wanted (or at least presumably wanted). But no longer - in the last ten years that has shifted in too many industries to be all about features that the company wants (spyware, tracking, DRM, cloud lock-in, and on and on). The phone duopoly is a poster child of this evil trend. Neither platform puts the user first and into the drivers seat. So no, I don't want an open source phone nor a Linux phone, specifically. (Not saying I'd mind if one or both are true, that'd be cool, but not a deciding factor.) I want a phone where I the customer are in full control of what it does. I must be able to override anything the OS wants to do and to override anything any app wants to do.
  • bregma 6y ago
    Phone makers are still competing on features their customers want. You need to understand their customers are the carriers, not you the consumer.
  • Valord 6y ago
    Wouldn't other non-Google ROMS such as LineageOS be more popular than they are?
• dmitriid 6y ago
  > iOS doesn't support open standards like Vulkan mainly because it's not in Apple's interest to support them. Or maybe because Vulkan was a standard so long and late in the making that Apple released their own graphical stack a year before the Vulkan was even announced?
• junippor 6y ago
  > What people really want, is a phone that is on their side 100% this. Why is it so difficult to copy files to/from my phone? Why is it so difficult to list all the files in a folder? Why is it so difficult to get a list of what's running? _Why is it so difficult to know that my phone is working for me_?
  • loulouxiv 6y ago
    > Why is it so difficult to copy files to/from my phone? Because they want you to have no choice but use their cloud storage > Why is it so difficult to list all the files in a folder? Because they don't want you to know what is a folder, just to type everything in their cloud storage search engine so you are even more locked in
    • junippor 6y ago
      I KNOW what the answer is :-P
• CharlesW 6y ago
  > What people really want, is a phone that is on their side. iOS doesn't support open standards like Vulkan mainly because it's not in Apple's interest to support them. Not because it's in the user's interest, necessarily. I couldn't agree with "people want a phone that is on their side" more. I also agree that Linux matters as much as iOS's BSD heart—that is, it doesn't. But this is also why the Vulkan example doesn't serve your point. As with Linux, technical implementation details aren't why people are using iPhones. Most people use iPhones because of the complete experience. For the few who care whether the iPhone is "on their side", it is clear that Apple's business model is generally aligned with their interests. This is either unknown or untrue for alternatives. This is where open source phone vendors will fail. Trust is not simply a technology problem.
  • Qwertious 6y ago
    Honestly Vulkan was just a lazy example, but it's hard to give a good one when I don't use Apple products in the first place. A better example might be places where it's hard to switch away from Apple's systems, or perhaps how they only support hardware that doesn't last very long and are notoriously hostile to attempts to repair your device.
  • suby 6y ago
    Except the iPhone is really not on the users side. I do tend to think the iPhone isn't going to spy on me, or at least if it is, it's going to be doing so to a much lesser extent than Android. But it's also not going to, for example, let me install a web browser which is anything other than a Safari reskin. There are other factors to 'being on the users side' than just privacy.
• pjmlp 6y ago
  All the relevant game engines already support Metal, the user doesn't care, their favourite games keep running.