Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by makerofspoons 2393 days ago
For those interested in a privacy focused phone, Pine64 still has preorder PinePhones available: https://store.pine64.org/?product=pinephone-braveheart-limit...

It has privacy switches for the microphone, camera, bluetooth, and LTE. It also supports open source mobile operating systems.

1 comments

While Pine64 phone is promising, it does not remove all the proprietary blobs. For those who need even more freedom and privacy, Librem 5 should be more suitable: https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/
I don't think the Librem 5 removes all the binary blobs either, right? From what I can tell, they're nearly identical right now in that regard, though I trust Purism to actually work on removing blobs, so maybe long term they're a better option. But AFAIK, neither has completely unlocked the bootloader or the modem, and I'm not sure about WiFi/Bluetooth.
They do remove all binary blobs at least by the definition of the Free Software Foundation, who already recommed it:.

"The Purism Librem 5 cell phone is another exciting addition to the Giving Guide this year: we're giving it a tentative recommendation because the company has publicly committed to doing the right things for prioritizing user freedom and privacy."

https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/ethical-tech-giving-guid...