I think it is safe to say that in today’s society most of us have a smartphone. Unfortunately, that usually means giving up quite a bit of data in order to use one. There are options to reduce the amount of data you hand over of course. You can tweak the settings and permissions as much as the OS allows you to, but if you want more you are typically left with deciding which OS you want to use.
The choices usually fall between android and ios. There have been multiple options in the past like UbuntuOne, FirefoxOS, and Windows Mobile, but they never really made it big and died off.
You also have a couple options of custom roms when it comes to android. LineageOS and GrapheneOS are two of those options, but they required more technical know-how to install than most people are comfortable with.
Here is where it gets interesting. There seems to be a decent selection of newcomers to the market. This includes Silent Phone, which has been around for a while already, as well as some newcomers like Librum 5 and /e/.
Librum 5 is an interesting option because it runs an operating system that isn’t based on android or ios. Instead it runs a seperate operating system, which means you’ll be free of Google’s and Apple’s influence, but it also means the amount of apps for your phone will be limited. Where the Librum 5 phone really shines in the hardware switches to disconnect the microphone/camera as well as Bluetooth/WiFi. You’ll never have to wonder if your phone is secretly listening to your conversations again, if that was a concern of yours.
Where /e/ really shines is that it is based on android, LineageOS to be exact as well as code from the AOSP (Android Open Source Project). This means that all the Google privacy invasive things have been taken out. Instead of Google Services, it comes with MicroG which allows you to still interact with Google services like push notifications while also minimizing the amount of personal data that gets sent to Google. The nice thing about this is that all your favorite android apps should still work, even if they require Google services since MicroG takes the place of them. This way, you aren’t getting a smartphone with a couple hundred or thousand apps, you’re getting most (if not all) of the already existing android library of apps. These phones aren’t available for direct purchase in many places yet, but there are plans to role them out to many countries. This will give an option to people who care about their privacy, but don’t feel comfortable installing a custom rom on their phone themselves. You can read more about /e/ here as well.
I’m looking forward to many of these options and hope they’re all successful. If we can get more competition in the market it’ll only help the consumer. Maybe we’ll even see an actual privacy shift from companies like Google and they’ll allow you to deny internet permission from apps in the future.
Links from article for convenience:
LineageOS
GrapheneOS
Silent Phone
Librum 5
/e/
wonder if your phone is secretly listening to your conversations
You can read more about /e/ here as well
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