Want self-determination for your handheld device?

The Gist

Ah, the smartphone. Its utility in modern life simply cannot be overstated. Alas, neither can any of its caveats.

At least not until we free ourselves from the grasp of an overpriced fruit pedlar, and companies naming themselves after either very small software, or very large numbers.

That is what we shall endeavour to explore in this article, dear reader.

The problems, the attempts at finding solutions, and where to from here. Won’t you join us on this little stroll? We’d offer to bring the tea, but haven’t quite figured out how to deliver it yet. Work in progress.

The Problems

We’ll start by addressing the very large mammal in the room… Security. In terms of personal privacy in particular.

All phone vendors would have you believe that they care about user privacy of course, which is about as sincere as an oil company’s promise to go green.

Not even our fruit pedlar actually believes that, they only get to say it because they care a microscopic percentage point more than the large number company. They proudly advertise that they won’t let anyone outside the circle of trust to access the data on your device.

Just you and the vendor themselves. Is that caring about user privacy? Or a great sales pitch, married to a mechanism that simply locks out the competition? We’ll let you be the judge on that one dear reader. Fruit launching an ad platform suggests to us that there are almost certainly mechanisms in place to deliver targeted advertising.

Can’t prove any of that though, very much a black box, and this isn’t an opinion piece. Let’s just say that ‘where there’s smoke, there’s fire’. After all, how can there be targeted advertising without a spot of snooping? We certainly aren’t the first, second, or anywhere near a limited number of digits to question that tidbit.

For many, the concern is that our handheld friends offer as much security as a colander, and are instead designed for a wholly different purpose: to lock you into the vendors garden and heap subscriptions on to you for all your days. And make ad revenue while they’re at it.

Security like a colander? Surely you jest.

Well yes, at least partially, dear reader. Security against malevolent 3rd parties has improved, and is of course an ongoing struggle. Security against 1st party malevolence however, i.e. your vendor, is a joke. Or it would be, if it wasn’t most serious.

Another issue of course is the matter of faux-ownership. We can buy a phone, but we can’t control the software without jumping through a considerable number of hoops. Let alone installing an OS of choice. By that we mean a completely different one, not just a modified version of the original.

Thankfully, after all these years, we are beginning to see some credible signs of alternative solutions. Self-determination seems almost (but not quite) within reach for most people. Blast, we just gave away the end didn’t we? Well, you know, we did say most people. But then that’s not you though—is it dear reader?

Before we move on, there is one thing that we have to address… owning a mobile phone, even one without the ‘smart’, brings with it security and privacy issues that we can’t pin on the vendor. Well, not directly at least.

The Mobile Phone Predicament

You see dear reader, mobile phones aren’t as straightforward as one might think. Instead of it being a single handheld computer, it actually holds two independent ones.

There is the obvious ‘main’ computer, which is the one users interact with, including but not limited to controlling things such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. This computer is the more powerful of the two, and it can be modified to run different operating systems if so desired. In theory at least.

The second computer is a different story. The so-called baseband processor. This unit is responsible for all cellular communication, and it is anything but open. With it devices can access cellular networks, and the providers of which can use it to triangulate the users position at all times.

So, unless the phone has a switch available to cut electricity to this chip, your location will always be known by the cellular network provider, and with it, the governments under which they operate. Perhaps even very clever criminals as well.

Although an attempt has been made to liberate baseband processor software, it hasn’t been very successful. For one, it hasn’t been updated in 13 years, meaning it won’t be compatible with any contemporary chips. It only ever supported a limited set of features, and we couldn’t find anything related to giving the user the option to switch the chip off.

Then there are legal issues, such as the certification requirements that certain authorities (i.e. the U.S. FCC) impose on the baseband processor software stack. It would no doubt require significant political pressure to overturn such legislation, and until it is, an open-source alternative seems unlikely.

Thus, true self-determination for your handheld device is sketchy at best. But if you find yourself stuck between the choices of convenience and security, and leaning towards convenience, then there are still avenues to explore, dear reader.

Some Solution Attempts

We understand, dear reader. Not easy to maintain a job, and social relationships without owning a blasted contraption such as this, is it? We won’t judge, we had to make the same decision ourselves. Reluctantly, begrudgingly, and somewhat unhappily, but a decision made all the same.

iFruit

While we’ve not been able to find any attempts at liberating Fruit, save perhaps the crusade in the right to peel, er, repair movement. The only thing we can suggest, er, did we say suggest? Politely insinuate? Is…to not get a Fruit device. No chance of self-determination here, for either of the onboard computers.

Automaton

Indeed, even 10¹⁰⁰ themselves have cleverly, deceptively… or both? Let’s go with both. It has even allowed users to install unofficial versions of Android on their flagship devices. It can even be done using a web browser, after enabling a feature on the device. That almost made us believe we were being given a real choice…until we tried it out.

Yes, one can indeed install a different version of Android on the device. Even so-called “De-Googled” versions such as GrapheneOS, CalyxOS and e/OS. So far, so good! And these alternative versions of Android work quite well!

Until we tried to install our banking apps.

‘You are running an unofficial ROM build of Android’ or something to that effect, slapped us right in the business card. Not allowed to use a custom ROM, and hope to do banking with it, it seemed. Thus 10¹⁰⁰’s strategy became apparent… ‘We’re open—we’ll even make it easy to play around with different software.’ Note the word ‘play’ there, dear reader. As that is exactly what it is, if we can’t use real-world apps on the device outside of official operating system releases. No way to self-certify the device afterwards of course. It will allow the use of the Play Store and Play Services, but it will always be an uncertified device. So, back to OrwellOS, er, certified Android, it was.

Personal note: one of us purchased a Pixel 8 a while ago, foolish enough to trust its ‘IP68’ rating for dust and waterproofing. They wouldn’t risk releasing a device with that rating without being serious, right? Right? A minor bit of rain later and the device was useless. Well, at least we got to see the consequences of having a ‘De-Googled’ user experience for a little while…without banking. And we got to see the fine-print on the device’s website where it says in very small letters: ‘The device is not waterproof’, ‘it was waterproof when it left the factory’. Must have been quite a rough trip from the factory then, eh? Can’t trust the device to be durable, but can trust the device to have hidden features.

We know, we know…what the flippitybollywhats were we thinking?! Lesson learned, dear reader, lesson learned. We shan’t dilly-dally with Pixels, Vectors, or Stroboscopes again.

It must be said however, that it is possible to change the operating system on other devices as well, although not as easily as with Pixel devices. At least not where the majority of devices are concerned. Thankfully there are a number of smaller manufacturers out there, whom are willing to go the extra mile. More on that later.

Open Software

To get rid of, er, continue the line of reasoning regarding alternative implementations of Android, there is e/OS and its Murena partnership. We’re not comfortable calling that ‘open’ though. It’s re-implementing a flawed operating system, on very much closed hardware. So we’re skipping this, dear reader.

There are also a number of projects out there that attempt to liberate, continue or re-invent operating systems abandoned by their progenitors, such as LuneOS, or the semi open-source SailfishOS. For our proverbial two pence: Meh.

More interesting to us is the slow—okay unbearably slow—but steady rise of mobile GNU/Linux projects. Projects such as Mobian, PostmarketOS, PureOS, and Ubuntu Touch. These implement a full-blown, Free and Open Source GNU/Linux environment on mobile phones.

A great step forward, were it not for one glaring issue and a sticky one we mentioned earlier. For one, there are virtually no efforts to release mandatory apps (e.g. banking, communication) onto this platform. As for the sticky issue…the baseband processor thing we mentioned earlier on. Thus far there is no way to control this fiddledyjibbit through software. Not that we’re aware of.

But there is a half-solution to the issue of apps. Enter WayDroid. This allows users to install and run a sandboxed version of Android within a GNU/Linux environment. It even allows for the installation of the Play Store, although the certification issue remains. Not all banks refuse to work with an unofficial build of Android, so it does give us a bit of an option for reprieve? Maybe?

Open Hardware

Open Hardware, now that’s promising. Well, as always, yes and no. Mostly no, with a smidgen of yes to be honest. Let’s unravel that bit by tidbit. Starting with open-ish phones. By that we mean phones that either have other OS functionality built in, or at the very least make it easy to do so later on. But they aren’t open-open, as in full disclosure of everything, from blueprint to any and all firmware.

Our first contenders are the Fairphone, Volla Phone, Pro¹X, and theoretically the SageTea XFone. We have to say theoretically on the last one, as the waters over there show signs of abandonment.

The others all come with some form of Android by default, although the Volla Phone does do things a little differently. It features the option to install multiple operating systems as by default, and can even be shipped with Ubuntu Touch instead of the Android-based ‘Volla OS’. It is also the only device in this line-up that seems to offer a genuine IP68 protection rating for dust and waterproofing. No kill-switch for the baseband processor though, on any of the phones in this line-up.

Personally, we really like the philosophy and practices surrounding the Fairphone, but the lack of IP68, and lack of a kill-switch makes this a hard sell atop its already considerable price. There is a lesson to be learned there however… Behold the true price of a phone when parts are ethically sourced. Food for thought.

Next up are true contenders for handheld self-determination: the Librem 5, the Liberty Phone, and the Pinephone Pro.

Why are these true contenders? Because they are designed with GNU/Linux in mind, but above all—they have hardware kill-switches. To be fair, the implementation of which on the Pinephone is more than a little clunky, but the relatively low price makes up for it. That said, we’d happily pay more if the thing had IP68. It doesn’t. But it does have spare parts readily available, akin to the Fairphone.

The most polished implementations are no doubt the Purism Librem 5 and Purism Liberty Phone. Alas again, zero waterproofing, but the kill-switch implementation is a thing of beauty. Easily accessible, meant for real-world use.

But there’s a catch isn’t there? Besides the waterproofing thing…

Indeed dear reader, there is. The price. Especially for the Liberty Phone. One could buy a Fairphone, a Volla Phone, a Pinephone Pro and still have money left over, for the price of a single Liberty Phone. No doubt this is because of the small scale production, high R&D cost etc. Understandable, but unfortunate.

The Takeaway

There we have it dear reader. There are three options available to us to have self-determination for our handheld device. One inexpensive, one fairly expensive, and one so expensive it makes us feel like Oliver Twist. But sadly, all three are quite fragile for frequent travellers.

Even with these three, one issue remains: mobile banking. Unless 10¹⁰⁰ can be forced to create a self-certification procedure, or banks can be convinced to ease up on their software requirements, the issue will remain.

As we said in the summary of this article, although few and far between, there are a few options available to us. This is true, but they are far from ideal. But perhaps by working together and barking up the right trees, we can make a difference.

Yours,

Digerty

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