this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2023
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Privacy
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I'd say a normal phone is a lot worse than smartphones in general, unless you don't care about all your communications being readable by the carrier. With a smartphone you can make actually encrypted calls and texts over trustworthy applications/protocols (Signal, Matrix, Simplex, etc.), on a phone you're stuck with the carrier service; another thing that comes to mind is the storage, as far as I know there are no normal phones with an encrypted filesystem while it is default for a long while on Android.
On the other hand, if your new smartphone model isn't loaded with a privacy respecting ROM you'll also have at least some data sent to other third parties like Google and whatnot, but if you can change the ROM, then the potential for better privacy far outweighs the benefits of normal phones doing fewer things with your data by default. If you're going to use your new smartphone like an old phone, to make carrier calls and SMS, then there will be near to no improvements (except storage security maybe) and as you say, more data snooping
A normal phone doesn't have AGPS download ephemeris (edit:they may today, I haven't looked into it for a while), doesn't have Google Services tracking everything, or third party apps phoning home.
I'd say by default a smartphone is way worse, it has fsr more data collection by default, even without an account. Every data point a feature phone has, a smartphone has, plus more.
Voice calls and SMS use the exact same infrastructure in exactly the same way on both types of phones.
But it can be mitigated quite a bit on Android by not using an account on it, disabling GPS, wifi, Bluetooth.
They could also debloat it to reduce some of the background nonsense (Universal Android Debloat has a "safe to disable" list). (I'm assuming it's not an unlocked Pixel or a phone that's on the Lineage list).
If they don't care about apps, I'd even add NoRoot Firewall, configure it for always on, and set it to block all network access by default. This would be a Global Pre-Filter using asterisk (*) for both the address and port fields with both Wifi and Cell boxes checked (system apps will still have network access, this only affects users apps on a non-rooted phone).
Other than root or flashing a custom OS (like Lineage or Divest, Graphene if they were lucky enough to get an unlocked Pixel), this is about the best that can be done.
No Root Firewall
Universal Android Debloat Tool
Agreed 100%, I wish any smartphone could support Graphene
Sadly it's only getting worse.
Google and hardware manufacturers aren't motivated to make open devices. Quite the opposite, really.
They learned their lesson from the BIOS wars of the 80's that resulted in standardized hardware interface, so any compliant OS could be installed. This is what gave MS the ability to beat IBM at their own game, and prevented strong DRM.
Phones don't have a standardized BIOS like that, so each brand requires drivers built specifically for it (also a bit of a result of using Linux as the base, since it's a monolithic OS). Without those drivers you can't install an OS, and each device is different.
Google and friends like it this way, their long-term goal is fully locked down phones that you don't control and can't modify, so they can fully implement DRM.