smeeps

Pixels are the best degoogle phone thanks to GrapheneOS...

Pixel is the only game in town for anyone who wants a secure and privacy friendly smartphone as they're the only ones that run GrapheneOS.

I do like the look of the 9, especially finally being able to get a smaller Pro model but the prices are getting silly and my 7 Pro is still working fine. Maybe the 10 or 11.

I'm also keeping an eye on Fairphone but they need to add all the hardware GrapheneOS needs to support them for me to be interested. And it'd help if they weren't launching with last gen specs. Fairphone 5 came out after my P7P but is inferior in most ways, I just can't justify paying for a downgrade as much as I support the mission.

I don't entirely agree with this: I know there are no ANPR cameras within my town for example. There's a speed camera that only takes photos if you're speeding, but ANPR cameras are limited to motorways and trunk roads, I can move around my town and the surrounding ones without clocking ANPR. Of course I'm still on regular CCTV and cell towers triangulate my phone, but that requires authorities actively looking into me which I doubt they are.

I tend to use an eBike where possible but again the phone triangulates if I have it on me, and it wouldn't be too hard to follow on cctv if you really wanted to. Everyone and their mother has a doorbell camera now

My ebike comes with a GPS tracking app to locate it. Luckily it's optional but it's already begun

Another awful "innovation". The screen in my 2016 van just does maps, music, and radio. I can swap it out no issue if I want (but I don't want android auto so I don't). The climate controls are still physical knobs thank god.

Holding onto my 2016 van with zero telemetry for as long as possible.

I use it both daily and for long trips. I use it daily because as I've said when I don't use it, I get stuck in a queue on the motorway that was easily avoided with traffic info. And also for long trips because again, there are multiple routes and there could be hours difference between them depending on traffic. I frequently travel from North England to London and depending on the day I'll use a route either on the western side or eastern side of the country based on the traffic.

The issue is, that people always say this but then people don't donate.

People have server costs and living costs and ads are realistically the only way to contribute to those. I always swing €5 here and there to developers whos apps I use often but most people don't: look at the Ko-fi page of small devs and they probably have less than €50 total, That's a couple months of server costs probably.

What a bizarre comment. Of course I need traffic data in a navigation app. Why would I want to sit in an hour queue on a closed motorway due to an incident when I could be using the alternative route that's still moving?

This is tricky. Luckily mine works on custom ROMs so I've not had to fool safetynet for a while.

Does it still trip if you install a custom ROM and relock the bootloader, without rooting? I know there used to be packages to hide you had root and keep safetynet

Depends, every tech company I've worked at has had Windows machines for project managers, account managers etc, and Mac for developers and designers. So it is possible to support two OSs as standard. I've always just picked the Mac but when my next laptop is due I may ask if anyone uses Linux

As time goes on you'll be exposed to more and more security vulnerabilities with no patches.

Nothing wrong with running an old phone but you should unlock it and put Lineage OS on or similar.