Yeah, in theory is for sure no good. I watched Gael on Open Tech Will Save Us last night (only seems to be a YT link out there at the moment, apologies) and it sounds like there’s a determination within /e/ to provide an operating system that works on devices long-forgotten by their manufacturers, and the people maintaining Android for them. Brilliant stuff and power to them.
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I keep wondering if Amazon and Microsoft are looking at the numbers about bringing out their own smartphones again now that cracks are appearing in Android and Apple’s lock on the phone market.
Neither would be private but then again neither would be reporting to Google or Apple.
Probably not yet.
And I think it’s a long shot because both companies are so huge that they have trouble thinking in terms of small lots and small niche markets.
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We were watching the launch event live, it’s on their Vimeo here and was pretty slick, good graphics and well presented.
I gave e OS a very good run on my old Pixel I bought for testing (which seems to be in need of some fixing at the moment) and was impressed. It was especially easy to add in my home Nextcloud instance.
Now that Bromite fork’s search engine list definitely could do with more non-proxy options… 
I updated to /e/OS ver 1.0 yesterday on my Samsung S9+. I bought the S9+ refurbished from /e/ about a year and a half ago. /e/OS OTA updates have been regular and monthly since then with no problems except when they also updated the version of Android which caused my notification sounds to all sound like a frog being strangled. I had to choose new sounds. 
Otherwise it’s all been smooth.
Anyway ver. 1.0 seems to be stable so far for this first day.
/e/ added a feature to ver 1.0 called “Advanced Privacy” this uses Tor somehow to obscure your identity. It caused MS Outlook and Twitter to freak out so fair warning, only turn it on if you are not using any of the silos from our corporate overlords.
The Murena One branded phone /e/ is moving into the user mainstream. This is the first phone built for them under their own brand. They also have co-branded phones like Fairphone and Teracube.
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i’m guessing that many people who install an alt OS do so for privacy reasons and from what i understand there still remains a huge security and privacy hole regarding the baseband OS
the problem, as i understand it, is that there’s multiple operating systems running on every phone with a cell radio, one being the baseband/radio OS/firmware and it is a) proprietary, b) insecure, c) has low-level access to hardware (think mic, cameras, location, etc.) and d), shares the same memory used by the user-facing OS - this isn’t terribly unlike the BIOS firmware in a PC
in other words, it apparently doesn’t make a difference what OS you install when the underlying firmware controls the hardware
to my knowledge there’s no way to get around this - there’s no open source radio/baseband firmware because the software has to be approved to use in cellular devices and there’s only two major providers (one is Qualcomm and i forget the other)
this rotten state of affairs has resulted in a few phones that a) don’t run Android, b) use separate memory for the user-facing OS and c), have hardware switches for the camera, cell modem, GPS, etc.
PINEPHONE is one (i believe it isolates the baseband) and Librem is another, but i believe there’s a couple more
Librem goes so far as to offer two versions, the more expensive one being a US version where there is a verified chain of custody during manufacture to avoid tampering and unwanted swapping of components, however it’s currently $2K
As of 2019, all available mobile phones have a proprietary baseband chip (GSM module, cellular modem),[2][3][4] except for the Necuno, which has no such chip and communicates by peer-to-peer VOIP.[5][6] The modem is usually integrated with the system-on-a-chip and the memory.[4] This presents security concerns; baseband attacks can read and alter data on the phone remotely.
The Librem 5 mobile segregates the modem from the system and memory, making it a separate module, a configuration rare in modern cellphones.
another potential option is a phone with no cellular modem that uses WiFi only - WiPhone is kind of a dirt-cheap hackers toy, but there are also full feature phones as well
also see Some of the Best Linux Phones
another option is to do as i did and ditch the bloody thing
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There is, however, a significant downside to choosing the Pinephone or Librem 5: Linux Phones | Madaidan's Insecurities
I do own a pinephone, though. I don’t think there are any good phones, just different compromises you need to make.
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It all depends upon the threat level to your communications and who is trying to spy on you. So with something like eOS all you are really doing is keeping Google and maybe third party commercial types from spying on you for advertising purposes. It isn’t intended to keep you free from industrial spies or government spies or law enforcement.
The Linux phones add another layer of complication but again it depends on who you are defending against. And Linux on phones has the same problems with Linux in general: Balkanization of distros and lack of universal apps.
The only sure defense is don’t carry or use a cell phone of any sort.
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yes, thanks for mentioning this - isolating programs is apparently one of the benefits of Flatpak’s but i don’t know whether that’s a comprehensive solution
a key excerpt from the article you linked…
Linux phones lack any significant security model, and the points from the Linux article apply to Linux phones fully. There is not yet a single Linux phone with a sane security model. They do not have modern security features, such as full system MAC policies, verified boot, strong app sandboxing, modern exploit mitigations and so on, which modern Android phones already deploy.
agreed - i should’ve mentioned that but i got lazy
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I use GrapheneOS on a Pixel 5a. I highly recommend the OS to anyone who is looking for an alternative to Apple and/or Google.
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There is a substantial change to booting between the PinePhone and PinePhone Pro. Previously, each distribution could develop a self-contained eMMC or microSD card image, including a compatible bootloader and kernel distribution. Installation is as simple as flashing a microSD card with the desired distribution and popping it in.
On the PinePhone Pro, the hardware works differently: it prefers to load the bootloader from the eMMC instead of the microSD. This means that when the PinePhone Pro shipped from the factory with Manjaro on the eMMC it will always boot the Manjaro u-Boot, even when booting from a microSD card. We no longer have any control over the bootloader for these devices.
This would completely break, for me, the way that I use mine (funnily enough a Manjaro Community Edition) as I’ve always used it as a distro-hopping device…
It seems like I ended up getting all three of the devices I bought from PINE64 during rosier days, it’s a shame, I had a lot of hope for the PineNote as when I was following development it looked like paper display + ereader capabilities + replacing my large quantity of paper pads.
PINE64 responded directly to Martijn.
And Brad Linder has links to additional responses.
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I haven’t replied for ages. Sorry about that. But, I saw this thread and it caught my attention. I’ve been taking a close look at the e-Foundation offerings. I see a few new names here - for example, PinePhone. I’m in the UK so that may have some bearing on what I choose. I’m currently a Google Android user.
PinePhone is an interesting one as PINE64 are mainly focused on hardware, with the wider community being where the software comes from (although @mike’s articles above show some disunity with regards to that process). I have one of the really early Community Edition ones:
which hasn’t really found much use as a phone, but has been very good as a device to take with me when I know I might want to SSH into some things on the go, but don’t really want to carry a laptop with me. I have also a Pinebook Pro which is an interesting device also (this way of building hardware is pretty unique) and has been taken with me on a camping trip where I wanted to do some writing, as you can just charge it from a standard battery pack!
This means that with a little bit of work on your side, and I’m talking very little as a bunch of these projects have quick installers that work through your browser, you could likely quite easily use /e/OS, GrapheneOS, CalyxOS, Replicant, LineageOS or DivestOS… it is very likely I’m missing something here, which is in my eyes a good thing. It’sMe’s comment up top is relevant here for managing expectations.
Lots of people seem to be taking on the challenge of forking and amending operating systems to help people get away from what is currently a quite-solidified duopoly (with some minor differences for those using hardware that gives its own flavour of Android). Also, /e/ through Murena provide pre-flashed devices, which is a cool way of approaching the problem for those who don’t want to go through this process.
Something which I also encountered recently which I think is very interesting to me, and also likely @mike (due to my perception that we share a hatred for e-waste) is KaiOS - an elegant answer to the question, “what if a (kind of) dumbphone was smart?”
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KaiOS sounds OK on paper. I feel that many KaiOS devices are just e-waste.
Ranting…
I had one for a bit. I actually liked it. It was the Nokia 800 Tough. Nice little brick. But, here’s the thing. Within a year KaiOS no longer served updates to the device. Then FB removed WhatsApp support (not that I used that) and that was a selling point for lots of people. Then certificates stopped being updated too (or they were announced to expire, I forget). So, it appeared it would become a brick.
(When WhatsApp was removed, the app icon stayed and could only be removed using some Bananahackers tricks)
The newer KaiOS devices still suffer from issues like battery life. They are loaded with trackers too. I really wanted to like the platform. But it was clunky with baked in games and bloat.
To me, it looks like an attempt to get a foot in the door for the “Next Billion” users in India and Africa, so Google and friends threw some money at them, and KaiOS was listed in TIME as an invention of the year… but if every major update means you need to buy a new device, doesn’t that make more waste?
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100% me getting the vibes of a thing but not having used it at all, very sad to hear it doesn’t meet expectations 
The idea itself is absolutely stellar, and I think efforts to reclaim and enhance old tech are always things that I will give some time to.
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I almost got a Mudita Pure a while back (maybe you’d enjoy it), but decided not to since it’s quite a big phone (the design makes it look like a small device), and I needed a couple of apps you can only find for Android or iOS, so for about a year I had a Murena Fairphone (before it was called that), and enjoyed /e/OS for a while.
Then they decided to make a lot of it closed source and I went for GrapheneOS. I think it’s been 6-7 months now and I love it. So much better.
I needed a couple of apps you can only find for Android or iOS […] and I went for GrapheneOS. I think it’s been 6-7 months now and I love it. So much better.
I own an iPhone that I intend to keep for as long as possible. I also own a Pinephone which I rarely use due to the lack of apps I need (namely, SIgnal, which might be easier nowadays). I’ve never used Android (so feel free to correct any incorrect assumptions I’ve made)—what would you say the advantage of using GrapheneOS instead of stock Android is?
You said there were still Android apps you needed to use, which implies to me that these are proprietary apps not available on free software app repositories like F-Droid. Which would mean you would still be using Google services on GrapheneOS. I had considered getting a Google Pixel and flashing GrapheneOS onto it as my next phone, far into the future, but if I have to use Google services anyway, that feels like a loss to me with a similar amount of telemetry to stock Android. Is there something I’m not considering (beyond the more security-involved changes like Graphene’s improved memory allocator)?
I own an iPhone that I intend to keep for as long as possible.
I had been fully in the Apple ecosystem for many years, too. I’d been growing worried on Apple’s “control” since 2018 or so, and after moving back from mac to linux in 2020 (I used linux before getting into the Apple ecosystem), it was the next logical step.
what would you say the advantage of using GrapheneOS instead of stock Android is?
GrapheneOS removes all Google stuff from it (tracking, telemetry, etc.), and if you need to enable Play Services (which I have, when I need to use these apps), they’re sandboxed (so they won’t access anything I don’t let them), and I can disable them after I’ve used them. You certainly can’t do any of that on stock Android.
I use Aurora to install apps that don’t offer APKs and are not in F-Droid (there’s only 3 right now, to be honest, all other apps I use are open source and offer APKs, because I’ve been making that effort/transition for the last 6 years).
This article explains a bit more about it and has some more links if you’re curious on diving deeper about the differences.
Hopefully that helps. You also have their Matrix community where everyone’s friendly and helpful to clarify doubts and point you in the right direction.
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