While I try to avoid Uber whenever possible, it is occasionally useful, I had no idea this was possible so thanks for pointing out!
The development team at /e/OS just posted this in their forum, regarding the comparison study:
It would be interesting to see a study that specifically examines all the custom Android ROMs.
Of course, we know that the L5 and Pinephone are going to beat any of those.
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No external buttons to turn off device features MANUALLY and QUICKLY are also really important to some people. Even the Pinephone has them hidden and you have to dremel out a window in the back plastic case to be able to fenegle the dip switches without having to take the case off every time.
If you take the elevator in a tall building often, this is really important for the following reasons:
- You probably want to carry your phone in a pocket.
- This puts the microwave emitter in close proximity to your skin.
- When you are in underground parking or riding an elevator in concrete buildings, if the modem is on it will switch to highest power mode (whatever that means for digital modems, I assume it just starts to send out a lot of packets looking for a tower response unlike the old analog modems that actually increased power for emissions).
- This additional radiation exposure can be dramatic to your body if the device is right next to your skin, even in a pocket.
- The additional radiation exposure for pocketable devices adds up over years and years of just going in and out of concrete structures of any sort.
I know about that microwave radiation dissipates at an inverse square, I just don’t care. I don’t want to have a microwave device powered on next to my skin for any amount of time. I don’t use blue tooth head phones devices for the same reason.
Unlocking any non L5 phone to put it into into airplane mode gets SERIOUSLY TIRESOME really quickly if you have to do it a bunch of times each day.
Of course, it is nice to just turn off the connectivity on your phone quickly while you have it on you for a peace of mind, but that is a secondary convenience feature.
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I don’t believe there is any such thing as “degoogled”. I think is a fevered dream by those that maybe aren’t familiar with the various software stackS. Android is the LInux kernel + java user space enviornment. I don’t care to check because I consider Google evil and a hostile entity, but, I am fairly certain that all LineageOS has done is uninstall the core components that either talk home or integrate with the Google ecosystem.
To my mind, not only is this not enough, in order to be sure that the entire codebase is Google free, someone would have to check / perform a line by line audit of the entire Android codebase to make sure things are not in there that compromise security. And, this would have to be done with EVERY Android update, not just once.
On top of that, all of the drivers on Android are NOT FOSS and are all proprietary. Even if someone were to do as I suggested and audit the code line by line during every release, you could trivially hide whatever snooping you want in the proprietary bits and pieces.
All of this degoogled stuff is nonsense.
Now, to be fair, the same criticism could be applied to the L5 and I accept that. I simply trust our ecosystem more than I do anything Android.
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One thing I don’t understand about android phones, even those with graphene and calyx OS is why the linux kernel in always only updated but never upgraded, not even to newer LTS versions?
Because of the devices themselves – often, the drivers are not part of the mainline kernel, and to properly work the OS needs a kernel customized by the manufacturer. There might be even closed-source drivers. This limits the potential of updating to newer releases of the kernel.
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I have a degoogled phone that fortunately the screen broke a few weeks ago, I’ve been using only the L5 since then. The most challenging thing has been driving without a gps to long trips, but it’s so strange to use my brain to drive, the landscapes seem to change, i see more things. The L5 has almost everything I need and it’s so elegant to be using one of the latest kernels and be able to upgrade. I have used graphene OS, calyx OS, Lineage…I also have a pinephone, it’s amazing how much easier it is to change distros on the linux phones.
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Exactly. I know this effect for so long now (games theory I explored). You also remember roads much better. However, GPS works (or at least should) on L5. The question is: do you want to use it after your new old experience? 
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I am perplexed to read that everyone seems to drive by GPS rather than by thinking / memory. I did not realize this became a thing for everyone. I only use maps when looking up an address,
I guess skills atrophy quickly.
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I have tried pure maps but it barely works, gnome maps that I have on mobian in the PP recently got a a nice update I must test it if works to drive. But I am much more to using my brain now, maybe I will buy a paper map.
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What doesn’t work for you? For me it’s only clunky entry for destinations. I think that would be OK if I didn’t use dark mode (@#$% Qt apps!).
I don’t use it often, but the GPS performs well and PureMaps doesn’t lag and gives good turn-by-turn. I am using the default map provider, OSM.
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I tried about three times, the first it froze the phone and I had to force reboot. The second it took a long time to find the gps signal and got stucked. Third time it was kind of working but updating my position every few minutes…maybe it’s the region where I am using it?
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OK, I should have remembered to add that PureMaps often doesn’t see GPS if you just enable location services. I leave leave location services off most of the time. To use PureMaps, I:
- Turn on location services.
- Reboot.
- Start PureMaps.
GPS gets a good lock for me within a minute or so.
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“Nothing to compare the Librem 5 with a degoogled devices. L5 it just a Pure Linux-GNU Phone with zero android dependencies, obsolescence.”
I love this comment because it is short, clear and to the point.
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I’m thinking how to answer this question… carlos gomez gave a good answer that I’ll expand a bit referring to the security and privacy section.
Anything underdeveloped, upgrades and timely upgrades and connected to the internet is not secure.
Anything that is in development, that is upgraded and upgraded in a timely manner we believe is secure enough.
The next level is what services and applications we use and how we use them.
Research the parts of your device (software and hardware) and how many parts follow the development and upgrade “mantra”.
Ask yourself questions:
- Does my favorite brand-system follow the rules of open source?
- Does it transparently indicate what is not open source and why and what are the possible threats to security and privacy as a result?
- What have they done to protect privacy at system and application level explained and documented in detail?
- Does it warn me which applications and services are closed source or partially closed source and what are the privacy and security risks, which open source applications are potentially dangerous and why?
- Do they warn you that parts of the system are at the end of life, that there are no more upgrades, and how does this affect privacy and security?
6.Did they tell you that they didn’t upgrade the potentially dangerous version of the application-service and whay?
7.Do they actively investigate and find vulnerabilities in the system and issue patches?
8.Does it perform regular and timely security upgrades of the system system?
9.Does it perform regular and timely security upgrades of the system system? - yes, I know, I repeat three times:Does it perform regular and timely security upgrades of the system system.
If most of the answers are negative, they unfortunately don’t have enough resources or don’t even care about your security and privacy whatever it may be.
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