This is the phone they announced: https://murena.com/shop/smartphones/brand-new/hiroh-phone-powered-by-murena-pre-sale/#android-without-google
Does it run linux?
How about something sized as iPhone SE or smaller? This just looks like a mediocre brick that already exists on the market.
I'll never understand why privacy companies do this: sell a thoroughly mid-range phone for a flagship price. The privacy OS market in my experience is largely either tech nerds with enough cash to splash out on a new/second unnecessary device just so they can play around with trying to get the new OS working for themselves, until it eventually becomes their daily driver, or poor students who got a beat up phone from their friend's cousin's neighbor's ex-girlfriend's roommate and are slapping this alternative OS on it to use as their main with all consequences be damned. Obviously there are people in the middle there, but tjoses eem to be the two primary groups. So the bulk of people you're selling to are those who want a higher end phone primarily, and probably would be willing to pay for it. Instead, they make a mid-range device that has low margins, often in small quantities because they throw in some niche feature that costs a ton to add to the existing design like a hardware kill switch, and then charge flagship phone prices for a mid-range device.
I'm willing to settle for having to buy a google pixel for instance (which is always a 2 year old design by the time it's released), and wait a bit before it's supported, but I'm never interested in a mid-range device. I dont care how much I support your mission, I'll throw a couple hundred at you as a donation before I even consider that. And that's assuming I'm buying the device at mid-range price. It's out of the question that I'd ever pay flagship prices for it.
Let me know when you have something that's closer to a 3 year old flagship and we'll talk, otherwise stop throwing your time and money at making a phone for a market that doesn't exist.
To this day I still can't understand what all the "need" for incredibly high-end phones come from. Gaming? That's the answer I've gotten before, and that just leaves me wondering why anyone would want to game on a phone to begin with. Are there other use cases for a phone that actually requires anything top of the line?
My phone was considered "mid-range spec" when it was released 4 years ago and it is still perfectly capable for anything I would want to use a phone for.
As for pricing - remember that there are other things than pure specs baked into a price. A locked down phone (i.e. no way of unlocking bootloader) riddled with spyware is likely cheaper than it otherwise would be from a company that won't be able to keep monetizing you as a product after your purchase. That's not to say that there is no such thing as a price mismatch, but matching price vs specs does not tell the whole story.
For me? Basic functionality. Even the Pixel 9 Pro is laggy as hell just opening apps like Garmin. God forbid I try to use the browser for anything. And that's a flagship phone.
I know it's the crazy badly designed apps, but I can't change that. What I can change is a phone that can run them.
Also, it's nice to be able to occasionally take a picture that's not completely washed out and looks like it was taken with a pre-OG Razer flip phone. No joke, I have pictures from that old flip phone 120x120 pixel screen!) from 20 years ago that look better than what came off the mid range phones I've tried in the last few years. I'm confident it's just poor implementation of much more capable hardware, but it doesnt change the fact that I can't even expect to use it for the most basic of functions.
Strange, I am rarely experiencing any lag on my four year old mid-range model, browser included. Maybe we have a very different perception of what lag is? Or maybe you have an insane amount of background processes running that bogs down your phone?
Camera is not great, but I always have a good time looking back at pictures taken with it and it is certainly much, much better than what I took 10 years, let alone 20. If your flip phone took better pictures, something is wrong and there could be ways to fix that.
Two things:
-please let it have a processor meaningfully better than an A13 Bionic (the iPhone 11 processor, my current phone, a 6 year old chip at this point)
I have bad news for you. From the specs on their site it appears to be a 6.5 inch FHD screen with a mid-range MediaTek processor. Really not much different from all the other mid-range phones offered in their site. For flagship price.
Though to be fair to the project, you don't need to buy a phone from them, you can re-inage an existing device bought elsewhere as long as it's one of their supported models.
Better than Play Services, microG the European open source alternative
Well, it's as paintful to use as a lineage os phone w microg (not a full implementation). If you want security and usability, use GrapheneOS.
does eos have well known pitfalls in this regard?
No AVB yellow state on most devices (bootloader relock with custom keys), MicroG (while actually a cool project) Isn't a fully functional implementation (no Chromecast if you enjoy self harm, no U2F, FIDO authentication, etc.), you also can't use safetynet (for banking apps) with unlocked bootloader
i use my browser for banking apps and i stopped using chromecast a decade or so ago.
This is actually incorrect, on almost all devices that Murena sells the bootloader is locked. I think you are confusing their official builds with their community/volunteer builds
Wow, so it's actually somewhat decent. If I had money to actually choose a phone, I would still prefer GOS.
Gos only subdues to Google phones, this is actually it's own project
Correct me if I’m wrong but I thought eOS wasn’t trust worthy? I can’t remember why though but I remember reading something about why it wasn’t good to use
Nope that's just FUD from certain other OS developers who are super toxic against literally everyone
I thought eOS wasn’t trust worthy? I can’t remember why though
...seriously? Why do you even repeat it then? The least you can do if you don't want to fuel rumors is to :
or, IMHO better, actually
I bet you are referring to https://lemmy.ml/post/35472063 simply because it's relevant recent and (sadly) quite popular... but unfortunately you can read my response, incorrect. OP there has their opinion (they clearly don't like Murena and /e/OS and prefer alternatives, perfectly fine) but unfortunately, and that's what honestly piss me off, make claims that are just not true. You can check the details there. Now is it trust worthy or not, that's up to you, just don't imagine that Murena services are mandatory in /e/OS based on that posts because (as others in this thread also confirmed) it is just a lie.
I think that's q bit overblown. You have an option to use a Murena account in place of a Google account. I just said no thanks and everything works perfectly fine with no services affected. In terms of security of privacy of the Murena account itself, no idea. Never used one.
My understanding is that it just redirects all the data collection from Google to Murena. Like you’re just trading one corp for another. That’s why some people have an issue with it anyway. Especially since GrapheneOS exists. I take a slightly more nuanced view that a lot of the conveniences modern smartphone users take for granted rely on this type of backend infrastructure. It’s sort of hard to avoid if you value mainstream features. That may be sort of a controversial viewpoint though.
I think that’s what I saw someone say somewhere the point about data being directed to murena, but I suppose it depends on how murena handles data and what privacy policy’s are in place. That’s what I think many people would look at before deciding whether to use it or not
it just redirects all the data collection from Google to Murena
Where did you see that? My understand is that it's only the case if you explicitly create then use a Murena account.
Also trading one corporation against another, in that case if the user genuinely want to (they are not being coerced), would be technically true but... Google is not "one corp". It's one of the largest corporation ever, one of the only two popular mobile OS. It does not mean automatically picking another corporation is better but it's definitely hard to do worst.
Mostly through hearsay on here and Signsl groups. I do agree the Murena-bad circlejerk has gone a little too far. I use an iPhone so I don’t have a dog in this race.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
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