Here’s a question that popped into my head when thinking about cell phones. What’s theoretically better, a pinephone, or an open spec dumbphone paired with an open spec PDA?
I personally don’t feel like there’s a huge difference in my life anymore. For a PDA to be usefull, i’d need some kind of mobile data. So to that extend, it would still have a modem in it. I rarely make/take phone calls anymore today. Maybe one or two a month. With WhatsApp being vastly more popular in Europe, SMS is also basically non existent. So, in that sense, my smartphone is basically a PDA for me now.
The only benefit i could see is having the option to leave the more expensive PDA at home where you fear breaking/loosing it, and still being reachable. But i can just get a second SIM for free from my Provider and put that into a cheap dumb phone, or switch SIM’s for those occasions.
So for me, There would be no difference between a PDA and a Smartphone nowadays. And if it’s got a modem anyways, having your PDA make calls doesn’t seem like that big of a deal…
In the context of libre culture, we accept that cell phones are a crazy mess. Cell networks are designed to be easy to exploit and monitor, and the operating systems installed on these cryptic devices are very proprietary and in the case of Android, have been shown to call home and allow Google to really watch you closely. This is the sort of thing we hope to avoid.
With the new Librem 5, a libre phone running all Free (as in freedom) software, published complete hardware specs and hardware kill switches, the device is immune to most of these issues. The device isn’t cryptic, we know exactly how it works, unlike other phones. The software is totally liberated and the firmware that must be closed is read-only and isolated, so there’s no fear. The devices also don’t spy on you and give your info to an advertising company, huge bonus.
The issue is, however, that it’s still a cell phone in the end, and cell telephony (or telephony in general) is incredibly easy to exploit. My thoughts are that we should move away from the old system and onto something new, like internet-only communication. A peer-to-peer encrypted audio call though the internet is far more ideal compared to a traditional phone call in terms of security. Thus, we should discourage the use of telephony completely. Obviously, we can’t just change everyones mind in one day, so this is where my idea comes in.
If we isolate our phones from the rest of our lives, i.e., we only use our phones to make phone calls and text messages, and nothing more, then Google can only collect so much data and a malicious actor can only exploit a phone as much as they could a landline phone. With a smartphone that we use as a PDA, due to the integrated modem, an exploit on the modem can give full control of the phone, but the Librem 5 avoids this with its design.
Thus, I think as we try to transition collectively away from phones, we should adopt a PDA for all the extra tasks our smartphones do and simply use our smartphones or dumbphones as only phones. We in libre culture believe in sacrificing convenience in the name of creating a better world. This is also great for those of us who are activists. We can leave our phones at home, and take our PDA’s, which reduces the chance of a company or government entity finding out our identities at, say, a protest.
Now we just need to figure out where to find a libre PDA…
TL;DR:
People who believe in Libre Culture believe in sacrificing convenience in the name of creating a better world. The truth is, cell phones are a mess that are easy to exploit. Various companies are making cool phones that definitely have the users best interest in mind, but I think we should move away from classic telephony altogether. By using a libre PDA as a daily driver, we can move the extra tasks our phones usually do on our PDA’s, which would greatly reduce Google’s spying potential. By doing so, we also don’t need to take our phones absolutely everywhere, so tracking us becomes far more difficult. If we leave our cell phones at home and use them only as a phone, they’re no more harmful than a landline. Obviously, it’d be best to get rid of phones altogether, but it’s going to take a lot of change before that happens. This could be the best alternative.
On the one hand, a pinephone is pretty convenient because it’s an all-in-one. The $150 price tag isn’t bad either for what it promises. However, with an open spec dumb phone you never have to worry about the cell modem having memory access to the entire system, because there’s nothing to really compromise. A well made dumb phone could also last quite a while. A separate PDA could do all of the tasks a Pinephone could do without fear of modem compromise, since it wouldn’t have a modem. It could end up being theoretically cheaper too, but I couldn’t actually say.
Another thing, while cell phones may be tracked quite easily, it’s harder to track a PDA. If you want the features of a smartphone without the actual phone bit, you can just leave the house with the PDA. This, I think, could be huge for privacy and way more accessible to us laypeople.
I wanna hear your thoughts!