Ask HN: What usable mobile phone do you recommend for privacy conscious users?

17 points·_8j50··7 comments

I looked into pine64 and purism, they both look impractical for day to day use. I have bad luck in the past picking android phones and finding out the custom ROM route was difficult or impractical. I wanted to know if anyone on HN had any success stories with recent phones.

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iPhone SE2, fastest mobile phone CPU in Universe, has all of Apples privacy protection features, and only $399.

The fingerprint of an iPhone is very common. If you use a rare privacy friendly Android operating system on a rare device, your device may have a very unique fingerprint.

So if you don't install many apps, I believe an iPhone is the best solution. You will still be tracked of course.

Buy a pixel and flash graphene OS.

Tons of guides on YT

I like this idea. I might use it for my next upgrade. Probably soon since one of my buttons is loose and there's a discolored spot on the screen.

The PinePhone or a Fairphone with LineageOS.

Have a look at the Librem tho, just for shits and giggles if nothing else.

An un-jailbroken iPhone with the latest software.

I’ve had success with an iPod. It’s very cheap, the size is perfect, and it’s just as fast as the latest iPhones.

It does everything a normal iPhone does (and I’ve never encountered an app that didn’t work), except you have no SIM so you can’t make regular calls, send/receive SMS, or use data. This can of course be a problem at times, so I still have a cheap backup phone that’s usually powered off, and often left at home unless I’m meeting someone or need to use Google/Apple maps. From a privacy perspective you also benefit from its lack of SIM card since it doesn’t ping cell towers.

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