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Comment by anonymousiam | Hacker News Reader

The new Samsung phones are less attractive for many reasons. A few months ago I upgraded my S8+ to a S20+. I considered the S21+ or Note, but none of those have a microSD slot.

I suspect that my next phone will be one of these: https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/

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After Apple's incredible reversal on privacy/spyware inclusion in iOS 15 I've chosen to cancel all future purchases with them and buy this. Hoping my american-made one comes soon.

I will likely continue to carry my 12 pro max 512GB for a while as my primary camera/use old school apps, but my linux phone will be how people reach me/where I store my media and files.

I purchase ~5 iPhones/year for my family (soon to be 6) and upgrade them every year (selling the old hardware). I refuse to participate in their closed ecosystem if they insist on shipping malware.

If you plan to use the Librem 5 (or Pinephone like me), I would highly recommend setting up a Matrix server. They're very easy to administer, hardware requirements have been dropping for months, and it means you don't have to switch chat apps.

Would it be nice to switch to whatever your preferred messenger is? Absolutely. But some people won't make the jump, and this allows you to switch more completely to the Linux phone.

I understand the appeal, but that's paying flagship prices for a phone with 7 year old hardware specs. You're paying for freedom, but trapped in 3 GB of RAM and 32 GB of internal storage (expandable, but you still need to store core software on that internal space).

A $900 device with low tier hardware specs (720p screen, 32GB eMMC storage, etc.) is not a particularly appealing offer. I understand that the value comes from the security aspect, but I personally don't find that worth a $700 markup.

Comparing specs between Linux and Android is an Apples vs oranges comparison IMO. I think a lot of people are unaware of the huge overhead that Android (and even iOS) has.

The intention of the statement was to show that it is low-end hardware at a high-end price point. Performance of eMMC flash memory isn't magically going to be "hugely" faster because it's ran on a different OS. That 720p screen will perform the same too. Android performance overhead is not relevant to this.

The value comes from the freedom aspect. Some people value freedom higher than others, some even say that you can’t put a price on freedom.

It is $850 markup. For $107 you can get UMIDIGI A11. decent phone with Android 11, global LTE bands, 4 GB Ram and 128GB Storage.

https://www.umidigi.com/page-umidigi_a11_overview.html

Ben, is that you?

I am not Ben. Bootloader is also supposedly easy to unlock.

Won't that be a downgrade though, even from your old S8+?

Not trying to dissuade you from the Librem 5 but fyi the Note 20 Ultra does have a microSD card slot. Samsung were planning to remove it from the Note 21 Ultra but that device was cancelled.

Is this actually reliable enough to use as an everyday device? As much as I'd like to leave the big 2 I'm not going to carry something that might be unusable when I really need it.

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