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Comment by Tijdreiziger | Hacker News Reader

So where do we go from here?

I have a Samsung Galaxy S9 at the moment, but Samsung's typo-filled changelogs don't exactly inspire confidence. It has also been bugging me to accept the new Samsung Account terms, which I don't want to do.

Chinese brands (Huawei, Xiaomi, Motorola, etc.) don't inspire confidence for me either.

Apple had the CSAM scanning controversy. I have an iPad, but a bunch of features I didn't want were turned on by default, and the walled garden approach is obviously a downside.

I would prefer to run a privacy-focused Android distribution, but I have a lot of apps and I don't know how much they depend on Google Play Services, so I don't really want to switch over 'cold turkey'. Also, they're still built on the same AOSP base, so who's to say they don't have the same bugs?

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Just look for a phone on which you can easily install a stable custom ROM. I previously had a Samsung device and installed Lineage OS and was happy-ish. It was clean and free of bloatware, fast, and had a good battery life. The downside was that it wasn't stable (probably never got an uptime above 48h) and the major updates were too buggy and too late.

I recently bought a Xiaomi device. The moment you turn it on you notice it's filled with spyware and bloatware. I thought I couldn't be more surprised after seeing the clock app ask for permission for "personalized experience", but they got me, in the calculator app. Other than that, the hardware is great, the themes look good, and overall it's a good experience. It's a pity I'd have to switch to a custom ROM because of this "personalized experience" MIUI nonsense.

The problem is that anyone who wants to use Google Pay or banking apps, or anything that requires the phone to pass SafetyNet, will not be able to use an alternative ROM. Right now that's the only thing stopping me from getting a phone with a shitty "skinned" version of Android, as I can't replace the factory OS without losing a ton of functionality I rely on.

I think that's outdated information in many regards. Most apps seem to have turned off the SafetyNet requirement; I suspect that may be due to a larger amount of Chinese Android phones that don't have it.

I'm using a Play-Store-less microG LineageOS on a Google Pixel 1, and all my banking apps work (Revolut UK, German Post Bank authenticator), as well as a Swiss online health care app.

I haven't found an application yet that I couldn't use on LineageOS due to lack of SafetyNet.

Yep, works here too - LineageOS using microG with Australian banking apps

Google Pay doesn’t respect your privacy anyway, as the terms state that Google can use your transaction data to profile you.

The answer to "I can't do X because I use Y and Z" is not "You're wrong to want to use Y and Z". Understand that not everyone prioritizes the same things you do.

Regardless, Google already has enough information on me to profile me quite well; avoiding Google Pay will not meaningfully change that, and I get enough value out of it that the trade off is worth it to me, at least for now.

Of course everyone is free to have their own priorities when it comes to privacy.

However, for people who want to use Google Pay despite the privacy implications, I'm not sure running a privacy-preserving Android distribution is even meaningful. At that point, why not just run stock Google Android?

You realize that all electronic payments are used to profile you.

Even if that’s true, why would you add another party (i.e. Google) to that chain?

While pervasive tracking is insidious, Google is the least problematic actor since they don't sell their data.

> Google is the least problematic actor since they don't sell their data.

Isn't that like 99% of their revenue i.e selling user data?!

Huh I've not experienced much instability with Lineage OS, other than a nasty bug that was fixed in the next update. Certainly not to the point that I couldn't get an uptime >48h. Actually I don't think the phone has crashed at all, maybe an app might have crashed at some point.

Just get an iPhone. They are for better or worse the BlackBerry of the 2020s.

Samsung is the only rival in terms of hardware. Google lacks the attention span to execute. Everything else is even less baked.

I’d experiment with nerdy Android distros with a tablet. I used to have a Linux smartphone (whose name escapes me, which is driving me nuts) back in like 2006/7, it was fun but not a “daily driver”.

Because I want to use a browser with Adblock and iOS won't let me, so it's ruled out from the start.

Why would I settle for an expensive device that makes browsing the internet painful? Why would I limit myself to only the software apple will approve?

It isn't even in the running and as long as their software policies remain as is, won't be in the running.

I was an inch away from buying an iPhone, even though I disapprove of their curation model, because Android is such a garbage fire. (Not one modern Android phone has in-kernel-tree drivers? Not one?)

And the forced curation is dumb but if they're approving everything I'd want to use anyway, Android can eat it until they sort out their problems. What do I even need? Signal and Firefox with uBlock, that's really it.

On iOS, Signal can't do SMS and there's no uBlock. Of course.

>Not one modern Android phone has in-kernel-tree drivers? Not one

That's up to Qualcomm, not Android. And Qualcomm needs to sell new chips every year, therefore planned obsolescence by tying the drivers to a version of Android works in their favor.

Google has the leverage to fix this if they wanted to.

Samsung is also leaving a competitive advantage on the table by not doing this with Exynos.

And the planned obsolescence is pointless. Even if you could run the latest Linux kernel on a phone you bought ten years ago, a phone from that year might have a 3G radio and less than a GB of memory. Which can still make phone calls, or be used in place of a Raspberry Pi, but it's hardly competition for anything currently commanding significant margins.

>Google has the leverage to fix this if they wanted to.

How?

>Samsung is also leaving a competitive advantage on the table by not doing this with Exynos.

How is Samsung different than the rest? They also make their money from selling as much hardware as possible as often as possible. They don't have a way to monetize users post-sale through subscriptions, services and AppStore cuts. All that infrastructure is owned by Google and that's where the money goes to.

> How?

In general the same way they get ~every Android phone to ship with Google Play.

The most aggressive way would be to design their own chips like Apple does and put the drivers in the kernel tree, make the chips available to other phone makers and then require satisfactory open source drivers from everyone as a condition of using Google services. Qualcomm publishes the drivers or loses all their hardware customers to Google's chips.

> How is Samsung different than the rest?

Qualcomm has been a near monopoly. The next phone you buy will likely be one of theirs even if you're dissatisfied with the existing one, so they can screw you and still get your business.

Samsung is the underdog here, and hardware brand loyalty is weak. If they could sell more phones by giving the people what they want, their overall sales go up even if people keep them longer, because the latter is more at the expense of their competitors.

There are adblocker extensions (aka “content blockers”) on iOS that work very well. This has been the case since iOS 9 IIRC, so seven years ago.

It only supports ‘Chrome Manifest v3’-style ‘simple’ blocking lists, not ‘true’ adblockers. These mostly work fine but are clearly less powerful.

They also don’t work with non-Safari browsers (e.g. Firefox).

This hasn’t been true for two years Safari on iOS has supported web extensions for that long.

iOS Safari supports Web Extensions for a year, but does it useful for adblocker? It lacks WebRequest API (from the beginning of Mac Safari).

I keep seeing these handwavy responses about the “limitations” of ad blocking on iOS. But I don’t see any ads with 1Blocker installed.

Yeah it's generally fine by just using a Content Blocker app, but your argument about web extensions and adblocker is wrong. "I don’t see any ads" is handwavy response.

If the purpose of an ad blocker is to not see any ads and unless you can show me a web page that shows ads when I’m running 1Blocker that doesn’t with a supposedly superior solution then how is 1Blocker on iOS inferior?

I'm also fine with a Content Blocker app (I use local made one) like you. It rarely miss some ads (I don't know is it due to missed rules or API) but ignorable. So I'm not against for Apple/Google to introduce rule based API for efficiency. I just say Web Extensions on Safari seems to irrelevant for this topic. You can say "Content blocker is fine" instead. Technically it's less capable than what webRequests API can do, but it's almost fine for most users except like HNers.

How is it “irrelevant” when 1Blocker in fact has added a web extension for increase functionality?

Ah Ok I found 1Blocker now uses not only Content Blocker but also Extension's content script to do more blocking work. Thanks for correction. https://backstage.1blocker.com/how-to-block-youtube-ads-in-s...

What? iOS only supports content blockers as safari extensions since iOS 15, which is the latest iOS…

Please do source your claim that this has been possible for 7yrs, as that’s not my experience.

(https://developer.apple.com/safari/extensions/)

See e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9695552 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10230704.

Seeing that rule based content blocking has been built into iOS for 6 years and web extension support has been built in for two…

Network level adblocking + DNS over HTTPs solves this really well and improves overall security imo

iOS supports ad-blockers in Safari.

iOS supports adblockers since iOS 9 was released in 2015.

it does not support real adblockers like ublock origin, it supports 'blocking lists' which are garbage.

iOS supports web extensions and has since iOS 12/13

Motorola makes good phones. I'm not sure why everyone is fixated on Samsung. Seems to me the Motorola G line is fantastic and even relatively cheap with the Moto G 5G being not but $300

Motorola produce virtually no software updates. You'll typically only get security updates for two years after the phone is started to be sold.

If its unlocked you can install what you like later on. At $165-$300 getting it fully unlocked is trivial.

Probably an Openmoko Neo 1973?

I can say, after 6+ months with samsung s22 ultra i am very happy with it. Camera delivers more than any apple device can right now (since 10x zoom is surprisingly useful for me in normal light), battery is fine, screen is amazing and I think still best on the market today.

People bash androids for privacy like all are from china, but Korea (and Japan and US) makes some fine devices too and as european I prefer them to US (and obviously China).

I even have european exynos crap version, which is slower but some claim exynos models on previous models were much more stable/reliable after few months compared to snapdragons. Can't say, what I want works, there is absolute 0 broken/annoying things for me, no bloatware, no ads etc.

That being said, when wife was looking for smaller phone few weeks back, I went through reviews and opinions and suggested iphone 13 mini. She always loved iphone photos of other folks and I think she will enjoy phone UI smoothness and long term reliability/security. It will be an interesting experiment.

I didn't consider Motorola a Chinese brand but apparently they were sold by Google to Lenovo in 2014 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Mobility

My Galaxy S21 is the best phone I've ever had. I didn't install any new firmware or anything that requires rooting and I never had a problem not accepting Samsung's terms.

Everything that matters works: the phone is fast, never crashes, and you can install browsers with AdBlock.

If you want good stock Android phones, I believe Pixel & Chinese brands are only game in town.

I don't really care about 'stock', tbh. It just needs to run the apps I want to run, and it's nice if it can also take decent photos. I would also strongly prefer for it to preserve my privacy, but I realize that's kind of a wash between Google and Apple.

> but I realize that's kind of a wash between Google and Apple.

That's an unusual take.

If you want a premium phone, Apple is pretty much unchallenged.

I'm not a fan of expensive phones though - I'm scared I will break it and lose $700+ in the blink of an eye. Been using cheap Motorolas for the past 10 years, no complains.

For the iPhone, you can always buy two generations back to save a few bucks. I bought an iPhone 11 a couple months ago for $499 plus tax and it’s a perfectly good phone.

If you're really on a budget you can probably go back even more generations and get both an acceptable phone and one that'll get updates for some time. Which are probably more important for iOS because it's such a single big target compared to the fragmented Android world. I'm currently using an iPhone 6s I got in February 2020 for $200 from my Consumer Cellular MVNO which unlocks it after 6 months.

One thing you'll lose with the older phones sooner than iOS updates is AppleCare support, but if you get a good bargain to begin with....

When you do that you're also buying into a phone that will stop receiving security updates sooner since iPhones receive updates for ~5 years after they're released.

I wouldn’t really worry about that. Apple has been very good at giving security patches to old devices. Just a few days ago they pushed a security patch for iPhones as old as the 5S

https://9to5mac.com/2021/09/23/apple-releases-ios-12-5-5-for...

I'd wager that a 4-year-old iPhone will receive security updates longer than a significant number of brand new Android devices.

>I'm not a fan of expensive phones though - I'm scared I will break it and lose $700+ in the blink of an eye.

Phones over 200 bucks are a serious liability, I agree.

Fortunately, that also happens to be the price of the fourth-fastest phone on the market, that being the iPhone SE (Gen 2).

The fastest phone on the market (that being the Gen 3) is twice that price, but I have an easier time accepting a premium for that that's closer to 100 than the 1000 you'd have to pay to get the most capable Android phones... and they're still 4 years behind the iPhone technology-wise.

> Chinese brands (Huawei, Xiaomi, Motorola, etc.) don't inspire confidence for me either.

Have you considered OnePlus? Their cameras aren't the best, but they're usually as good as the other top brands in everything else.

I haven't owned one of their devices, but it seems like Linus[1] is not satisfied with their current situation.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GNoelvk6S4

Yikes! I have a OnePlus 5T that I'm very happy with.

Amusingly I was thinking of getting a Pixel 6 until I saw this thread, and thought "Oh well, back to OnePlus." Now I don't know what to get.

Is Pixel hardware the problem?

Or untested buggy Google shovel-ware?

I would argue the value add of the Pixel 6 is the proprietary Google SW. I was considering the Pixel 6 only for its photo abilities, and a lot of those are via Google SW - not fantastic lenses/processors. If I replace it with a custom ROM, the OnePlus is probably a better device (faster processor, etc).

If the Google SW is so buggy, there's no compelling reason to buy one just because of the HW.

GrapheneOS.org, CalyxOS.org, et al

Would I get access to the proprietary camera features with these? If not, what's the point of getting a Pixel 6 and putting a custom ROM on it when there is better HW out there?

Man, I'm old enough to remember when Linus stood for the Linux guy. I was a little confused until I clicked the link.

I lost my confidence in OnePlus when one of their OTA updates soft-bricked my OnePlus 5 on Christmas Eve. Lost all of the data that wasn't backed up, since I had to perform a complete wipe and the phone was encrypted.

Also, OnePlus doesn't have a good track record when it comes to this particular issue: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-40656034

Consider installing /e/ os on your galaxy. https://e.foundation/e-os/

The Fairphone 4 is great IMO.

Repairability is super high, it's easily flashed to eg LineagOS and has been promised software updates for many years if you want to stay with Android.

yeah, but not if you're in the US

> Currently, we only sell and ship Fairphone products to countries within the EEA and to Switzerland, the UK, Norway and Croatia.

If I had the money I'd probably get one of the more expensive Sony phones. They seem great, at least in theory.

> So where do we go from here?

GrapheneOS.org

Which is supported only on Google Pixels. So if I go that route, how can I be sure it won’t suffer from the same bugs re: emergency calls?

...check their git repo's issues?

Take 30 seconds and ask in the channel?

Due diligence and personal responsibility for what is likely your most important computing device, instead of contracting that out to firms who would stab their grandmother to improve their quarterly numbers.

If Google, with their army of engineers, hasn’t been able to track this bug down, why would I expect a team of volunteers to have done so? They do their own customizations, but it’s still based on AOSP.

To be clear, this is not meant to disparage the GrapheneOS devs, but there’s an obvious difference in available resources, so I don’t really expect them to fix hard-to-find bugs in AOSP.

Well, then you don't understand the incentives at play, yet.

You don't know what you're missing, stability-wise!

PS Only supported on phones that have proper boot security.

Samsung A52s 5g. There is a variant with 8GB ram / 256GB storage with dual sim support. Enough features, headphone jack and 2 days battery life easily. A53 is worse.

Nokia.

Hardware runs a gen behind but it's fine enough with stock android.

> Apple had the CSAM scanning controversy.

You mean like Google’s recent CSAM controversy? At least Apple never proposed using ML to find new CSAM and report you to the police with a single violation…

No, he meant Apple's CSAM controversy. Apple wanted to scan files on your device, while Google scans stuff you upload to their cloud.

Not really.

It was a controversy created by a poorly written Apple press release that unveiled two distinct features, and subsequently ginned up by an even worse EFF blog post.

CSAM scanning was all about iCloud, just like every other vendor, and the benefit was a roadmap to E2E storage.

The more confusing thing was the explicit content notifications for parents for their minor children in family plans.

So instead, just like everyone else, you almost certainly have CSAM scanning happening in iCloud directly. All of your content is just a subpoena away. Thanks EFF.

Running this kind of stuff is already leg in the door. Next they can decide to scan your device even, if you don't upload anything anywhere. For your safety, of course, you might be in a possession of an objectionable material, like photos of MAGA hats or other extremist paraphernalia.

So this is a big red line. If you want to upload to iCloud, ok, scanning there is a fair game and you can always not upload to iCloud. But your device should be your device, respecting your privacy.

My minor child’s device is my device.

As a parent, I may want to opt into a service on my managed, family device so I know my child’s fellow 9th grader girlfriend is sending pictures that may be a crime to possess, or vice versa. That is exactly what Apple did.

Like I said, you’re conflating two things that are not the same, because you’ve been fed a steady diet of bad information stemming from Apples unusually poor communications and the EFFs inaccurate blog post.

Apple scans files on your device to compare against known CSAM content.

Google scans your content for potential CSAM based on AI.

One can imagine the false positive rate for the Google approach is likely higher.

Apple scans files on your device, using your resources (storage, compute, power).

Google scans files on their devices, using their resources (storage, compute power).

It is you who decided to upload files to Google's cloud.

However, it is difficult to use your own device if you don't have privacy there.

Apple’s proposal means that your data will never leave your device unencrypted - they can’t scan it on their servers due to inherently having quite good privacy in the first place.

The feature Apple proposed would only apply to files you were uploading to iCloud. Turning off iCloud photos prevented scanning.

The whole point of the Apple system was to enable end to end encryption so Apple couldn’t view your data on their servers. The only way they could get access is when a threshold of CSAM likely files were met. e.g the keys are sharded.

With the Apple approach you have considerably more privacy.

For now. The foot would be in door to enable it system-wide.

Why would they care about getting a foot in a door that they have the keys to and is wide open?

Modern SoCs have security domains that are invisible to the main CPUs. Apple can run just about anything it wants on the security coprocessor and users will be none the wiser.

The American DOJ, FBI etc do not want end-to-end encryption and use ‘think of the children’ as an excuse. This gives Apple the plausible pushback to say ‘We have thought of the children…’

Politicians feet not Apple's.

Apple don’t scan files on your device, they backtracked on the plan (for now at least).

Apple absolutely scans your files on iCloud.

ybeh intended to but the backlash was too strong. not a vote of confidence in them either way.

Apple only wanted to scan files on your device once you decide to upload it. In other words, if you don't ever actually upload anything nothing would ever be scanned.

Nobody is mad about cloud providers scanning for objectionable content. Everyone is mad because Apple is using the hardware you payed for to perform an operation you're paying them to provide. It's like paying for an API that gives you the weather, and all the endpoint returns is a system call for your phone's thermometer.

It goes to show that Apple isn't afraid to undermine their own experience to implement adversarial software services. Combined with the way they "respect" the privacy of Chinese citizens, I don't think Apple actually cares about our privacy. It would seem that instead they're testing the waters for more radical changes[0], like using on-device machine learning to detect suicidal users or terrorists. And who's going to object when that happens, right?

[0] Source: the past century of US political discourse.

The guy who had his Google account deleted for sending pictures of his children to his doctor is definitely upset about cloud providers scanning his content!

I'm sure he is, but rules are rules. Google cannot store that content for any purpose whatsoever: there are very specific regulatory standards in place for storing medical data, and Google Drive/iCloud doesn't comply with those standards. They (both!) go as far as to tell you that in the EULA, so the context of the situation doesn't even matter in the first place.

The more bothersome thing (to me) is client-side scanning. Apple is setting a precedent that allows any first-party manufacturer to work against the user's interests as long as there's a large enough common enemy. It should go without saying, but that's a horrible idea!

If Google were doing the same thing on their Pixel phones, I'd be slamming them equally as hard. It's simply depressing to watch a company claim they know best, while proceeding to use your phone to run their regulatory compliance code.

Taking a picture of something on your own phone is not "medical data" and they weren't doing ToS compliance, they were scanning for novel CSAM in a way they're not required to, reported it to the police, and now are refusing to undelete his account because of their never give anyone customer service policy.

(Even if you took a picture to send to your doctor through an encrypted app, it just has to end up in the photo library to be cloud synced, unless you remember to hand delete it.)

Not sure what the distinction is. Either Apple uses the hardware you paid for to scan [before uploading] or uses the service you paid for [during upload] to scan.

The practical difference is nil. The fact of the matter is, either way, if you don't upload you won't be scanned, if you do upload you will be. End result is the same regardless of whether you use OneDrive, Box, Dropbox or Google Drive (who all implement CSAM scanning)

The practical difference is that I pay for the electricity they use, now. The wear-and-tear of their service is now imparted onto my phone.

If Apple wants to run that code, they're welcome to do it on their own servers; they pay for the hardware, they decide what software it runs. I shouldn't have to waste my storage space on their NeuralHash model though. I shouldn't waste my CPU cycles on their regulatory compliance. Arguing anything else is paramount to saying that Apple owned your phone from the start, and if that's the case, then antitrust legislation can't come soon enough.

seems like a dumb thing to argue about. everything you're saying is moot as you can just plug in your phone to your computer and upload photos without scanning, or use a self-hosted file upload service, etc.

your compute and phone resources are already used for analytics and other things that you didn't explicitly tell the phone to do.

you also greatly overestimate how much CPU it takes to compare a hash, lol

fact of the matter is, you're only scanned when you're using apple services.

> your compute and phone resources are already used for analytics and other things that you didn't explicitly tell the phone to do.

I didn't know LineageOS sent analytics, it never showed up on Netguard. Curious!

If you think this is a dumb thing to argue about, then by all means; don't argue about it! If you're satisfied with your iPhone and convinced that Apple can do no wrong, then certainly don't let me get in your way. We're talking about the largest company in the world, though, and if you're unwilling to offer them a little criticism for objectively degrading the iPhone experience, then I don't see the point in discussing this.

> you also greatly overestimate how much CPU it takes to compare a hash, lol

Do I? If it's not such a big hassle, then Apple can just run it on their own servers. They own your iCloud decryption keys anyways, it shouldn't be too big of a deal.

We're talking about Apple devices here so LineageOS is irrelevant. Please keep up.

> Do I? If it's not such a big hassle, then Apple can just run it on their own servers. They own your iCloud decryption keys anyways, it shouldn't be too big of a deal.

Privacy is better preserved doing it on device compared to on their servers.

anyway, nothing more to discuss here.

You might think that it's silly to complain about having to directly pay for an adversarial program to run, but try to imagine how it could bother other people.

That upload that is the only way to load data onto your phone for many apps, that the phone is auto-opted into and that only Apple can offer? That one? The one that literally no competitor can replace since it uses special Apple entitlements?

I'm not sure what you're talking about? iOS has implemented interfaces to use things like Google Drive, One Drive, Dropbox, etc, baked into the file system.

1. There is no filesystem (exposed), there are per-app sandboxes with the ability to move files from another sandbox

2. It only allows single file actions, no sync/offline cache/etc. Most apps don't meaningfully work well with this - there is no "sync these ten comics to this device at all times"

Most apps still only use their local file sandbox.

Any application that saves files using the standard file selector allows you to choose any installed storage solution.

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