Phone

An overview of all the phone devices I have for personal- as well as business-use, including details about each individual one.

Phone

I keep multiple phones around for different purposes. I don’t have all of them with me all the time and I limit my reachability to the absolute necessary. I try to be reachable for a handful very close contacts, but apart from that I will get back only during designated times.

The phones I have serve designated purposes, therefor each has a different set of apps on them. In case either of them should break, I might temporarily move some apps to one of the other devices.

n4u7i1u5

n4u7i1u5

n4u7i1u5 is a Google Pixel 8. It is my primary phone and it runs GrapheneOS, a custom de-Googled, Android-based ROM that is focused on security and privacy.

Unlike e.g. /e/OS, Graphene does not come with an alternative/proxy to the Google Services Framework (GSF) – like microG – by default and therefor isn’t able to run applications that depend on it. While it’s possible to sandbox the GSF, I haven’t done so and instead ditched every app that has a hard requirement on it.

I get most of the apps that I use from F-Droid and I check their source code repositories upfront for any obvious red flags. However, there are some apps I can’t get rid of, for which I use Aurora Store to download/update them.

Check my sort-of-review of GrapheneOS here.

Apps

Homescreen of n4u7i1u5

Note: The icons do not always correspond to the apps. For example, I use the Facebook Messenger icon for Conversations, a weird Reddit icon for Voyager, etc.

n3m0

n3m0

n3m0 is a Google Pixel 6a. It was my primary phone until I got n4u7i1u5 and it used to run GrapheneOS, a custom de-Googled, Android-based ROM that is focused on security and privacy. However, when I replaced it with the Pixel 8, I flashed it back to Google’s stock firmware in order to be able to use it as a spyware phone for things like online banking and eCommerce apps, Uber, and other software that you wouldn’t want to give access to your primary device.

These days n3m0 is mostly a stay-home-phone that I only have with me when I anticipate to do any online banking on-the-go.

Apps

  • Amazon
  • Camera (Google)
  • Clock (Google)
  • Files (Google)
  • Find My (Google)
  • Maps (Google)
  • Govee Home
  • LinkedIn
  • Marriott
  • Messages (Google)
  • Phone (Google)
  • Photos (Google)
  • Shop
  • Translate (Google)
  • Uber
  • Wallet (Google)
  • YouTube Studio
  • Various Telco apps
  • Various VPN clients
  • Various banking apps
Homescreen of n3m0

j0l1y

j0l1y

j0l1y is my experimental phone, which I’m currently test-driving to see whether I can replace n3m0 with it eventually. It’s a Pine64 Pinephone Pro Explorer Edition and hence an actual Linux phone. I’m mostly using it for evaluation purpose.

Most of its software isn’t ready for prime time yet. While Plasma Mobile has most of the looks that you’d expect from a modern smartphone, it glitches in many areas and is generally quite sluggish on the Pinephone Pro.

Phosh on the other hand is more lightweight, it is however a UI and UX disaster.

At this moment in time, the Pinephone is less stable and usable than a RockPi 4 (which happens to rock a similar 3399 chip). If you’re looking for a super portable Linux device with some battery runtime that you can connect to an external display/keyboard/mouse to fiddle around with, the Pinephone Pro is for you. If you’re only looking for an Android or iOS replacement, better look elsewhere.

I regularly switch systems on the Pinephone Pro and all of them have weird quirks and glitches, hence its hard to give a recommendation on what distro to use in general. What I can recommend though is staying as far away from Manjaro as possible, as it has been the only system that has been consistently awful on the Pinephone Pro, as well as on other RK3399 devices that I’ve been using. Its ability to break and make devices impossible to boot with every other system upgrade is unparalleled by any Linux distro I’ve used so far.

I’m currently running PostmarketOS on the Pinephone Pro.

Apps

Since I’m currently test-driving the device it doesn’t make sense to list the ever changing apps here. However, most Linux apps that have an aarch64 build can theoretically be run on a Pinephone.

p4bl0

Who they waitin' on? That's Pablo!

p4bl0 (iPhone 11 Pro Max) runs the iOS version of every spyware app that I run on n3m0, just for redundancy reasons.

I don’t usually take this device with me anywhere.

Apps

I have the following apps installed on the iOS device:

  • App in the Air
  • App Store (iOS)
  • Apple Maps (iOS)
  • Camera (iOS)
  • Clock (iOS)
  • Contacts (iOS)
  • Files (iOS)
  • Find My (iOS)
  • Google Maps
  • Google Translate
  • Messages (iOS)
  • Phone (iOS)
  • Photos (iOS)
  • Safari (iOS)
  • Settings (iOS)
  • SwiftScan
  • Translate (iOS)
  • Uber
  • Wallet (iOS)
  • Various Telco apps
  • Various VPN clients
  • Various banking apps

m0t0k0

m0t0k0

m0t0k0 (Samsung Galaxy S10) was my now defunct daily-driver, running /e/OS. Back in Q3 2022, the camera module stopped working and shortly after, when I spilled water over the IP68 certified phone, it appeared to have given up completely. Only after n3m0 was delivered to my place and halfway set up, the Samsung magically turned on and – after a few days of random reboots – seems to have stabilized again.

I used the situation to pull every bit of data left on the device over to my new primary phone and have since only used the device as OpenWRT mwan fallback and Briar Mailbox.

Apps

  • App Lounge (/e/OS)
  • BlissLauncher (/e/OS)
  • BlissWeather (/e/OS)
  • Briar Mailbox
  • Browser (/e/OS)
  • Calculator (/e/OS)
  • Calendar (/e/OS)
  • Camera (/e/OS)
  • Clock (/e/OS)
  • Contacts (/e/OS)
  • F-Droid
  • Files (/e/OS)
  • Gallery (/e/OS)
  • Mail (/e/OS)
  • Maps (/e/OS)
  • Messages (/e/OS)
  • Music (/e/OS)
  • Notes (/e/OS)
  • OpenKeychain (/e/OS)
  • Phone (/e/OS)
  • Recorder (/e/OS)
  • Tasks (/e/OS)

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Published on 2022-03-23 and updated on 2024-10-28