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 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 and the update with the Google Pixel 8 here.

Apps

• α-Remote
• addy.io
• AntennaPod
• AnyType
• Apps (GrapheneOS)
• Audile
• Auditor (GrapheneOS)
• Aurora Store
• Aves Libre
• Binary Eye
• Birday
• Bitwarden
• Bluesky
• Bluetooth Remote
• Breezy Weather
• Cake Wallet
• Calculator (GrapheneOS)
• Camera (GrapheneOS)
• Circles
• Clock (GrapheneOS)
• Contacts (GrapheneOS)
• Conversations (XMPP), for my instant messaging service and push notifications
• Cromite
• Currencies
• DAVx5
• Element X
• Ente Auth
• Etar
• F-Droid
• Feeder
• Fennec
• Files (GrapheneOS)
• Find My Device
• Flipper
• FUTO Keyboard
• Gallery (GrapheneOS)
• Garmin Connect
• GitNex
• Grayjay
• Goguma, for idling on the IRC
• Hacki
• Hypatia
• ICSx5
• Jellyfin
• Keep Alive
• LocalSend
• Messaging (GrapheneOS)
• Mullvad VPN
• Open Food Facts
• OpenKeychain
• Orbot
• Organic Maps
• PDF Viewer (GrapheneOS)
• Phone (GrapheneOS)
• PixelKnot
• Scrambled Exif
• Syncthing, for running my own decentralized Dropbox
• Table Habit
• Tasks
• Termux
• Thunderbird, for e-mail
• Tor Browser
• Trail Sense
• Vanadium (GrapheneOS)
• VLC
• Voice, for listening to audio books
• Voyager
• Zeus

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 banking on-the-go.

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.

p4bl0

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.

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.