I’m a computer geek from the 80s. I even wrote iOS software for those stupid little personal locator beacons, but I’m feeling myself headed towards the Ned Lud Society in many ways (and have been for many years). I am not destructive though, just tired of the internet (Big Biz & Gvt.) eye-balling me everyplace I go and everything I do.
One thing: There are no more pay phones. You’d be lucky to use a “house phone” in a hotel anymore (and if you pick up a phone in your hotel room, it’s and arm and a leg to make a call). In fact, the last hotel room I was in didn’t even have a phone, just an CAT5 ethernet jack for your laptop, or worse, just “Free” WiFi (you need to firewall the shit out of these things and use VPN). If I traveled more frequently for business, I’d carry along a portable router with my own pre-configured security setup.
Any other means of communications besides cellular is becoming “unobtainable”, like silver.
One of the nice things about Above is that they will help you get everything transferred. If you’re not sure about anything in particular, you could give them a call and ask before you decide to get the phone.
Voice over IP calling is available so you can call anywhere where an internet connection is available, in addition to connecting using various apps.
I frequently participate in conversations with people in other countries using the zello app. An app called Line is quite an all in one communication app popular in Japan and other places.
Cell tower based Wi-Fi data can be purchased when traveling so theoretically you could stay in touch without having a phone number.
We found that using some of the Internet based options by buying a VOIP calling card for international calling worked well. Amazon or any China town of a large city is a great place to buy these. You dial a number for the country, enter your calling card number then the number you want to call. At a few dollars for up to thousands of minutes of call time I used to keep one of these in my wallet just in case. There are likely updated versions of this.
I had installed LineageOS on a Pixel phone I got off ebay. I also discovered there are several sub-versions of the Pixel, that usually don’t make it into the advertisement. And you have to make sure you get the right one.
Using it was a pain, but I muddled through it for the privacy. Using websites instead of apps is definately more cumbersome, but possible. The Aurora app store failed more often than it worked. 2FA mostly worked, but I had to manually open the right app. It wouldn’t alert me that I had a 2FA prompt. Granted, this was LineageOS and a couple of years ago. I stopped using it because the screen broke, not due to the OS. While I admit going back to the ease of a ‘normal’ phone was kind of nice, I might try again. Though I would never get anyone else in my household to put up with the inconvenience. Even my very security-minded husband.
I can speak from experience that installing an alternate OS on a Google Pixel is MUCH easier than installing it on a Samsung Galaxy. Even when the Samsung Galaxy is technically in the list of supported phones.
I am interested in a review from anyone who tries this one. Specifically if you use 2FA. Google Authenticator is easy to replace with Aegis Authenticator. But Duo, Okta, Symantec VIP, Authy, and Microsoft Authenticator are a bit more picky. Yes, I use all of them.
Ex-IT tech here. I’m not aware that Samsung uses any special format/code for common data, such as text messages. Have you tried a free app. like MyPhoneExplorer to backup or move your more important Android cell data?
There are also many small Windows apps which let you backup only your Android contacts.
To transfer photos, you don’t even need any special software-you can just connect to your PC’s USB port, navigate Windows Explorer to the correct folder ( \DCIM ) and copy files over to your computer.
I don’t trust those cat 5 connections directly to my laptop. I also don’t use any USB jacks directly. I take a power block, use it charge my phone then plug it into the jack.
Granted it may just be meta-data, but I’d plug my MacBook into a hotel jack and “Little Snitch” was going bonkers. mDNSResponder a lovely Apple technology (DNS responders are way old), that says, yea, let’s play, let’s communicate, I’m right over here/there in room 262.
I share my cell phone data to my other device by making a hotspot on the phone.
If I was needing to work with someone else’s network, I would carry a old router so I had a firewall between me and the network and use a vpn on top of that.
AFAIK, only the AbovePhone is the AbovePhone so there is only one place to buy it.
You could buy a pixel and install GrapheneOS to get same/similar to AbovePhone but you gotta be a bit handy with computers and make sure you get a phone with an unlockable bootloader.
I think the price premium is probably worth it to just get AbovePhone but Im also a cheap bastard so I support you in your journey if you flash Graphene yourself
Texting with GrapheneOS is not compatible with all the various protocols. It’s a mixture of reasons. I think all of it comes down to security.
I can’t really go into specifics because we tried so many workarounds.
You can get a great idea looking at the texting threads on Reddit r/grapheneos
Group texts fail
Emojis fail
Photos fail
Links fail
Some don’t deliver without notice
Some aren’t received- no notice
There’s zero rhyme or reason.
Signal app works flawlessly. With other people with Signal
When we moved Ashley’s SIM card back to her old Samsung they all came in - a whole four weeks worth.
Sent texts that were not delivered are gone.
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