Question about phones: Am I overreacting? (linux.community)

submitted 11 months ago by vestmoria@linux.community to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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I don't like so called smartphones (flashy devices to mine your data and other reasons) but my regular no touchscreen phone's microphone is no longer working as it should, making conversations difficult.

Enter a smartphone I received as a present, my phobia (for lack of a better word) to smartphones and my (misguided?) obsession with privacy: I don't want to use this smartphone as my default phone because I'm scared the carrier, ISP or google are going to mine my data and trace my calls.

Which might be an overreaction, because each time I use my regular cell phone, the carrier knows when I'm calling from, who I'm calling and how long the call lasts.

So I ask you: how much more data would I be leaking if I use my new smartphone for calls only, compared to a regular, no touchscreen phone?

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[-] halm@leminal.space 3 points 11 months ago

2012 was 11 years ago, so out of curiosity: do you still have the same smartphone, and why are you still using one if it hasn't improved your life?

[-] xilliah@beehaw.org 2 points 11 months ago

No at some point they become uselessly slow or won't receive necessary updates. Like even some dumb chat app requires a ton of resources. And I've also had an iPhone that worked just fine until there was an update. After that it wasn't practical to use any more and I switched back to android.

I've had 4. And I've used each one until it was completely useless.

I bought 2 of those 4 for my work. I do vr/ar and some clients require ar on the phone or tablet. And I needed one of them when I had an Airbnb, because you need the app for that. The again you can replace that with android running on a pi or sum.

[-] Kbin_space_program@kbin.social 2 points 11 months ago

Truth be told I have a Motorola Droid running Android 1 and if all you need is a phone with some email and sms texting it works fantastic. Even has a physical keyboard.

[-] halm@leminal.space 1 points 11 months ago

I'm not even going to ask when the last security update came out 🤣

[-] Kbin_space_program@kbin.social 2 points 11 months ago

Lol, yeah that's an issue.

this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2023

41 points (79.7% liked)

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