Good. Start by introducing a viable smartphone OS, because right now it’s down to Apple and Google, both from the US.
Linux is a great place to start. Android is based on Linux. Even a fork of Android that doesn’t give Google any data would be a good place to start, but relying on AOSP — Google’s open source repository — isn’t ideal.
Damn funny me thinking about Symbian and the fallen empires of Nokia and Ericsson, now that the ball is in EU’s court as enshittification consumes America and the Chinese government likes to have its presence in nearly every device ever made from the Middle Kingdom.
I’d say the priority should be to have hardware that allows changing the os, just like pcs. We already have a lot of functional mobile OSes, but with locked hardware, we’re still stuck with google and apple
To give a bit of technical details, the hardware must have a feature to destroy encryption keys for user data whenever a new OS is installed on it; and you have to be able to install a new OS on it at all.
Like, today, many smartphones have the problem that you can’t install a new OS on them at all, because the bootloader doesn’t allow it. Meanwhile PCs have a different problem, where they do allow installing new OS, but the user data is typically not encrypted and so you can just boot linux from a USB device and read all contents on the internal disk.
The best solution might be to encrypt all userdata, store the keys in the bootloader on the device, but when a new OS is loaded/installed, the bootloader doesn’t give out the keys so the userdata can’t be decrypted.
You would have the same trouble Microsoft did though. No one wanted to use the Windows mobile because there were no apps for it, and there were no apps for it because no developers wanted to develop for a platform with no users. Chicken and the egg.
It would be nice to have a smartphone that was just web-based and didn’t really have apps, but I think that ship has sailed, people are just used to the concept and I think they would think of it as a step backwards if they had a phone that didn’t use apps.
Good. Start by introducing a viable smartphone OS, because right now it’s down to Apple and Google, both from the US.
Linux is a great place to start. Android is based on Linux. Even a fork of Android that doesn’t give Google any data would be a good place to start, but relying on AOSP — Google’s open source repository — isn’t ideal.
Damn funny me thinking about Symbian and the fallen empires of Nokia and Ericsson, now that the ball is in EU’s court as enshittification consumes America and the Chinese government likes to have its presence in nearly every device ever made from the Middle Kingdom.
I’d say the priority should be to have hardware that allows changing the os, just like pcs. We already have a lot of functional mobile OSes, but with locked hardware, we’re still stuck with google and apple
To give a bit of technical details, the hardware must have a feature to destroy encryption keys for user data whenever a new OS is installed on it; and you have to be able to install a new OS on it at all.
Like, today, many smartphones have the problem that you can’t install a new OS on them at all, because the bootloader doesn’t allow it. Meanwhile PCs have a different problem, where they do allow installing new OS, but the user data is typically not encrypted and so you can just boot linux from a USB device and read all contents on the internal disk.
The best solution might be to encrypt all userdata, store the keys in the bootloader on the device, but when a new OS is loaded/installed, the bootloader doesn’t give out the keys so the userdata can’t be decrypted.
Graphene and e/OS exist.
Problem with Graphene is the limitation of hardware to Pixel due to manufacturers.
e/OS is good, but the missing killer app for me is contactless payment. Which brings Europe back to the Visa/MC problem. Digital Euro could fix this.
You would have the same trouble Microsoft did though. No one wanted to use the Windows mobile because there were no apps for it, and there were no apps for it because no developers wanted to develop for a platform with no users. Chicken and the egg.
It would be nice to have a smartphone that was just web-based and didn’t really have apps, but I think that ship has sailed, people are just used to the concept and I think they would think of it as a step backwards if they had a phone that didn’t use apps.