iPhone or some Android
 

I need to get me a new phone. My current one (a Samsung thingy) has several troubles. I'm considering getting an iPhone. They're hideously expensive, especially the ones with the storage I need (at least 256Gb) due to storing my entire music collection on the device. Samsungs (and some other Androids) are cheaper since they support microSD cards. But there is one thing I've read that I wonder if it's worth considering.

This: "Apple’s Latest iOS Update Includes App Tracking Shield To Protect iPhone, iPad Users" (https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/20…ne-ipad-users/). Apparently tracking (by apps?) from sites like FB is by default turned off, in stead of you having to adjust settings to block it, which may be cumbersome. Facebook is pissed, which to me seems like a good thing.

But the question is: Is this important?

I've also heard that apps from apples app store are less likely to contain malware. Don't know if it's true.

I don't doubt that Apple does its own tracking, but there is the question: Who is the baddest guy when it comes to privacy: Google or Apple?

These are the thing I'm curious about right now. There are of course also thechnical aspects, but I'll come back to those if I need your advice.

pibbuR who wonders.

PS: There are also other reasons for wanting an iOs device. There are apps the I would like to use, only available on iOs, especially some music apps by Jordan Rudess of Dream Theater fame. I haven't found anything comparable on Android. (Maybe there are, but I haven't been able to find them). DS.

PPS. Regarding my music. Spotify is NOT an option, there are too many things I listen to that are not available there, and I don't want two sources of music. DS.

PPPS. One thing reagarding price. My pusher (subscription provider) has this nice almost-new offer, selling refurbished second-hand phones with 2 years warranty. If I can find one here, I'll save thousens of NOK's. Probably won't get 5G, but the way I use the phone, 4G is more tha good enough. DS.

Yeah, iPhones are hideously expensive. I made the jump to iOS after being fed up with my last android phone. It was a Google Nexus. And after plenty of instability (also experienced with my previous phone, a Samsung Galaxy S1) I decided to jump to an iPhone 6s. And was very happy all around, except for one thing. The awful battery.

But other than that, I no longer experienced the issues I had on Android. Crashes and freezes. Even during simple phone calls. Then the proximity sensor, that shuts off the screen, started messing around where I would constantly touch the screen with my ear. I'm not sure why androids, in my experience, are always less stable. I did have a theory that it could be due to the fact that almost everything on an Android runs on a VM with a garbage collector, so most things are not deterministically run. Whereas on an iPhone almost everything is native and resource management is deterministic. I could be wrong, and it might be something else.

A caveat to all this, is that I used my android (as I do my iphone) in as close to factory settings without installing shit upon shit on it. So the apps (of which I have very few compared to others) are likely not the cause of these issues on Android.

When I first got a smartphone, I donwloaded a lot of apps, including games. Turned out I didn't play any of them except mah jongg and sudoku, and rarely (never) used most of the apps. Now I only download apps I need and actually will use.

pibbuR who BTW doesn't use Tapatalk.

One more question: My Samsung has the ##¤@@ Bixby "helper" in addition to the ##¤@@ Google Assistant. I've disabled as much as I can, still they pop up occasionally just to pester me. How is Siri?

pibbuR who fortunately never has seen Cortana.

PS. Once again I'm reminded of something I've told you about earlier. When my oldest for the first time sa the "nice" little doggie in the Window Explorer search interface, her immediate reaction was: "THAT ONE HAS TO GO". The I knew she was my daughter. DS

PPS. Actually, I didn't have any doubts as soon as I got the eye colour thingy correct. DS.

I have for years had two phones - work & personal. So I tend to always have an iPhone and Android (right now it is iPhone 12 Pro Max and Google Pixel 4a). For the longest time I used the SD card to load up music, etc. Not so much anymore - even small publishers like Bandcamp allow you to stream purchases, so the amount of 'digital but not online' content I have shrinks each year.

One option I have used on iOS is 'iTunes Match' - basically it allows you to have your music library available on any of your devices (for an annual fee, of course). Like so many other things, this minimized my need for massive storage.

Both Android and iOS devices are great - personally I find that the work on privacy and data protection is actually having an impact on how often I find myself looking at ads that show that Google or Facebook have ignored my settings and preferences and sold my data anyway … which is why they are mad about it!

Siri is better than Cortana, much better than Bixby, and IMO better than Amazon's Alexa (which we honestly use more than anything else) … but not as good as Google's Assistant.

I have had the flagship devices of both at different times.

If you go for the flagship apple or Samsung they're both almost the same price usually and similar quality.

If you go for non flagship that's where you save money but when I did that I then bought a flagship one a year later as it wasn't so good.

:)

I think it's really a matter of preference. If you buy a Samsung s21+ or the apple Pro max 13 then you end up with really good phones.

My two cents.

Can you avoid using and not see Siri entirely?

pibbuR who liked Siri Endresen (his favourite teacher at high school). Other Siri's - not so much.

PS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite DS.

Overall, yeah, it might be. Especially at the high-end. But another thing to consider is that one company has it's whole business model around the idea of monetizing all your data. While the other is not perfect at that, especially with the recent iPhone scandal around running scanning your device for abusive content, I'd still rather put my eggs into the basket that's not directly motivated to milk me for all my data.

I recently replaced my huge Nexus 6p, which died due to old age, with a Pixel 4a. Very happy with it. Good price/value ratio (got it for ~300 Euro, IIRC). Fairly lightweight, too. I also got a lovely, grippy case for it without screen protector. All in all, just right for me.

Next time I'll probably replace it sooner, maybe when the security updates are discontinued in ~3 years, with the next current mid-range vanilla Android offering.

Got an iPhone X at work that I only use as a normal phone. And even though I can see the Apple appeal, its eco system and price policy just aren't for me.

I usually don't go for top models. The second best in general offer better value for the money, methinks. (But I will need a 256 Gb - I still have all my music bought and stored)

I will probably go for this phone if i choose iPhone: iPhone 11 Pro 256 GB which I can get at a reasonable price from my pusher's almost-new campaign. Or I may wait a bit - probably iPhone 12 will start to appear soon now that number 13 has come.

pibbuR who no doubt, given his current mental state, will need a lot of time to make a (n uncertain) decision.

I'm not keen on buying Samsung ever again, they're bloated with Samsung apps. But they're good quality - at least in the upper range, and the displays they make are usually very good. For a low-range model, it's best to read enough reviews before buying. And if that's a Samsung, it's best to take the one with as much storage memory as possible.

Last time I bought a Google Pixel 2, very happy about that. But they're sealed so you can't replace the battery on your own. Not that it matter much since smartphones get obsolete in a few years, before the battery needs replacing. I don't know if the latest Pixel devices are good, I believe the last but one (5?) is.

About the SD card though, you have to check first. Android changed a lot in security policy and many apps don't store on external devices, which makes an SD card almost useless. Samsung used to tweak Android enough to allow it more easily in the past, but I have no idea if that's still the case.

EDIT: iPhones… it's a matter of taste. Their system is too simplistic and not open enough for me, and expensive as you said. I have no idea about tracking and the behaviour of apps on that.

So far, I've not had any probelms using the SD card on my current Samsung (it has the latest Android version AFAIK). But thanks for the tip, I will verify that it works if I go for a phone supposed to support an SD.

Perhaps they continue to make it so. If you take another Android brand, it's best to ask or check first. It will mainly depend on the app, IIRC it requires extra programming to allow the user to choose whether it's internal memory or something else.

Absolutely - I have things set up so that I have to unlock my phone and push a button to bring up Siri. Never unintentional.

I use a Pixel 4A 5G, with GrapheneOS installed. It's a hardened and privacy-focused version of android. It's very stripped down, and allows you to set things up as you wish, instead of being loaded with intrusive commercial bloatware. By default, applications are sandboxed and can't access your contacts and such if they tried.

For further privacy it makes use of secure profiles, which are easy to switch between, and which are isolated from each other. I use a separate profile for apps that are trashy but occasionally useful, like one I have for train times.

I've had no trouble with it at all.

A lot of work setting it up that way? I assume it must be, since it's a Google phone???

pibbuR who is not sure if he want to spend much time finding out how to do things like that and implementing it.

PS. Never heard about that phone. Major branches in Norway are Apple, Samsung, Sony, Oneplus and Nokia. also Xiaomi (not sure I want a chinese phone). But I see that the Google phone is available from some vendors. DS.

Go to a store. Any.
See which phone is the cheapest one.
Buy.

You have a PC. I know you do.
Which phone you buy doesn't matter, it's all the same overrated and overexpensive bs with prices higher than a decent PC.

The question remains what to do with the money you didn't waste on a phone because you bought the cheapest one.
Invest into a microscope.

Not a lot of work. The Pixel phones are the favourites for open-source devs, because they implement pure Android, are easy to unlock, and have excellent, open security hardware. There's a procedure to install Graphene, but not very onerous, IMO. Then it's just a question of installing the stores and apps you want.

But, it's clearly not as straightforward as something out-of-the-box configured for us by The Combine. For me it's worth it, because clean Android minus the Google tentacles is very pleasant - a bit like a nice fresh Linux installation. But there's nothing really painfully techie in normal use. For maximum convenience, though, obviously not the first choice.

I will of course consider that option.

One phone I really would like to get is the Fairphone. This one is, unlike most phones, constructed so you can replace almost everything in it. I see that its now available in Norway. My youngest daughter has one. I'll take a closer look at that one, now that it's available in shops in Norway.

pibbuR

I highly recommend C-3PO.

To some degree you make sense. What I need on a phone is practical apps, like apps for buying/showing tickets on trains and buses, a kindle app for reading books, a Bible app, Netflix, Prime, a couple of other streaming apps, in order to chromecast them on my TV. A scientific calculator, and actually also Mathematica. Polar Beat for tracking my exercising (no sharing with others). Several two factor authentication apps. And a couple of other things, all of them quite practical. These things don't require much of the phone (except being a smartphone).

Other things? It's my watch. And I use it as an WIFI->4G adapter when accessing the net from my laptop PC when away from home.

I don't use the phone for checking mail - yes, I've got a PC for that. And regarding surfing on the phone, it's mostly for Crossword solution helpers. And I post things on the Watch using my PC.

The most demanding part is playing music on the road, and for that I need at least 256 Gb storage, which probably will eliminate a lot of the cheaper phones.

pibbuR who wrote this on his PC.

PS: Never heard of the CAT phones, but I see that they are available from shops I use to buy things from in Norway. Might be an alternative, especially if they can survive falling into the toilet. DS.

Yes, the earlier iterations looked a bit creaky, but it looks promising now. I believe they also have an option to come with e/os, which is another clean Android distro.

There’s just so many pros and cons to list in the iPhone vs Android debate. But it sounds like your big hang up issue is your music collection. Seems like this is more of a special-case audiophile issue.

If I had that much music that cannot be streamed and needed to have access to it, I would probably just consider a dedicated iPod or other player. That way your not limiting yourself to a platform solely based on that.

On the audio side, a pibbuR may be interested in Funkwhale. A Raspberry Pi ( or perhaps a NAS) can happily run a private pod, which would allow you (and your family) to stream your music to your devices, at whatever quality you wish, and also sync selections for offline use.

There's a lot of powerful server-based software that will cheerfully run on RPis, which could almost be powered by a potato. Even software that is primarily designed for a heavy load on powerful server will run well on a Pi when you're just serving yourself and your family. I've got a few of them doing various things, and you'd never know they were there. If you don't mind faffing around for a few hours on a rainy afternoon, you can get all sorts of things going.

A bit off-topic, I know, but it seemed somewhat relevant in that it's quite easy to run your own web-based services, so that you're not constrained by what's available on a particular phone platform.

Valid point of course. I had an 160Gb iPod (wife has it now). But I prefer having just one device in my pocket (in addition to my keys). And, I can get both iPhones and Android thingies with enough storage, so it doesn't affect choosing between them. The main effect is that I probably can't go for the cheapest phones.

pibbuR

PS. I probably in the discussion here has put too much weight on the music storage bit. I mentioned that aspect mainly to illustrate that an iPhone with sufficient storage capacity would be more expensive than a Samsung (and a few others) since those phones, even the non-top models, support SD cards which is cheap compared to internal storage. But if I go for the before mentioned almost-new campaign, the difference isn't that huge anymore. My main issue in this thread was actually privacy concerns between Apple and Google. DS.

Nice one, Alrik. Would make communication in all parts of the world a breeze.

But if you allow me some nitpicking: C-3PO is a robot, not an android. As I understand the term, an android is an artificial human being (like those in Blade Runner), with artificial biology.

pibbuR who looks forward to be corrected in the UNLIKELY CASE HE'S WRONG!!!!

PS. Is the Terminator an android or a robot? He looks human (Well, actually, he looks like Arnold), but on the inside he's all mechanical. Off topic, but please, I welcome that. DS

So… Those aren't the droids you're looking for?

iPhones are going to be more secure simply because it’s a closed source OS where as android is a “more” open source OS. Apple will only allow you to install apple approved app’s unless you jailbreak your phone. On android you can install custom roms, emulators and side load apps from unknown sources. So you have more chance of exposing your device to something nefarious. Honestly though if you’re knowledgeable and responsible you’ll probably be pretty safe on either.

Apple has shown a more anti-tracking stance lately which I suppose is good. I personally donÂ’t worry to much about it. The worst IÂ’ve seen is targeted ads which TBH I kind of like.

I switched to Apple several years ago mainly because I got tired of either waiting many months after release of the latest OS to get the update or not getting it at all despite buying a high end android phones.

Both IOS and android have their + and -‘s but at this point I’m so deep in to IOS monetarily that I probably would not go back to Android unless Apple really pissed me off.

I'd say that open-source is far preferred by most security folks. The transparency and open contributions to addressing weaknesses I think are a much better bet than trusting the secrecy (and unknown exploits) of closed-source proprietary software.

Agreed. IOS being more secure and having better personal and data privacy is not related to open/closed but rather to a focus on those things, whereas Android is based on being 'secure enough' while always being able to monetizing the user regardless of settings or preferences.

I'd actually disagree on that. The thing with Google, and most huge corpos, is that they're a confused mix of good and bad. I would say the design of Android, in terms of an OS security model, is solid. And the security-focused design of Pixel phones is pretty much top-of-table. Although Chromebooks are limited, I think they're leagues ahead in terms of a secure desktop OS.

Then, of course, there's the Tentacle Department, which puts all the disingenuous, privacy-invading monetisation on top of it. But, if you cut out the proprietary binaries, Android itself is good work.

My mobile is a Motorola, that my brother recommended to me. I immediately disabled the online feature and simply use it to make calls and texts, and it works much better at both than my previous model, which was a flip mobile that I owned for roughly ten years. I actually got the Motorola free from my carrier, they said I'd had the flip model for so long that they'd upgrade it, so it worked out well. I would highly recommend this mobile, although I couldn't say anything about how it functions online.

This would be a topic for The Language Thread ! ;)

The word "android" comes - as far as I know - from a Greek word - and the "robots" in the "Star Wars" movies are called "Droids". As far as i know, there is even a trade mark on the word "Droid".

Exactly, "security by obscurantism" is not an option and people should be educated against using it. The more peer review a system benefits from, the better it gets.

It's a key concept in cryptography (sorry for the pun).

This is not completely true, that we rely so much on open source projects for security is very dangerous, there are several examples, this is a recent one:

https://thehackernews.com/2021/03/ha…evelopers.html

Another example is password managers, many rely on open source password managers, with not so many maintainers and peer reviews. It is quite easy for a hacker group or such to infiltrate an open source ring, and write some good which looks pretty friendly at a first glance, but would sneakingly send the passwords to the server or such….. yes it might be discovered after some time, but at that point it is already too late.

However for very big projects, like certain Linux builds that has a huge amount of peer reviews from trusted people, it is of course a good way to keep the system secure.

In an ideal world, with ideally written code, indeed. Open source should lead to no vulnerability being exposed in the system, if the system was designed and implemented correctly. With a clear separation between secrets and public knowledge within the system.

Unfortunately we live in a world where bugs and improper implementations do exist. So open-sourcing cuts in two ways. It could lead to the bug/issue being discovered and fixed, since potentially more people are looking at it, but it could also lead to someone with mal-intent discovering it and abusing it before it's discovered by someone else.

Generally, I think I would also fall in the camp of open-sourcing, especially if it's a general purpose library that's used by a lot of interests. Theoretically that should lead to a lot of people looking at it, right? Well, the recent (a few years now I think) Heartbleed vulnerability in the openssl library (that's reportedly used by 2/3s of all webservers for SSL/TLS channels) kind of contradicts that. Apparently a single dude managed to commit a bug, and there was no one to review his work and catch the bug, iirc? How the hell does that happen? Well, it happens because we live in capitalism where every company just loves to use free open-source and not give it another thought, since security is not treated as an investment but as a cost. Until they get hit. After the incident I believe google is paying 2 engineers to work full-time on that library.

Microsoft uses their own closed-source implementation for SSL/TLS channels and they were not vulnerable to that. They most likely do have bugs and issues (I would imagine) but they're harder to find.

Again, in principle I think I would agree with open-source to expose vulnerabilities, but my point is that it's not as clear-cut. There's that principle that if everyone is responsible with something, no one really is. You don't know if there are enough people looking at it, if it's open-source. Unless you make the effort and get people to look, but you can do that with closed-source.

Nothing is perfect but I think it's a good principle that pays off on average.

You can't even tell if a closed system is sound, most of what I've seen or been asked to design - sadly, to protect hardware IPs with a smart secret sauce were just ridiculous hacks that wouldn't stand a chance against a determined attacker.

The benefits of open source in relation to security only pays of, if there are sufficient people reviewing the code, like with the Linux kernel. As has been mentioned here, an open source project with a very limited number of people reviewing the code is not by definition more secure than a closed source project.

That's why this practice is good and reduces the overall risk.

If many people are using an open system, there will be more chances to find security holes and the expected failure is balanced. The open systems also tend to have more developers, which makes the code exposed to more expertise.

If there aren't many users, it's less critical, the expected failure will remain about the same (higher probability of success but less individuals, and fewer attempts to make it fail). Except if the cost of failure - or the gain for the attacker - is high, so this is probably a bad situation - using a system with few users and for which a failure is catastrophic or which attracts more attackers. Usually in those case, there is enough at stake to require an audit.

In an obscure system, if there are many users, that will encourage more attempts to make it fail, but nothing will encourage to make it more secure. Moreover, those systems are usually developed or integrated by fewer individuals, typically a few employees of a company: the chance of spotting an issue is lower.