De-Googled Phones: Inconvenient and Impractical? 

Great comment. It is not about ‘if you are doing something wrong’. It is about ‘if whoever is spying on you *thinks* you are doing something wrong’

@@truthnotfeelings BAM! Well put. I'm gonna use that.

If that family still uses iPhone products after this then the world is doomed.

Omg 😱

​@@truthnotfeelingsUnfortunately a majority of people aren't even aware of this and/or don't care.

@@JA-zy7pp because ironically google's phones is one of the most friendly in terms of putting an degoogled OS on it, as while it still has googles random garbage on it, it doesn't ALSO have a bunch of junk from Samsung or LG etc., and Google Phones are easy to put a Degoogled OS on, compared to say Samsung, which can be trickier to do on.

CalyxOS SUCKS!!! You can't even use the ebay app because you can't login! Ohh and youtube isn't working too! So it renders the smartphone useless.

So you haven't been caught?

@@porvoonosho - Caught doing WHAT? I haven't do e anything illegal.....yet. But I'm not making any promises.

Sorry, in what way do you think this works? You are identified by the phone you leave at home, how would you guarantee the phone that you carry with you is in NO WAY linked to that home phone? Or to your real identity? For starters, if someone else has that "portable" phone number in their online contacts database anywhere, then that's you identified. What about accounts you use on both phones? Faecesbook, for example? Google Maps? Surely you need maps on a phone you are carrying with you.

@@terrydaktyllus1320 he's not using google apps of facebook crap on a degoogled phone. Also there is no real way to determine identity on a standard androind phone (the one that he leaves at home) if he never typed his identity on that phone or never added any google account.

@@orange11squares "he's not using google apps of facebook crap on a degoogled phone." So he can't speak for himself and appointed you his spokesperson then? Look, don't waste my time here. I debate offering my opinions, you respond offering your opinions because you're not in someone else's head - and it's a waste of my time arguing against what you believe someone else thinks. "Also there is no real way to determine identity on a standard androind phone (the one that he leaves at home) if he never typed his identity on that phone or never added any google account." Complete rubbish. Google Apps on the phone give them the phone's IMEI number, phone number and location. The location that phone is in most of the time, or at night time, gives Google an address and therefore access to a database provides a small number of identities that can be living at that address. To be any more anonymous than that, given Google got all that info for free before anything else happened, you'd have to guarantee that you do not have other contacts in the phone's database or that no-one else has the owner's name against that phone number in their online contacts too. And unless you are very strict with that phone usage, then the chances of that not happening are close to zero. Identified. And all without any Google account on the phone.

"Leaning towards" means absolutely nothing, it is still complete non-commitment on your part. The choice is simple - "privacy or convenience". With that said, by doing some learning and doing things differently, it does become convenient once again. But nothing changes until you do it - either buying a de-Googled phone or installing it yourself.

De-googled phones don't work. I can't use banking apps, I can't use PingID - which I absolutely need for my work.

@@bernardmueller5676 The don't de-Google a phone and sacrifice your privacy because you need those apps. That is the choice you make, live with it. At least you now make that choice being better informed and understanding the "tug-of-war" battle you face between privacy or convenience. What has kept you? Rob has been saying this same message for a few years now, there's nothing new here.

@@terrydaktyllus1320 "Leaning towards" means whatever to the person who posted it, Maybe, he or she is not able to commit because of finances or other stuff that's none of your business. Your post makes you sound like a condescending jerk.

@@bernardmueller5676 I think that just depends on the person. I don't need banking apps or social media or much of anything else except for communication. Like Rob explained, it's just so much of an inconvenienced because we are so spoiled by them. Privacy vs convenience. As tech gets better and better, you can bet it's going to get worse (as far as privacy). I would love to be able to use my little Nokia analog phone that was half the size of these phones. Phone call and or a txt is all I need.

Couldn't agree more... and having a *Common-Sense* seems to be - A crime now. By some Nations...

There is a second b@ttery. Takes bolt cutters to get to.

yes that is likely

It's also likely that 24x7 tracking of your phone by Google to an accuracy of 2 meters put your wife in proximity to the store which then caused her to get the ad. Probably nothing more mysterious than that.

Recently, I was outside of my house, on a cordless landline phone (my cell phone was inside, nowhere near me). I mentioned long range walkie talkies to my son, and had walkie talkies suggested to me on Amazon.

​@@terrydaktyllus1320no they listen. I was at home when i talked about specific watches and they appeared in the browser. Same with other devices i never googled before. Just by speaking about them

Same stuff happens to me with amazon ads. So I like to screw around with it when I go to peoples houses. I just say "I'm looking into to buying" some random nonsense topic to see if the spy-algos will advertise it. I'm currently testing out using Trump and voting phrases out loud to see what the internet turns out through ads.

Even banking?

yes@@badriyah43

most banking apps don't require google services . They require a non-customised phone with most security features enabled . Which you can do even in a degoogled custom rom

How did you do that?

Waze works fine on de-Googled phones actually. Which is strange. But don't log in.

The thing is that Google or Apple know exactly which fence you are on to an accuracy of 2 meters until you do something to help yourself.

good luck. ( I've cloned this device in roombas on 70 floors in this building. )@@terrydaktyllus1320

Uber now has a phone number you can call to order a car. You do not need the Uber app. Google Uber phone number

​@@terrydaktyllus1320 - Google & Apple also know about that stick lodged up your _ss.

I think I would still want to do the dual phone method. Let's face it: Google's all-seeing, all-knowing Maps app really DOES know where the traffic jams are, because it knows where each phone is and how fast it's moving. I don't know of any other navigation aid that gives this level of real-time data. So I guess the question is, if I have a phone that's used for nothing but navigation, do I still care if someone knows where my car is at every moment?

@@BrightBlueJim "I think I would still want to do the dual phone method." ...which then makes it completely pointless have two phones, one de-Googled because the other phone always identifies you. I do it find it funny when in the face of Google and Apple spending hundred of millions of dollars on creating the best surveillance devices possible, that people like you think you can "defeat" their surveillance with a simple "workaround". One thing and one thing only works - turning the surveillance off. All of it.

gando no I1

Does it have a SIM though?

@@keylanoslokj1806 Yes

@ clickclack_Bam True, I have observed the same thing. They tends to override your choice and freeze's the toggles.

I use a Linux computer to do my banking.

I was just swapping the sim card back and forth with the tool I left in the back of the case. A small hassle, but free. I tried to get a pay as you go plan, but the minutes expire every month and you have to sign up anyway so it's pointless.

@@deckmonkey1459 That’s probably not a good idea because now that creates a link that ties you personally with both phones via the SIM card and your phone carrier.

Just checked it out on the web site, priced in Euros too so presumably of European origin. The only downer for me is that I consider phones to be a "necessary evil" and believe that a good and private phone is as "dumb" as possible. (Hence carrying around a small Linux laptop with me most times to do my computing on that.) I therefore don't want to pay around 500 Euros for such a phone when I can pick a used Moto G7 or Pixel 4a on eBay for 100 Euros and de-Google it myself. But thanks for the "heads up", it's an interesting phone.

Browser cannot access IMEI. However there is something called a Worker process that continually tracks the IP address and reports that with a Google ID. Only clearing cookies will stop it. For this reason, a second phone might be the better option

De-googled phones don't work. I can't use banking apps, I can't use PingID - which I absolutely need for my work.

@@bernardmueller5676 De-googled phones don't work for YOU, but that is because you can't figure out how to organize your life to the way things worked only ten years ago, before the apps became popular.

@@bernardmueller5676 Have a seperate phone for your work, or just use your phone for work and do absolutely nothing else on it at all, especially not bankIng.

Yea, same here. The one app that forces me to buy new phone every four years, is my countrys banking ID app, and they make you download it through Google play store, so I have to log in to it with a google account to download it, so the phone now is forever connected with an google ID. Can't bypass it anywhere. Also they make everyone switch up their phone to newer model so older phones are thrown away in the garbage because you can't sell it to someone who needs the banking ID on it as it won't work anymore.@@bernardmueller5676

Only problem is the Stasi would be brought in and confiscate on trump up charges and eventual bought and sold Tech will catch up on the needed new firmware to secure your compliance one way or another this isn't going away..unless legally Elected leaders if that is allowed these days. Must have the integrity to follow US Constitution and legislate a comprehensive internet Bill of Rights..which grantees complete privacy from any 3rd party Govt...Law enforcement or otherwise. Everybody get to play on the same field and from the same start and finish line..don't mind me I dreaming. MONEY CONTROL and POWER are the bottom line. They go it and they won't give it up. Forget it...if it is not game over yet..it only means they are prolonging the game for more of the same.

Unfortunately easy tether is not supported beyond Ubuntu 20.04. Sure, you can pay the hotspot prices to phone companies if you wish.

Might as well get a kai os device or a hotspot

@@ericsmith1801 that is an ubuntu problem - don't break debian

Absolutely, exactly what I do. And no public wifi, use the phone's data allowance.

@@ericsmith1801 Then I suggest you change mobile provider. I have four de-Googled phones here in Europe and there is no cost for me to connect a Gentoo Linux laptop to any of them as a hotspot for Internet access. If it's an Apple phone you have then there's no point doing any tethering because Apple know what you are doing at all times anyway. You can forget about privacy completely.

this sounds like it would be an interesting story if it made sense. I don't know what "new cased" is... But the main part of the story is that you tracked your phone and it was in a car park. I didn't know of the inherent dangers of phones being in car parks but apparently it's so bad that you need to get a new phone.

And he was caught by his burner

Nope…. Rob has something to sell you. You know this because he holds his products in contrast to Apple Goog -- instead of relative to how many attempts by the gubberment to penetrate his products

Is your name James Bond or something? Have you even started with just a normal deGoogled phone, to see how you get on with that? Or are you one of my "OMT" people - the procrastinators where always "One More Thing" needs to happen before you will actually do anything?

@@terrydaktyllus1320: It's Mr. Jason Bourne to you. And stop scolding me. You're not my Mom. You're not the boss of me. Nyah nyah nyah! I had a Ulefone Armor & spent a bit to get it rooted. (Got bricked thrice.) After a year the battery swelled. Poop! I'm a tech junkie & value privacy. Currently have 3 android devices & follow Rob but none are completely degoogled. We each walk our own privacy/security path. Thanks for your concern.

This has essentialy already been done using things like a Raspberry Pi, you can configure it how you want.

Cell tower pings are imperfect and inaccurate, they aren't (or at least weren't) designed to pin-point your location and in cases of poor coverage they may only be accurate to a radius of a few km, furthermore they may provide several 'possible' locations rather than one de facto location. They would be a particularly poor tool to use as sole evidence in a court of law.

Also if you buy your phone with cash, the IMEI isn't registered to anyone.

In the US there are very few choices of this type and I can't recommend any. A de-Googled phone is the safest bet even if you just did texting

And old method for safe communication is to make a account at an encrypted Email service like eprivo or tempory Mail , and to write a mail, but not send it, and have a time a day to check for new mail, only you and the other party has the code to log in , if the mail is not send, it cant be traced right?

Yes,

Any phone that you use to make calls or text messages with will have it's location triangulated by the cell tower, the moment the phone goes online. The numbers you contact also builds a map of who the people are in your circle. Again this data is collected by the carrier, and has nothing to do with what device you use. No one is going to make de-google phones illegal. The carriers will just continue dropping support for older phones, forcing people to upgrade to less secure devices in order to remain connected. Any phone with a SIM card can always be triangulated by the cell tower.

No identity is required to sign in. But it allows you to communicate with others. You can ask other users of phones right there. In any case, BraX2 phones are sold out. We only have De-Googled Pixels currently.

How is the battery life? How does it compare to the Pine phone?

@@TLM860 I roughly get through the day with it in one charge. I utilize its suspension feature a lot so it will automatically suspend after a few seconds inacitivity (similar to most Android phones) to save power. Biggest difference is that it won't wakeup if applications get any message. It will only wakeup on its own when you receive a call or SMS because then the modem can trigger your CPU to turn on. Obviously it's also required to have the modem active and not cut from power via its hardware kill-switch. I personally get probably around 12 hours from the device with very light usage (checking messages, reading a website or blog) now and then but mostly in suspension. If you want to know more accurate numbers, Purism did publish multiple videos and articles over time with numbers depending on usage. Those can be quite realistic from my experience. But obviously it depends on your own usage. The Pinephone (and Pinephone Pro) use a smaller battery (only 3000mAh while the Librem 5 offers 4500mAh). So physics will obviously limit you more. Their chips and software are not as much more efficient to keep up. But they also offers some deep-sleep suspension mechanism. If you use that only your active usage should be reduced (for the most part). I own a Pinephone and Pinephone Pro as well. From my experience I would say the Pinephone Pro is very close in terms of specs to the Librem 5. The original Pinephone is too slow because of its memory speed and slower GPU for me as daily driver. So I would recommend trying out the Pinephone Pro if anything. One thing to keep in mind though is that either Pinephone requires definitely more configuring and tinkering to make it work than the Librem 5. Purism pays developers to improve the software state of it and updates are pretty often. From my experience I would also note that the best software experience I had on the Pinephones was when I used mostly the software stack Purism implemented and published (which is open-source of course). There are still many community efforts to improve the Pinephone but you need to know how to find them or at least how to get a distro which makes use of them. ^^' Either way I really like how these Linux phones work already. The concept of convergent apps which use the identical code base for desktop and mobile is awesome. I already developed apps my own and it's as easy as moving a Python script over and running it. I much prefer it over developing for Android.

@@TheJackiMonster Thanks for breaking that down. I've heard bad comments about Purism

@@TLM860 I mean I still had to wait a long time to even get the device (waited about three years). There have been shipping delays because they needed to tweak the hardware in multiple iterations getting rid of overheating issues for example. Then the pandemic and chip shortage got into their way. One thing many people don't talk about when addressing that is that the Librem 5 uses a SoC you can find in multiple cars. But since Purism is a very small company they didn't get any priority to meet demand, chips got more expensive and they couldn't get an alternative. Typically hardware manufacturers would just switch out the problematic parts to meet demand. But since the Librem 5 aims to offer as much FOSS support as possible (even on firmware level for most parts) switching out hardware means more work for their development department. So they had to deal with that and I believe that's why Purism ended up delaying any refunds until new orders would bring it enough cash to process them. That's still pretty bad since consumers don't really care about circumstances. They just either want to receive the product or get their money back which is reasonable. So that's the most reason you will find such bad statements about Purism. They are not wrong. But at the same time I recommend checking out their Gitlab repositories. While they couldn't fulfill orders for a long time, their developers worked on the software stack very hard. Therefore it's not as easy as calling the whole thing a scam. The product exists and it works, better than I had imagined originally to be honest. I mean they have fully reverse-engineered the camera sensor and now you can record videos with a live view, auto-focus and even audio synced. From their latest posts it seems like they could actually fulfill last remaining orders hitting shipping parity. So new orders should get delivered in two weeks windows. I really hope it works this time. ^^' It would just be better if the product wasn't as expensive now. Because obviously the hardware compared to any Android phone on the market in a quarter of that price, looks kind of silly. But it's a difficult business model. Overall the consumer pays once but gets software updates for a lifetime, hardware can be repaired, battery replaced and all of this without ads, dependency to one big company or anything. Even if Purism would go bankrupt one day, you could still use an upstream kernel and run Debian on it, I assume.

Do not buy the librem 5 phone. It is a complete scam. I bought one and waited a year before I upgraded to the USA version before they shipped a phone. When I got it worked for about 1 week before the awesim service got shut down for everyone. It took a month for purism to send out new SIM cards. I passed and got no refund or anything back. For the phone, it is completely useless. The suspend feature that is being talked about basically turns the device off completely - you get no calls. For the battery life for real, it’s about 4 hours. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. There is nothing useful at all about this phone. No Linux app other then chess and the terminal app actually fit the screen. Linux on a phone is a good idea but purism is a scam company.

One way around that is a burner SIM that you never give the number for, and use a VOIP service for actual calls. Of course, this should be on some form of degoogled phone

Separating your devices makes it much harder for someone to get a complete profile on you or your activities, because your information isn't all in one place. It's the same reason you use multiple passwords. You can have one breach that doesn't compromise any of your other accounts.

@@lihtan my point of question is based on the fact that having 2 phones only gives us the illusion of privacy. While it may limit some businesses from the data, the corrupted US Government with the present traitors ARE the enemy. They still have it ALL in just milliseconds of anything we do thats electronic. Am I missing something¿ I really hope I am.

I keep thinking that. But is it really? I thought the same thing 5 years ago and boy did life change in those 5 years. I don't know...

De-Googled phones have no identity and no exact location. So only the regular phone is tracked. I said that in the video.

It has nothing to do with the wifi network that you use - it's Google Play Services that sends the wifi access point names and relative data strengths to Google so they can get your location. No Google Play Store so no way Google can collect that data.

@@terrydaktyllus1320 thanks for clarifying

It is not a small step to de-Google a phone. If you don't have the tech skillset, and the specific instructions for that specific model, you can brick the phone. I've tried to come up with a video to do that but there's that inherent danger in bricking the phone.

@@robbraxmantech I completely understand that but for people that can do it(like me) why not and just have a BIG BOLD notice that this could make your phone unusable. I am sure most people that would want to be Google free do have some knowledge of the needed skillset.

There are lots of different phone models out there & because the de-Googling process is different for each make/model of phone - it would take a long time indeed for someone to work out how to de-Google each make/model of phone (& at the risk of "bricking" several (& possibly expensive) phone models along the way) just so they could pass that information on to others. And they might probably end up having to "sell" those de-Googling instructions to others, in order to recoup the cost of all the hours spent trying to work out that process for each phone make/model, as well as the cost of any "bricked" phones along the way. I also doubt that there would be a sufficient market for such de-Googling instructions - because people would need to have a certain level of technical ability to do it themselves - even if they are just following the instructions given to them. Yes - there are certainly people with those skills out there - but probably not enough to make providing such a service worthwhile & at the very least to recoup costs or make a small profit to give that service provider "money to live on". And there are some makes/models of phones that simply cannot be de-Googled for a range of different reasons. It' may well just be easier & less expensive (in terms of "bricked" phones created in the process) to create a new phone from scratch that does not have any Google at all. It should also be noted that it is not possible to de-Apple at iPhone.

Can not see the last comment

As a free market advocate -- as I am sure many people following Rob are -- I would counter your criticism that he deserves to be paid for his expertise and work. Why would anyone expect something valuable for free? I think it is praiseworthy that he already makes so much of his knowledge available free of charge here on YT.

The only thing to worry about is Google. Clear cookies or it will leave a web worker tracking you forever

GTFO. The Police are on video removing the barriers & waving people into the buildings

Rob has made that point several times, that if you're _a target_ there's really nothing you can do. This isn't about that, this is about privacy not evasion

Big brother sure, but I'm sick of all the ads I see, and the info about my browsing history getting sold to 3-rd parties that push these ads. If you need your product to be pushed this hard, I guess your product isn't that good that customers would come by themselves to check it out or you risk loosing customers because of the invasive pushy advertising. It's becoming so cringe sometimes that I feel like taking a brake from digital browsing and all platsforms.

just go to the website brax.me and sign up

Yes it is a normal phone so you can switch SIM cards all day

Thank you! Will you have a Pixel 7 available soon? I'll get one as soon as yuo do I think at this point. This video was very good.@@robbraxmantech

You can swap SIM cards between devices no problem, but then the carrier will know for sure that both devices belong to you. I better approach might be to use tethering, so that your carrier only ever sees one device.

Phones receive updates like usual. We provide updates to our own OS of course. Whoever makes the OS supplies updates.

If you de-Google the phone yourself using a phone supported by Lineage OS, they will also provide OTA (Over The Air) updates. But do note that there are a lot of unofficial Lineage builds out there which would not get those updates.

I have a BraX2 de-Googled phone - for which here have already been a number of over the air updates of the Operating System (BraxOS). In terms of updating the apps on the phone - there are a number of sources/sites from which one can download & install apps on the phone & those same sources/sites also provide updates for the apps on a regular basis.