FOSDEM 19 Announcements Discussion

[Luke]

Bottom line is that phones are not easy. The more complex a phone the more things you need to accommodate and plan for. For a first, security oriented, Linux (and *BSD!) phone from PINE64 its quite important to keep it a relatively simple device, which delivers in the few key aspects you'd want/ expect it to.

I don't really see any evidence that security is a primary design goal for the pinephone. There is the potential for a secure device, and that is great, but the kind of rigid lock-down required for provable security would severely limit the ability of end users to adapt the phone to their needs.  I think adaptability is just as important.  

If security were a primary design goal, the privacy switches would not be located "under the back cover".  I'm not criticizing that choice, by the way.  I would be satisfied to be able to simply disable the services that use the cellular/wifi/bluetooth, even if choose to do it at the kernel level (modprobe -r).

What I meant by "first" was - PINE64's first phone...