12-13-2020, 05:41 PM
As it happens I was having this very discussion with a friend today, showing him the Pinephone. His reaction was pretty much that he couldn't see the point because it can't run the "apps" that he wants and the camera is not much good. That's going to be what most people think. They don't care about being tracked, instead going with the attitude "I have nothing to hide". (Orwell's Inner Party would be proud.)
What I see in the Pinephone is a way to escape from at least a part of Google's and Apple's surveillance ecosystems, an operating system that can be tailored for what I want, not what some huge tech giant wants, the ability to remove the battery and switch off cellular and GPS, full disk encryption, and having a pretty much fully functional and highly portable Linux computer. So the cameras are what you'd get in a cheap laptop, so what, I don't care about that, especially given the price. (If I want a good camera I'll buy a good camera.) I also don't want the stupid "apps" that most people have tracking everything they do 24/7.
So it's really not something that the masses are going to want. Just as well to fly under the radar.
What I see in the Pinephone is a way to escape from at least a part of Google's and Apple's surveillance ecosystems, an operating system that can be tailored for what I want, not what some huge tech giant wants, the ability to remove the battery and switch off cellular and GPS, full disk encryption, and having a pretty much fully functional and highly portable Linux computer. So the cameras are what you'd get in a cheap laptop, so what, I don't care about that, especially given the price. (If I want a good camera I'll buy a good camera.) I also don't want the stupid "apps" that most people have tracking everything they do 24/7.
So it's really not something that the masses are going to want. Just as well to fly under the radar.
