I am considering changing to an open source smartphone. However there are some apps that I must have, like authenticator, mobile bank and government apps. Does anyone have any experience with any of these brands, what are they like and also is it possible to install android apps?
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Personally, I’m watching Volla.
Volla supports dual boot. Android and Ubuntu. Play with Ubuntu, work with Android.
I’m pretty sour on murena. Never used their hardware but their cloud services have been down since October last year.
Murena ? as the murena foundation that develop /e/OS ? If yes, their OS is based on LineageOS microG edition with a great ad/tracker blocker and an app store that is kind of a fusion between the aurora store and fdroid (without the ability to add repositories unfortunately, in the version I used at least).
So you can install whatever apps you want with it(Except maybe android auto, I guess). I had my banking app and it worked well (until it detected I was root).
I used it with my oneplus 7, It had some big trouble these last months as their servers were outdated and they needed to update their whole infrastructure. Now, everything seems to be back to normal.
I can not say for their phones (murena 1 and 2), but their OS is solid to me.
I used e/os by Murena for a few years already on my Oneplus Nord. Except for banking and some google stuff it works really well. Now that phone is almost dead, and I plan to switch to Pixel 7 pro and probably LineageOS.
I would expect murena’s homebrew phones to be lower class, so if you dont want to flash/install OS yourself, you can also get a refurbished pixel 7 : https://murena.com/shop/smartphones/premium-refurbished/murena-pixel-7-refurbished/
All of the open source phones I’m aware of barely function. I mean like they can barely make phone calls, and receive text messages. Much less last throughout the day.
I have a pine 64, and I would put it into the hobby toy category, not a everyday carry device.
Asking for a totally open phone, and the ability to run critical Android apps, we’re not there yet. Maybe in 20 years
Yeah, the infrastructure just isn’t there yet, and with the difficulty being reported on models I haven’t tried, I’m not willing to jump into any of the current options.
Even the pine phone I got to play around with for a few days was prone to connection issues, and that’s a bit of a dealbreaker
Sounds bleak, especially when you think that these phones cost 500+ euros, but thank you for the honest review.
I think for some apps you need a mainstream os. But maybe you can use the bank website instead?
It’s less convenient but it’s a payoff
Unfortunately, in the country where I live pretty much everything requires requires a 2fa app from the government and also my job requires a 2fa app in general, so not having those would make the whole device useless.
That is too bad. Scary what the government can do. Sounds like you will need two devices if you care to have one that is open source.
Scary what the government can do
Requiring 2FA is a good idea though.
There are plenty of 2FA apps you can use that aren’t made by the government and will work fine on any phone.
2FA isn’t the problem. It’s being required to use a specific app.
My guess would be that a 2FA app from the government is likely using PKI (private + public keys) or something similar, rather than a basic TOTP algorithm. There’s not really a generic app for something like that. Many services are moving away from TOTP since it’s not phishing-resistant.
Nothing is phishing resistant though?
FIDO2 tokens (like Yubikeys and passkeys) can’t be phished.
