I don’t like so called smartphones (flashy devices to mine your data and other reasons) but my regular no touchscreen phone’s microphone is no longer working as it should, making conversations difficult.
Enter a smartphone I received as a present, my phobia (for lack of a better word) to smartphones and my (misguided?) obsession with privacy: I don’t want to use this smartphone as my default phone because I’m scared the carrier, ISP or google are going to mine my data and trace my calls.
Which might be an overreaction, because each time I use my regular cell phone, the carrier knows when I’m calling from, who I’m calling and how long the call lasts.
So I ask you: how much more data would I be leaking if I use my new smartphone for calls only, compared to a regular, no touchscreen phone?
Sadly it’s only getting worse.
Google and hardware manufacturers aren’t motivated to make open devices. Quite the opposite, really.
They learned their lesson from the BIOS wars of the 80’s that resulted in standardized hardware interface, so any compliant OS could be installed. This is what gave MS the ability to beat IBM at their own game, and prevented strong DRM.
Phones don’t have a standardized BIOS like that, so each brand requires drivers built specifically for it (also a bit of a result of using Linux as the base, since it’s a monolithic OS). Without those drivers you can’t install an OS, and each device is different.
Google and friends like it this way, their long-term goal is fully locked down phones that you don’t control and can’t modify, so they can fully implement DRM.