[kwlug-disc] Local places to buy unlocked phones...

[Khalid Baheyeldin]

It used to be that CyanogenMod was the go to distro for Android devices.
They went commercial, and many things happened, and LineageOS emerged
from that source tree.

I use an OmniROM variant on my [very old] tablet, and it has been
great, until Google started to use instruction sets (Neo on Tegra)
that are not available in my tablet. My workaround for now is to
install old versions of important [to me] apps.

One of the challenges I have noticed in the field of open source
Android distros is that they support a limited subset of phones. This
is due to the non-standardization of SoCs in the ARM world (which
device is connected to which pins for example), unlike the PC world,
where peripherals are standardized to a much higher degree.

That makes selecting a phone much harder.

Another obstacle is the bootloader locking. Manufacturers often lock
the bootloader so only signed firmware can be loaded. That makes
loading a free Android distro impossible or hard (varies by
manufacturer and model).

To those who do use open distros on their phone: please post your
phone model and distro you use.

On Wed, Apr 11, 2018 at 11:22 AM, doug moen <doug at moens.org> wrote:
> I think you want an open source Android *distribution*. You'll want it
> either preinstalled on a new phone that you buy, or some easy way to install
> it on a phone after buying it. You'll want automatic security updates.
> Probably you don't want to compile the source from scratch and manually
> compile and install all security updates.
>
> The most popular one seems to be LineageOS.
>
> CopperHeadOS (from Toronto) is an extremely security oriented open source
> Android distro. If you want to have the most secure opensource phone on the
> planet (which implies that you don't want to be spied on by Google or use
> their app store), then you might want CopperHead. You need to buy a phone
> from them, which has the OS preinstalled, and then you get security updates
> from their server. You'll use fDroid as your app store (it's an open source
> app store).
>
> On 11 April 2018 at 11:06, Federer Fanatic <nafdef at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi, Suggestions on where one can buy unlocked phones running android?
>>
>> Secondly, opensource android? Definitive source where one can install
>> easily
>> and super securely?
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>>
>>
>> --------------------------------------------------------------
>>  Roger Federer Fanatic Extraordinaire :-)
>>
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Khalid M. Baheyeldin
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