I am a long term idevice user (for which I am truly sorry) and am in the process of ‘jumping ship’. I gave ordered a murena fairphone and am awaiting delivery. In the meantime, I want to find out as much as possible about the phone and OS. I have zero experience of stock Android either so, this may well be a bit of a learning curve. I use Fedora and Debian on my laptops and and moving most of what I did on the IDevices to them. But, I want to set up the phone so that it is as secure / private as is possible these days. After what has happened with Apple, I am more than a bit ‘cloud averse’. But, would really appreciate and advice, based on your own experience, about tools / utilities that you use. I already use Mullvad and Protonmail. Also, if you could point me in the right direction at unbiased / accurate guidance on setting up my phone when it arrives, I would really appreciate it. I suspect, that I may be one of many ex-apple users who turn up here.
I looked on YouTube but, could find much.
Related to a cloud you should know the following: when you switch your new device on it will ask you some things, language and so on. Then it comes to the /e/-cloud. It looks then as you should create now a cloud account and most people do this indeed. But you don’t need to do this at all. If you are sure you don’t want to have a cloud account (like me) and an /e/-email-address you can skip this. The device has then not at all any lack of functionality except that there’s no cloud.
What you can also do is create a cloud account but then decouple it later by removing the cloud connection from your device. Then you have an account in the /e/-cloud but the device doesn’t interact with it. You can then still use this cloud account for mail, manual file and picture up- and downloading and other things.
When you create a cloud account you should know that the device starts then synchronization processes in background. This means that files will be pumped into the cloud regardless if you want that or not. Generally synchronization will be switched on by default and will affect all files, also GBs of music. So if you have an account you must configure the synchronization before you start putting files on your device, otherwise you will soon get the well known storage exhausted error message because the size of the cloud account will only be 1GB.
Thanks so much. That is very useful advice. I hate to say it but, this approach sounds a bit like how Apple does things. But, not just Apple. I know many Apple, Android and Windows users who have been ‘forced’ to pay for extra storage because they don’t understand how to configure their devices to prevent all their data shooting up into the cloud.
when you configure your mail accounts check if your IMAP servers are able to send push notifications, all IMAP servers which support push notifications do not need to be polled again and again for new messages, but this polling is the default in the Mail app, when you have proper modern servers you can switch this polling off and save a lot of network traffic
there’s an option in the developer settings to keep the mobile data connection open even while the device is on wifi, this is intended to provide “more stability” in the network connections but it’s indeed questionable, if you have a proper wifi router you can switch this off, your device is then on wifi whenever it finds a proper wifi environment, otherwise it’s on mobile network, this saves you a lot of energy
you will find a feature called TrackerControl in the settings, this is /e/ specific, this detects known trackers in your apps and blocks them, good to have this switched on
if you want more information and more control over the data sending behavior of your device you can install a private VPN app like RethinkDNS or NetGuard, these apps allow to monitor your apps, to block single or more requests to any servers and they provide mostly also a firewall based on blocklists, I recommend this but it’s also something you must learn to handle, not always easy
/e/ has an app store called App Lounge based on the amount of apps in the Google Play Store, in App Lounge you find (different from GPS) also informations about privacy protection, so there are trackers counted and listed for each app, you see the TikTok app has 7 known trackers which will probably send your data to intransparent receivers (it goes up to more than 20 for single apps), before you install an app you should always have a look at this to keep the number of trackers on your device as small as possible, you will see that this is not easy
because of that it’s a good idea to use other app sources like the F-Droid repository, there are several possible client apps you can download in App Lounge (the original F-Droid app, Foxy Droid, …), the difference is that F-Droid lists only free software, there’s a number of other compatible repositories you can integrate into your client app, on that base you can then indeed fill up your entire device with free apps, the only damned exceptions are proprietary apps (online banking, authentication, sports watches …)
@linux_fangirl
I advise against using a cloud, especially the free /e/Cloud. An encrypted data backup can be made with the ‘Seedvault’ backup tool integrated in /e/OS - either on a microSDXC card or USB stick. This keeps your data exclusively in your hands.
If your backup is encrypted I don’t see a reason to not put it onto a cloud storage.
Using internal micoSD card imposes the risk that if you lose your phone, you lose your backup.
Backing up to USB is a manual process, which is often forgotten.
This is true, but - this is the only way to ensure that my data is MY data. To achieve more data protection, it is necessary to move out of your usual comfort zone and take important things into your own hands.
I like the idea of being able to back up the phone to usb, using seedvault. I do accept the point that such an approach requires you to be organised and disciplined in the backing up process. But, I already back up much of my personal data locally and have systems / a timetable for doing it. So, adding the phones to my existing system would be quite straightforward. I will definitely be setting this up - thanks for telling me about it.
I am not really a heavy app user but, I do use some. One problem I am wrestling with at the moment is WhatsApp. I never really wanted to use it at all, as I prefer signal. But, so many people I know do use it and want to contact me on it. I was just looking to see if I could transfer my chats to a new phone without the cloud. It looks like ai can but, am still not sure if I will.
Apart from that, I use Mullvad vpn, protonmail (with Simple Login) & drive, Apple Maps, Standard Notes, OS Maps (bought) which I can do without, GoodNotes (bought) which I am happy to change for something else, BBC Weather / News / Sounds Apps. Proton / Mullvad, I would like to keep using it, otherwise, am happy to try new alternatives.
As far as I can, I am moving my banking back to Browser based on Linux.
I thought that encrypted cloud backups were a good idea too until Apple switched off ADP for new uk users and promised to be deactivating it for existing uk users soon. If you encrypt your own backups, it is much more secure but, after what has happened, I just want my backups stored offline entirely.
Until now I could always avoid this. OK, so I’m not an honorable member of the crowd … I can live with that.
For (unencrypted) mail I use Fairmail.
For maps and navigation you get Magic Earth preinstalled, but I use Osmand with downloaded maps and voice. A good addition if you like public transport is Transportr.
For notes I use Another Notes 1.5.4 (I want local, not cloud storage). As far a s I rember the preinstalled stock Notes app can now also have local storage.
For weather I take Prognoza.
Music players are special because many people have many different expectations. I have a large library with heavily inconsistent tags, so it’s rather difficult to get this into a player which is based on albums, interprets, songs and genres. I need strictly a folder based player. I also can’t stand players based on a playlist I have then to manage. Whenever a player description mentions playlists I take my hands off. So I use foobar2000, VLC and FoldPlay, which does indeed an excellent job.
Instead of the original Signal app I use Molly (another client for the Signal protocol), Molly has some extra features like receiving using Unified Push (Unified Push is integrated now into /e/OS, you only need to switch this on)
Yes, me too, but the very most online banking websites require two-factor authentication. So you need in many cases (except you have a special device for that) a mobile phone. In rather rare cases you get still an SMS with a code on the phone whenever you want to login on the banking website. Mostly you need a proprietary app on the phone provided by your bank, and running that app on an /e/ phone can get really difficult. I know people having a second, completely unprotected phone (mostly an old one) only because of that one app.
has not been answered yet as far as I see: these apps will work, I had been using mullvad for a while myself and from what I read in this forum Proton is commonly used as well
if you cannot avoid it for reasons - search the forum/web for guidance on shelter, an app that allows sandboxing questionable apps within a work-profile and thus limits their access to only the content of that specific profile.
From what I understand an additional set of contacts with only the bare minimum of information would be required for wa (within the same profile) in this case.
I am not a wa-user (nor shelter) myself but that´s what I would try to achieve.
Ah, Linux connection … I use simple FTP (FTP over SSH). There’s an app called primitive ftpd, which acts as a FTP server on the device. You can then have any command line or GUI FTP client you want to exchange files in both directions. A good PC application on Windows and Linux is DoubleCommander which has a builtin FTP client. I find it an advantage not to need a cable.
I suspect that in the case of eOS, the way the setup process is designed is rather meant to be for the conveniance of the new user when entering their new “biotope” (eOS rather aims at “normal” folks instead of geeks), rather than an attempt to encourage users to buy larger data plans…
But as @irrlicht points out, the setup process should be a lot more transparent in this regard because it regularly leads to problems and confusion…
I was able to install OS Maps from App Lounge. I was not able to use it as I have no account. However with a login associated with a paid account, my guess is that it may not be lost.
Thanks. We have 1 bank account that needs app authentication. I was thinking of calling them to find out if there was an alternative. Maybe, change banks if not. I don’t think as a customer, I should be forced to use apps if Indon’t want to.
Your suggestions will definitely be installed. I have tried Joplin notes once before and quite liked it. And am happy to try Organic Maps and drop the one that I was using. It has had some good reviews. I think this is a good opportunity to dump WhatsApp and just tell everyone that they will need to use Signal if they want to keep in contact with me, or texts / email.
To all of you. Thanks so much for all of your advice suggestions. I will be trying them out - you can count on it. My phone has arrived. The first thing I did was inserted the SIM card - I know you will laugh but, I had to make sure it did the basics - and it does - it picked up the SIM card correctly, and it can text / make phone calls. Everything else, I will be checking out tomorrow. I am so pleased and relieved, that I can move away from Apple. Once the phone is sorted out, I might get the pixel tablet. Then, the iPads can be completely retired as well.
One typical answer of a bank when you ask for an alternative authentication is: “Use a secure operating system!”. When I asked because of their damned proprietary java application didn’t run on my Linux they told me seriously “Install Windows!”, that seems to be secure enough.
(OK, in rare cases they still have an older system running, not officially, but for the people not having a smart phone or whatever. Depends then on the guy you get, only one of ten knows that.)
