Samsung has longest update policy, A series and M series are highly affordable can it be suggested for someone who has tight budget but needs moderately high security and privacy?
Will there any drawbacks of choosing samsung phone instead of Google pixel in terms of privacy/security. Heard samsung has knox which provides high security for users.
The support cycle for flagship samsung devices does not apply to their budget models.
Yes, Samsung is notorious for forced analytics, and targeted advertising (just check out their privacy policy or Smart TVs). It has never been suggested as a “privacy friendly” option. They also love to push a lot of their own rubbish, Facebook, Bixby, McAfee in their OS as system apps.
currently google pixels are not available in all countries and iphones are pretty costly , is there any good smartphone devices which provide high security and privacy and is affordable for common people.
You really should not be using any phone like this:
ARM reported vulns in their drivers after being informed by Google Project Zero: Mali GPU Driver Vulnerabilities
Last year the same thing happened. Google was the only one providing patches somewhat timely (grapheneOS was faster) .
Samsung never informed their customers of active attacks using a zeroday they didn’t patch: Project Zero: A Very Powerful Clipboard: Analysis of a Samsung in-the-wild exploit chain
Samsung had some large data breach which they did not report: Samsung Fails Consumers in Preventable Back-to-Back Data Breaches According to Federal Lawsuit
Another proof of samsung’s horrible security management: Samsung Left Millions Vulnerable to Hackers Because It Forgot to Renew a Domain, Researchers Say
A detailed study on data collection of Samsung, Xiaomi, Huawei and Realme devices by Liu et al. at Trinity College: https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/Android_privacy_report.pdf
To add, somethings I forgot.
Samsung Knox does not exist anymore. All of it was integrated in AOSP so any modern Android phone has these protections.
There isn’t really an alternative to Google Pixel or iPhone. If you chose not to get this for perhaps understandable reasons and limitations you will have to deal with the consequences of this. I can’t make it any brighter. You can always try to disable or uninstall as much bloatware but it will never get to a similar level.
The main issue is, unless you buy a flagship, you won’t get long term support, simple as that.
The reason the Pixel is popular, is because of Secure elements, Trusty OS, and Titan M2/Tensor Security Core. Which are superior to other devices.
Part of it is also that GrapheneOS does a lot on the software side in making Android better as well.
If you can’t get a Pixel, then probably something with long term support on the firmware would be the next best, as far as I know thats only going to be comparable to flagship Samsung phones and the iPhone.
Many of the other phones which claim to have more than 2 years of updates, simply don’t have that support on the closed sourced firmware components.
Maybe try Motorola devices.
This is false. The press release for the latest generation of budget Samsung Galaxy phones states “Galaxy A53 5G and Galaxy A33 5G support up to four generations of One UI and Android OS upgrades and up to five years of security updates.”
I was referring more to their J series, though even these seem to be now four years, which is an improvement.
I tried to acquire Knox recently but apparently they do not have those in our country.
Also with regards to the availability of longer software support, it was a somewhat recent feature. The low end phone that I wanted to get Knox for was the first to have the 4 year (or was it 5 year bump?) in software support (from 2-3 years).
I don’t believe that Pixel devices doesn’t exit in your country, but I do believe that it doesn’t exit in main local stores or in carrier stores because it’s the same in my country. I would suggest you to look at peer to peer markets where people sell to other people. That’s where I got my Pixel, which was brand new and sealed too.
If, somehow, Pixel devices doesn’t exist in your country, then your next best option is getting a used iPhone.
The Android phones with the longest updates are:
*not sure if this includes firmware/drivers or just OS/AOSP updates; probably the latter as it will use the same CPU as the Fairphone
So that’s for the length security updates, but note that some phones may get them with a delay.
In terms of privacy you’ll want to install a custom OS (usually called “ROM” in the Android context), ideally GrapheneOS or otherwise DivestOS (see here for more info). The Pixel is supported by pretty much every custom ROM; Fairphone and Shiftphone also support custom ROMs but unfortunately GrapheneOS doesn’t support it; Samsung phones are completely locked down with no option to install another OS.
If you mostly care about privacy rather than security, and you can’t get a Pixel in your country, have a look at the devices supported by DivestOS.
Only Samsung and Google will have firmware updates, the others would be 3 yrs per Qualcomm SoC support. Samsung only have long term support on their flagship models.
Out of the two I would pick a Pixel over Samsung phone. You don’t have to then deal with bixby or any of the crapware that Samsung includes, like facebook as a system app etc. It also means GrapheneOS is an option.
They don’t because the devices have weaker hardware backed security than the Pixel, and no vendor support for firmware updates beyond what Qualcomm offers.
That might be the case but the latest S model supported by LineageOS or DivestOS is the S10 from 2019…
That’s the way. That is, if you don’t have someone you know traveling soon to the US or to some place else where Pixels are sold, that could bring you one.
I wonder if that also includes firmware, because that seems very specific OneUI and Android OS. You would think it it would, but it would be nice to see that somewhere.
I have a stock low(est) end Samsung under my care and I will report back in two years or so if it stops receiving firmware updates. But then at that point, it would be moot but at least we can have a retrospective.
Speaking of, I tried to manually debloat said lowest end Samsung phone and it had a glitch of not being able to save contacts after my overly aggressive debloating (mostly the duplicate Samsung-based apps). I reset it to factory settings and it works ok now but definitely not privacy preserving
I think you could buy a Samsung mobile and disable much of the bloatware it has using adb commands, there is even software to make it easier and it has an interesting number of documented packages.
I would take it into account before Motorola for quality (as long as it is a good price) and I think of it as a user who cannot access a Pixel phone in their country in a simple way