New Google-free smartphones

General
1

https://volla.online/en/

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2

I think they are only now getting official support for Android 11.

At least they seem to have finally gotten a proper kernel tree instead of some squashed code-over-wall nonsense.

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3

If they are only getting Android 11 now its a hard pass for me personally

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4

This isn’t new. It’s a known trash phone that offers falsely promised security.

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8

Can you elaborate?

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Per Android Tips | PrivSec - A practical approach to Privacy and Security Volta ships end-of-life hardware and makes dishonest marketing claims.
Edit: oops I mistook Volta for Volla. That’s gotta be trademark infringement on someone’s hands btw.

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10

Volla is also (near) EOL hardware afaict so no real difference there:

Unrelated, but noteworthy: Murena Phone, Brax Phone, and Simple Phone are all the same chip, P60/MT6771, from 2018: https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/mediatek/helio/mt6771 :

  • hxxps://murena.com/shop/smartphones/brand-new/murena-one/
  • hxxps://simplephone.tech/product/simple-phone/
  • hxxps://brax.me/prod/host.php?f=_store&h=rob&p=&version
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11

PinePhones are an option, but I don’t daily drive one. GrapheneOS is what Edward Snowden runs as his daily.

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I wouldn’t trust Brax Phones, he’s knowledgable but his phones are a joke.

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They are not sorry but can we stop recommending things you have no knowledge about? It is not secure. Stop it.

All of these phones run shitty cheap hardware, have no big company behind them with actual security engineers that know what they are doing.

Phones like these are a hobby project, sorry not sorry.

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14

I just tried accessing that link but it’s been taken down.

Does anyone know what Snowden recommends now?

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https://xcancel.com/snowden/status/1588472045960327168?lang=en

That specific Nitter instance is down but the tweet is still up. There isn’t really any reason to believe he would’ve switched from GrapheneOS since there still isn’t anything remotely competitive.

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16

I appreciate your reply!

However, even that post is over 3 years old now…

I’m just curious what he recommends for 2025 in all software categories, not just mobile devices.