Edit: Thanks for the responses everyone. Seems it was too good to be true.
The phone looks interesting abut the other devices almost look too good to be true, like potential vaporware.
To his credit, Rob’s videos introduced me to cell phone privacy. But his products are all just pre-flashed off-the-shelf devices. The bespoke Brax phone models are merely rebranded mid-tier phones from a generic ODM. None of it is more secure than what GrapheneOS on a Pixel offers and all of the offerings have alternatives that are cheaper or better audited.
This guy’s videos get pushed a lot to people interested in privacy. He also (used to?) advertise his own “secure social media” with no metadata/tracking, until some other youtuber discovered it had security vulnerabilities. I’d suggest, stay away from anything related to Brax
Buyer beware. Years ago, Brax was selling end-of-life Pixel 3s (with a degoogled OS) and not letting his customers know these devices would not be receiving security updates.
Until the day I die, I will associate “Brax” with “scammer”.
On a related note, I saw recently that the folks over at PostmarketOS are working on BengalOS which will support the Pixel 3 and 3a.
According to GrapheneOS, Google is the one who publishes security and firmware updates. If this is true, the Pixel 3 and 3a will remain insecure regardless of OS.
Oh wow! I had no idea.
I have one. It kinda blows. Just get a used pixel 8 or 9 and install grapheneOS. That’s what I ended up doing.
my antipathy towards google was making me avoid pixels, but knowing that motorola’s graphene friendly phone is going to be a $1k+ high end folding phones and making me reconsider.
You might go the route of dumb phone with tethering, which opens up your computing flexibility slightly.
dumb phones are running android these days.
That wouldn’t be dumb, but I get your point.
https://dumbwireless.com/collections/phones
How many of these do you suppose run Android. The operating system is listed in the specs. Do you suppose they are not correct?
The Dumbphone 2 listed is a TCL Flip 2 which runs modified AOSP. Functionally, the Flip 2 is a dumbphone, though if you’re willing to put in the elbow grease you can install apps through adb and install a cursor to use them. The screen resolution and modified OS make many apps unusable though. I was able to get Firefox, Jerboa, and Molly (Signal) working on mine though. It was definitely better to tether to a tablet or laptop as you said.
I think the Sunbeam phones, Keyphone, and Light phone are AOSP as well, with varying openness.
A lot of manufacturers just use gutted AOSP so they don’t have to write network, UI, notification, etc. stacks from scratch. If not Android it’s usually Mocor or KaiOS
Thanks. That helps a lot. I think I need to dig a bit deeper, because I’m sure even AOSP is still linked to Google in some form.
Actually looking through carefully, most of the ones that work in my area are Android based. I would avoid those.
Fwiw the GrapheneOS developers themselves have spoken negatively about Braxman, as in hes a fraud I guess. I don’t know the full details myself. As said above just get a used Pixel 8 or 9 and install Graphene, its really the best way to go.
Yeah well they speak negatively about everyone so I would take their statements with a huge grain of salt.
Both absolutely true, AND they live in a world where a lot of money is being paid paid to attack them. It’s like elections in a corrupt country: on paper you may even have fair voting, but in practice there will be constant attempts at sabotage.
They live in a harsh world. Personally, I forgive them their paranoia. A huge chunk of security+freedom on mobile currently stands on their shoulders, and on PinePhone / Librem5.
Louis Rossman is not being paid to attack them. Murena is not being paid to attack them. PrivacyGuides is not being paid to attack them. Calyx is not being paid to attack them. Techlore is not being paid to attack them. And if you think one of them are, refer to the rest, because there are many.
Louis Rossman
That one guy that’s been related to nazis from FUTO?
Murena
e/os is the worst “private” mobile OS. It is just a LineageOS with a bunch of proprietary crap. Their STT even uses OpenAI as a provider.
Also Murena founder has made some diabolical claims about exploits about how they aren’t developing their OS for “pedos”:
However, we don’t have a “hardened security” approach, we aren’t developing a phone for pedo(censored) so they can evade justice.
https://xcancel.com/GrapheneOS/status/2040887784253141142
PrivacyGuides
PrivacyGuides recommend GrapheneOS as the only AOSP-based mobile OS, what do you mean? Calyx is not being recommended by them.
I don’t know anything about Calyx or Techlore critique, so I can’t comment on that.
Your arguments are wrong but that doesn’t even matter because is not the point. The point was that they were not being paid.
I guess you’re right in a sense that, I’m not aware of anyone specifically getting money with the job “just hurt them somehow”.
I don’t know if people receive money to say other things though. Like that a googlified phone or other things are secure (when they’re much less secure, and that can be proven in the technical realm). Do people receive money for that? I’m aggressively blocking all ads and barely watch any youtube at all, so I’m a bad judge for that. I’ve seen what looks to me as traces of that, but I could be wrong. So I’ll take back my claim and just state that I merely have doubts. Maybe someone can add more information on that. If they know whether people are getting for saying that google is secure, or that some of the alternative firmware is just as secure. It would not be attacking GrapheneOS then, but it would be attacking and muddying the truth.
I’m sure some people are getting money, and I’m sure many govt are running disinformation campaigns, but I’m referring to respected denizens of the privacy community.
no they don’t
I’m glad I asked. Thanks!
Got one of his phones a while back and it was just a pixel 4 with lineageOS and I think MicroG on it. If you’ve got the funds listen to that other guy and get a modern pixel with graphene
I keep looking at the tablet and I am also curious if anybody has experience.
