Purchasing phones which ensure frequent software patches for a number of years is a far better tactic IMHO. For example I recently purchased a Nokia X20 (https://www.clove.co.uk/products/nokia-x20) which has a promised 3 years of OS upgrades...something I've not seen by other manufacturers.
This still wouldn't protect me from a targeted surveillance attempt like Pegasus, but it does protect me from automated mass surveillance in the cloud, and at least partially reduces the attack surface, by getting rid of unvetted, unreviewable, backdoored proprietary software.
0 regrets, only privacy vibes every since.
The hardware seems fine, but, as said above, it seems that critical hardware (and software for that hardware) is closed.
What is great is: replaceable battery and dipswitches to physically turn on and off every module in the phone.
But why do you expect people can trust a group of anonymous developers building open source smartphones?
No, these modules are closed because it's simpler than making them open. Someone is getting ready to type "FCC and other regulatory bodies prohibit consumer reconfiguration of specific certified radios" but that has nothing whatsoever to do with openness. Being able to monitor something and being able to configure it are not the same thing.
But this article writes about the very people who have plenty to hide (for good reason!). I think it's a bit misleading to say investigative journalists have "nothing to hide" - confidential sources, on-going stories, contacts, whereabouts etc. Mixing this up, in my eyes, is not helping the "privacy for the masses" adoption.
However as the cost of exploits and ease of mass surveillance becoming cheaper . That statement has made less true for more and more people.
In the NSO target list for India I am seeing all sorts of people like virologists and journalists I wouldn't have thought were doing important enough to be tapped. More than the tapping that surprised me.
Sooner or later either we will be worth slightly more than cost or costs will become cheap enough.
However at that point it will be too late. Like the infamous quote goes " first they came for communists/Jews"
All the open phones in the world won't help if you use closed-source WhatsApp / Facebook. And you kinda have to if you want to talk to your less tech savvy friends and family.
In the EU there is a law in preparation that will force big players in chat networks to open up to third parties: The Digital Markets Act (DMA): https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/priorities-2019-2024/euro...
