Askalan's Samsung S with Replicant

[AlanOstaszewski]

I will replace my 3 year old Huawei y625-u51 with this phone. I had this in mind for half a year because I wanted to try an Android distribution that does not use non-free software and non-free drivers. Replicant is the only one, but it also requires an old mobile phone, such as: S, S2 or S3.
I won't be able to use Bluetooth and I won't be able to use W-Lan, because of Replicant. That is why I will in the future add to my contract mobile internet. A 50MB plan should do it.
The installation for me went on for 5 hours. I spent 4 hours solving a problem and the rest of the time with the installation. To solve this problem, I had to install CyanogenMod first and then Replicant. I realized it late. So I softbricked my mobile three times. Fortunately there were still old images on the internet (kernel, operating system, bootloader too), so I could always get back to the last state.
I bought the phone so late because it is only available second-hand. If you search the Internet for this mobile phone, you will only find overpriced offers that are even very damaged. A week ago I saw an ad for reBuy on a certain television station. And so I bought the mobile phone in a very good quality there, even very cheap (50€). There used products are sold, which are checked and cleaned by experts. I wanted to mention this page here, because it didn't disappoint me.
I will perhaps replace the battery in half a year, as I am used to a mobile phone lasting three days. So far, I'm pretty happy.

 

[brod56]

Why did you choose Replicant? Most roms like Lineage are also open source and reliable.
For that price, you could have bought something like a Oneplus 1 and have a much better experience, imho.

 

[AlanOstaszewski]

Why did you choose Replicant? Most roms like Lineage are also open source and reliable.
For that price, you could have bought something like a Oneplus 1 and have a much better experience, imho.

Actually, you're right. If I had to buy a mobile phone for someone else, then I wouldn't use this model and certainly not replicant. But I just wanted to try a 100% open distribution and Lineage is not 100% open source. Free Non-GNU Distributions - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation
So far I have had a very good experience and I would probably not want to swap. Everything works great, which I really didn't expect.
By the way: A OnePlus One is not so cheap. Costs just twice as much used.

 

[AlanOstaszewski]

Back to this topic a week later:

I got my mobile phone case and protective foil for this mobile phone. The shipping cost of 3€ was higher than the price itself . Today I also got the mobile internet unlocked and downloaded Conversations Legacy and OpenKeychain from F-Droid. 2048 also because this is my favorite game. I also noticed that the battery lasted the whole week without charging. So I won't buy a new battery after all. Ultra satisfied so far!


Well, Replicant is a very good mobile system. Very fast, slim and well adapted to the mobile phone. Well done Paul Kocialkowski!
I'm gonna take some more screenshots tomorrow.
I didn't know that switching to a completely free operating system was so easy for mobile phones. It's much harder on the PC.

 

[slash/]

.

 

[yitworths]

Best wishes for your FOSS adventure. Please keep informing us about your latest status time to time... You've taken a leap for sure. I myself won't feel any loss without bluetooth.But W-lan is needed for me... dunno how you are gonna cope up with that.

 

[AlanOstaszewski]

Best wishes for your FOSS adventure. Please keep informing us about your latest status time to time... You've taken a leap for sure. I myself won't feel any loss without bluetooth.But W-lan is needed for me... dunno how you are gonna cope up with that.

There are actually two ways to access the Internet with a mobile phone:
First, you have W-Lan or
2. you have a cell phone contract where you can make phone calls, text messages and use Internet.

So I don't have to do without the Internet on my mobile phone because I can use my sim card for that.

This phone definitely doesn't look like your daily driver, but I'd still add any free security app just to scan your device occasionally. Looks solid for a lightweight device otherwise.

A security app would be complete nonsense for the 4 apps, which have a good reputation and are open source. Sorry
And yes, it is my daily driver.

 

[yitworths]

So I don't have to do without the Internet on my mobile phone because I can use my sim card for that.

Mobile data is not cheap, is it? May be, you are not gonna use internet extensively through that mobile. One decent quality of youtube video may hurt your pocket badly. To sum it up, probably you are gonna use your android as some basic phone.

A 50MB plan should do it

I've just noticed you are happy with 50 MB plan. Whoa, what are you man? A buddhist or something?

 

[AlanOstaszewski]

Mobile data is not cheap, is it? May be, you are not gonna use internet extensively through that mobile. One decent quality of youtube video may hurt your pocket badly. To sum it up, probably you are gonna use your android as some basic phone. I've just noticed you are happy with 50 MB plan. Whoa, what are you man? A buddhist or something?

For 50MB I pay two euros extra per month. I can use an infinite number of megabytes, only the Internet is throttled.
To check what on Google or to write messages it is enough! Watching videos I don't, I would also never do that on a cell phone.

 

[Question]

Why did you choose Replicant? Most roms like Lineage are also open source and reliable.
For that price, you could have bought something like a Oneplus 1 and have a much better experience, imho.

@askalan is right. A used OnePlus One costs about 200 €. I got my Huawei Y5 II for 140 € or so and it's still not bad.

 

[AlanOstaszewski]

@askalan is right. A used OnePlus One costs about 200 €. I got my Huawei Y5 II for 140 € or so and it's still not bad.

I mean, I don't use the I9000 because it's so great, but because it supports Replicant .
Replicant
And I wanted to try it.

I spent a few weeks satisfied with this device, only I learned from friends that the mobile phone is not only used for telephoning and messaging, but also for photos ;D Well, since you also have a camera in the front and back of this device. I cycled 20 kilometres away from the city to a national park to show you some pictures. In advance:
- Panorama and video mode do not work, because about 400 megabyte of Ram are not enough for this task. In addition, the camera app has crashed 20 times in these 4 hours.
- You can use presets for photos to make them look more beautiful. So I always modified the white balance before shooting, depending on how I like it. The lighting too, of course.
- I took the photos from 7 pm to 9 pm because you can't see anything on the photo without light.
- At the end I tried to improve the photos on the computer with Shotwell Photo Viewer with the automatic algorithm. Because I wanted to get all the potential out of that eight-year-old cell phone.

The results (I hope MalwareTips does not compress the images when uploading...):


I didn't know what else to photograph. I hope that's enough.
When you shoot a landscape, it looks standard (sometimes shaky), but when you get very close to objects and adjust the focus properly, it looks like you're using a very expensive camera. I can complain less here, I mean I didn't spend more than 60€ on this phone. Just awesome!
If you would sharpen the images a bit and edit more, you would get better results. Unfortunately, I have no experience in it.

Now we come to the other topic. Yesterday I helped my friend to flash LineageOS on his S7 Edge and it all went smoothly. Only I told him not to use cleaner apps or an antivirus. I mean, why do you need that? I can understand that on a computer, but mobile phone? Nevermind. Reminded me again of the post from @root/ that suggested installing an antivirus. I mean, I would jump off the roof if I had to install a closed-source app on my phone with open source software only (even bootloader and operating system is open-source, drivers like W-Lan, GPS, 3D acceleration are not working because they are not open). Everything except the Hidden OS is free.
So let me ask you a question: How would you convince me to an antivirus for a mobile phone if I could review the source code for every app on my mobile phone. On other devices with Android, Play Protect provides protection. Is the source openness not sufficient for me and Play Protect for the others? (Here again: I don't use Google Apps or the Play Store because I want only to use FOSS software on my mobile). @root/ What protection do you use?

In the end I would like to mention @silversurfer , @Der.Reisende , @Andy Ful , @Weebarra and @RoboMan so that they might make a good suggestion perhaps or not. But please let's talk now about general things except virus protection on my mobile phone, because I will not put something like that on it. (Except @root/ because he could maybe convince me )

 

[slash/]

I probably can't convince you of it. I sometimes can't convince myself either. Antivirus on Android is somewhere between a placebo effect and a "better safe than sorry" mindset. I've never been infected by malware on Android, but I still add protection on regardless. If I ever did get infected, it would be quite easy to clean too, but I save some time by preventing it from happening to begin with.

The only thing I could truly recommend (on a rooted device) is AFWall+. Fantastic open-source app that can create rules for inbound/outbound traffic for each individual app (system apps too).

 

[RoboMan]

In the end I would like to mention @silversurfer , @Der.Reisende , @Andy Ful , @Weebarra and @RoboMan so that they might make a good suggestion perhaps or not. But please let's talk now about general things except virus protection on my mobile phone, because I will not put something like that on it. (Except @root/ because he could maybe convince me )

You're asking the wrong guy my friend! I'm the creator of the most polemic Android antivirus thread: Q&A - Why you don't need antivirus on Android (in most cases) (jk on polemic)

I personally recommend one or two brands, but I certainly would not recommend one to an advanced user if he's not paranoid (I am, so I use one). Not needed...

 

[Andy Ful]

You're asking the wrong guy my friend! I'm the creator of the most polemic Android antivirus thread: Q&A - Why you don't need antivirus on Android (in most cases) (jk on polemic)
...

Nice thread. Though, I did not notice anything about Bluetooth vulnerability.
Both parties have some interesting arguments. Generally, I agree with @RoboMan.

 

[AlanOstaszewski]

The only thing I could truly recommend (on a rooted device) is AFWall+. Fantastic open-source app that can create rules for inbound/outbound traffic for each individual app (system apps too).

I know the app particularly well, since it ran on my old mobile phone. Replicant should be rooted by default, but I won't use the app there, because you can easily switch off unnecessary apps in the settings and the apps that I installed don't communicate with the internet unnecessarily.

You're asking the wrong guy my friend! I'm the creator of the most polemic Android antivirus thread.

I have already seen your topic a long time ago, but now only pressed the like button (bit late haha).
You didn't understand me a little bit. I wrote in my post that I won't use an antivirus on my phone, but I wanted to ask @root/ (because he recommended me an antivirus solution) why I should use it.
I just wanted to ask you what you generally think about FOSS software/operating system on a phone and/or you have another tip

---

Now for another thing: I wanted to put together a small list of apps I use on my mobile phone that are all FOSS:

F-Droid (app store): Alternative to the Google Play Store. You'll also find all the apps I use.
Red Moon: Alternative for Twilight and f.lux. It darkens the screen at night and turns it slightly orange, so that you can fall asleep better and are not blinded too much.
FreeOTP (Two Factor Authentication): Alternative to Google Authenticator. It generates a code based on your time, which you have to enter when logging into accounts. So if someone breaks your password, he still needs your phone.
Conversations Legacy and OpenKechain (for managing PGP keys): Alternative to WhatsApp, Telegram etc., which you can self host. This allows you to chat with your friends with PGP (end-to-end) encryption. (Not to be confused with Efail, which has only affected emails in the past!)
2048: A little game we all know. It's a lot of fun when you're bored and doesn't use a lot of battery power. Can also be played online (Attention: addictive ) gabrielecirulli.github.io/2048/

I also use the built-in apps for telephoning, SMS, listening to music.
The operating system is very stable (even if the processor is clocked down [I did it to extend battery life]), only the camera app not so much because of the small memory.

I will change and update my first post in a few days, so that you can see all necessary things at a single look. Maybe there will be a short tutorial on how to install Replicant and some information to make the installation easier.

 

[AlanOstaszewski]

I thought I'd get a title for every new post I post here in the topic, so that you can find certain things faster:

USB Tethering (LAN Hotspot)

I am not always at home in Germany, during holidays I am in Poland and there is no Internet at my grandparents house.
Not so bad, but sometimes I want to check MalwareTips or search something up and for that I need the internet. Therefore I bought a prepaid card for 5zl (about 1,50€), with which I can phone, text message and connect to the internet for five days (1GB), but under that I can use services like Netflix and YouTube for free, without using this gigabyte. I don't need it, but it's good to have. In Germany it would cost twice as much.

With the Samsung S and Replicant you can not create a W-Lan Hotspot (because W-Lan is an un-free driver) but only transfer Internet via cable. That's what I get in terms of speed:

Spoiler: Speedtest

It would go easily also more, but at the time of the test I was connected with H and not with 3G. The page also falsified the test result. So much advertising on a site that is supposed to measure Internet speed is not acceptable to me at all.

and that's how the setup looks like:

Spoiler: Setup

My laptop is a seven year old Acer netbook with an Intel Atom processor, running Puppy Linux on a USB stick. This is practical because the entire operating system is loaded into RAM when the operating system is started and it is therefore very fast.

 

[JM Safe]

I know you don't want to install any AV app, if you will change your idea I can suggest Zemana Free for Android and Sophos, Bitdefender.

 

[AlanOstaszewski]

Add Zemana Free for Android and a good AV like Sophos, Bitdefender, etc.

Hello and thanks for your "feedback".

Let's start with the fact that I'm using Replicant. This is a custom rom that aims to use open source drivers and open source software/apps as much as possible. It would be a contradiction if I installed an app like an antivirus scanner, which is usually not opensource and privacy friendly.

Secondly, I only use open source apps on my mobile phone (except WhatsApp). Do you know where I'm going with this?

And third, antivirus scanners for any android are bullshit anyway, unless you're using apk files from unverified sources.

So I don't think that I'll use a AV on my current mobile phone.

Side note: The Galaxy S with Replicant is still my daily driver. It runs very well!

 

[JM Safe]

@askalan I edited my main post.

 

[ChemicalB]

I've to say very nice thread