
Ask HN: What's the most secure smartphone in 2019? - egonschiele
Apple announced that iphone sales are down. Actually, I have been thinking of getting off the iphone and android ecosystems. Are there other good alternatives? My primary needs are: email, google maps, text, slack, and lyft.
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snazz
I'm not going to mention the application software or OS, since I'm sure
someone more knowledgeable than me will give you information about that.

What you're probably not thinking about is the baseband processor, which
negotiates cellular connections and handles everything related to making the
phone an actual phone. The trouble with baseband modems/processors is that
none of them are open source and that they oftentimes have direct memory
access to the application processor. iPhones and the Purism Librem phone
isolate the baseband further from the application processor than the average
Android phone.

Even if you find a nice phone and install an open-source, audited, secure
operating system, your hardware might compromise you.

~~~
tdsamardzhiev
And even if you find open-source, audited, secure hardware, your carrier might
compromise you. The more I think about it, the more "secure smartphone" sounds
like an oxymoron.

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obvsthroway7676
As always - it depends on your threat model. But frankly, for most cases -
iPhone.

Might not be the answer you want, and it has neither the purity nor
auditability of OSS. But sales are down because of pricing model insanity,
which is fairly orthogonal to your question, and it's still huge (so you blend
in) and from a corporation with incentives generally more aligned towards your
security and privacy than most.

So, unless you're doing insane burners and low level hacking to make a more
secure device, iPhone is probably the way to go.

~~~
gen3
I agree with you. Strictly comparing IOS to android, I would say IOS is more
secure. Apple is in a position where they are incentivized to give you a
secure and private product. They make money off of hardware sales, not ads
(They are trying to increase their revenue from services though). They are
incentivized to do as much processing on your phone as they can, because it
saves server costs. Examples of this would be the facial matching in the
camera app (IOS done on phone, android done at Google) and TTS of voicemail
(only sent to Apple if you tell it to).

There are still dangers though. Apple still has control of your phone through
things like updates and the ability to place in a backdoor if they are legally
forced to. As far as I know, they have a good reputation though (see San
Bernardino iPhone case).

If your super paranoid, build your own phone
[https://www.adafruit.com/category/281](https://www.adafruit.com/category/281)

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sammygutierrez
Librem 5 is coming out sometime this year.
[https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/](https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/)

You should be able to use all of the services you've listed (some of them
through the browser, not sure about Lyft).

~~~
hbcondo714
I didn't see any mention on price but when I clicked the pre-order now button
and added the phone to the cart, the price shows as $599...not bad!

~~~
Jitnaught_
Sadly for us that price will be increased to $699 in a few days.
[https://puri.sm/posts/2018-devkits-are-
shipping/](https://puri.sm/posts/2018-devkits-are-shipping/)

------
aportnoy
OT: you have the same first name as Karl Pearson’s son.

~~~
diego_moita
I suspect it is a reference to the Austrian expressionist painter:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egon_Schiele](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egon_Schiele)

