
$200 PinePhone Linux smartphone comes with physical kill switch - vvpvijay
https://androidrookies.com/200-pinephone-linux-smartphone-comes-with-physical-kill-switch-to-turn-off-camera-microphone-bluetooth-and-wi-fi/
======
ggm
Steve Bellovin asked a good question in twitter: is it a real kill switch
which breaks a line or is it a DIP switch which sets a flag the kernel is
meant to honour?

~~~
dylz
On mobile currently, but
[http://files.pine64.org/doc/PinePhone/PinePhone%20v1.2a%20Re...](http://files.pine64.org/doc/PinePhone/PinePhone%20v1.2a%20Released%20Schematic.pdf)
exists if someone wants to take a look.

~~~
swiley
I skimmed over it: for WiFi there’s a switch on the chip enable pin. The modem
looks like there’s a switch controlling the power supply.

~~~
scrps
Yep they are marked SW1-[A-F] for anyone interested.

------
squarefoot
Assuming all the switches actually turn off the chips (CE lines?), it means
the drivers have to be written in order to be able to find that a chip was
enabled or disabled out of their control, and not bomb because of that. Would
this mean that all device drivers for these hardware subsystems are FOSS?

If that's the case so we have a real hardware kill switch, then ladies and
gentlemen the above image is the best possible ad for the PinePhone. Forget
stock photos of pretty models, athletes or busy professionals, _that_ is what
privacy sensitive people want to see on the back of their phone.

~~~
EE84M3i
I'm not sure I follow. Why does the drivers been written to handle chip
disablement imply that they are FOSS?

~~~
squarefoot
I assume that being the PinePhone the first phone whose sections can be
disabled by turning off chips, and not telling a driver to do that, the driver
should be agnostic wrt the chip status, and not panic especially if the chip
is being switched off during work. That would hopefully require the drivers to
be rewritten by Pine64 devs to manage an event that as of today would happen
only on the PinePhone.

I didn't look at the phone architecture yet, so I was referring to chips
mapped on the MCU bus lines since the chip enable was mentioned. USB
peripherals would be very different, still interesting if they both used USB
for ease of support and directly drive the CE lines to be sure the chip is
being disabled.

------
t0mmyb0y
Badly written article and bad comments here. Apple never warned to not tape
over the camera. They warned against using a too-thick third party device that
physically wrecks your hardware if you are a moron. Kill switches do not kill
for good...have you never heard of kill switches in cars?

------
ngcc_hk
It is NOT a kill switch. Kill mean never come back again. Not like that kind.
Sometimes you need it in Hong Kong to as all phones are hacked (except Pixel
strangely). Hence, you have to kill your phone not to expose (just friends to
be harassed by useless popo). But you need real kill switch.

~~~
cheaprentalyeti
I'd like to know more about "all phones are hacked" in Hong Kong. I believe
you, I just want to read about the details because I've been thinking about
this lately.

(For instance: this includes Apple phones, or you would have mentioned them,
the way you did Pixel, right?)

