From a Feature Phone

Disclaimer: this may get its own page someday, but for now this will do.

On October 5, 2023, I wrote that I had sold my smartphone a few months earlier and traded it in for an old-fashioned feature phone, namely the Nokia 105. With this phone I could only text and make calls, not even play music.

I used this setup for a year and a half, but recently went back to a smartphone. The reason for this is simple: privacy. While a smartphone can track you to an absurd extent, a feature phone is not much better.

Text messages are sent over the telephone network as plain text. You may be afraid that Apple or Google can read your messages, but you can be 100% sure that absolutely everyone can read your text messages that are sent as plain text. That is why I wanted to go back to a smartphone.

And although a smartphone can of course track you in many more ways, this also happens amply with a feature phone. For example, it is possible to track your location with your SIM card. There are even free to use websites for this, where you can enter a telephone number and then you see where the phone is, it is that simple.

To a Smartphone

That is why I recently bought an Iphone 16E. The reason I chose an Apple device over an Android is that Apple seems to be slightly better than Google when it comes to privacy.

For example, look at the recent news that Facebook was able to track so much mobile browsing data on Android devices that even Google — itself notorious for tracking its users without their consent — called the practice a blatant violation. Apple, however, has implemented a number of privacy protections for its devices in recent years, causing Facebook to lose billions in advertising revenue after Apple implemented them.

Besides the Apple junk that is forced on me, I have hardly installed any apps and the only ones that I have installed are completely open source. These are: Signal, VLC to easily send files to my phone — via their Sharing via Wifi function — and to play music and films, Adguard — an adblocker — and Tofu as two-factor authenticator.

I only call and text via Signal and for the people I know who do not have Signal, I use Imessage and Facetime. I no longer send anything via plain text.

I've used a feature phone for about a year and a half and I've never regretted missing out on certain features. But sacrificing so much privacy wasn't worth it to me in the end.

My Laptop

Apart from a smartphone, I only have an old laptop with Arch Linux installed on it. The window manager I use is Openbox with Pcmanfm as the file manager.

I also have very little installed on my laptop. Apart from the bare essentials like Libreoffice and Firefox, Darktable and Krita are the only real standouts, which I use to view and edit photos.