There is a new phone coming out of Israel called "Unplugged" which touts being free from Apple and Google. Runs on mobile data Wifi not cellular 4 or 5G. The OS is "LibertOS" and one can download the app suite. It is not open source so makes one wonder who is reading your data! Cost of the phone is $849 and the website can be reached "unplugged.com"

So you admit you're suspicious, yet you still share the website?

If I had a $ for every new privacy focused phone I'd have a complete shell environment.

Sorry if I offended you and certainly did not warrant an attack. Don't see the harm of "sharing the website". What am I missing here? Is it best to ignore rather than publicize?

Looked forward to other's feedback for my limited experience. Here we have a phone which expressed Privacy but it's not open source, bit of irony there.

IMO, if it can't use cellular, then it's not a phone. Also, if it can't use cellular, it's garbage since it'll only work at home.

If it's privacy focussed, it can't use cellular. For one thing, every so often you have to ping the network to find where you are. Presuming the police or Thought Police are looking for you, the responses from the 3 nearest towers allow your gps coordinates to be detected to within ±5 metres. When you use wifi, of course, they can have the cuffs on you before you finish your coffee at the local Starbucks
presuming you're logging into their wifi. Best being legal, & honest.

If that were true, how does the Purism Librem use cellular?

Didn't some of the linux supported products come from them? unplugged seems like the name.

^ Maybe you're refering to the Linux Unplugged podcast?

And that nicely illustrates how meaningless the "Privacy focused" buzzword is, by itself.
Timothy Miller is right - if it can't use cellular it's not a (cell) phone.

Also claiming "free from Apple" and especially "free from Google" would require proof.
Also, NOT FOSS? Forget about it.

Yeah, you do seem to have missed that.

All you've done is help their SEO and give them traffic.

And for the record, everyone in this thread is capable of building a handheld VoIP device for a fraction of that price.

It's a WiFi phone!

If such is the case and there is no way around it using cellular or WiFi the powers that be always knows our whereabouts than we have lost the battle even if we are legal and honest.

The examples I quoted varied.

Any App that uses GPS gets it's 'first fix' from a cell tower ping. The police can have that information monitored for your cellphone number or device ID.

The police can also trace your current IP back to an ISP customer having it on a dhcp lease at that particular time. Presuming they sent guys within 5-10 minutes, they could nab you within the 15-20 minutes you would take leisurely sipping your laté.

Point remains: positioning, triangulation etc. are not bound to one technology. WRT privacy, a Wifi phone is not better than a cell phone. WRT usability outside your home, it's definitely worse.

It's also very difficult to get free from Google, because so many sites sell them tracking information.


Special phones have been built aimed at criminals with no gps, no logs, encrypted messaging, and other features. We had a situation here in Europe over some phone that a lot of criminals had. One country's police broke the encryption. They did nothing, except quietly call all the local police, who all raided their own countries simultaneously. There was a serious cleanup, goods siezed, arrests, safe houses discovered, etc. We have a Criminal Assets Act. If the police have good info that something is the proceeds of crime,it's siezed until the criminal submits proof that it isn't . None have tried to date.

Exactly. There's no such thing as "free of Google" if you want to use the internet in a timely fashion.
OTOH, it's not a zero-or-all kind of thing - less Google is better than all of it.
And let's not forget that, while Google is probably the biggest, it isn't the only data kraken.