Next year's Huawei phones: Android without snooping?
 

It struck me that if Huawei does it half right, next year's Huawei phones could offer the Holy Grail of an Android phone without Big Brother Google knowing your every move. Personally, I don't care if it tells Beijing, I'm not likely to be there anytime soon. I don't believe it does tell Beijing, btw. But I would be rid of the persistent logging of every minute detail. If I break wind, google wants to know so it can advertise all appropriate medications :-/.

I don't really think Huawei is working on their own Android version. It claims to be "Android Compatible". Android is open-source but it is still "Google Owned". They would need to create they're own OS to get rid of Google.

I think the Android/iPhone monopoly is about over. Librem 5 is not much of a worry yet. But the PinePhone sure could be. The mobile Linux operating system development is really accelerating fast recently.

Just get a phone that allows rooting without hacks and flash it with something privacy oriented

must admit that, while I have another brand of phone in mind as my next (who offer dual-boot Linux) I think along similar lines. I distrust my own and the US government more than I worry about Beijing even noticing me.
Well, Android may be Google owned but if you have the source and are willing to go to the effort no reason why you could not "roll your own" non spy version.

The Nexus 5 (which I still use as a second phone running Lineage) was a Google phone made by Huawei .... :eek:
The damn thing probably got confused sending all my data all over the globe .... :D

I can think of two good reasons: Lack of programming expertise and inertia. The fact that one hand disqualifies me from the Home_Volume_Power button press to reprogram the thing. It's theoretically possible but I haven't managed it.

Besides, I like Android's software suite, and if I break compatibility with that, things like WhatsApp goes.

my apologies, perhaps I ought to have used "one" rather than "you" or, indeed I should have used "they".
I see no reason why rebuffed manufacturers in countries which excel in tech could not produce a version of Android not made for the purpose of making Google shareholders rich and giving US(etc,) governments a way in to anything they want.

So I'll await next year's Huawei offerings with interest. My S7 Edge will still fetch money, Huawei will probably be realistically priced, and Beijing will hardly be as intrusive as Google:rolleyes:

Moderator Response
 

Moved: This thread is more suitable in <General> and has been moved accordingly to help your thread/question get the exposure it deserves.

Thanks. I forget where I posted it. Anyhow, moving it seemed to kill it off :-P. Folks had probably added what they wanted to anyhow.

Sure, as long as you don't say anything about Tibet, Tiananmen Square, Hong Kong, etc, Beijing won't care about you. I heard from a friend, who visited as a tourist, that you get an immediate notification on your phone when you jaywalk, thanks to the ubiquitous cameras. So if you think Google is intrusive, make sure never to visit China.

Don't worry, I won't be visiting. I have a son who spent a few weeks in Northern China. He was visiting his friend who has been 10 years helping in a seriously banned religion there. As foreigners, they'd just be thrown out if caught, but the locals are looking at lengthy jail terms. We're pretty re-education proof, so I'm sure they have tried that & given up. It's one of the places we get no news about. We don't even officially acknowledge we have any presence there. But there is a list of 45 countries where our work is banned & reports are incomplete. China is in there.

?

But since China Military and Intelligence funds those phones. Plus Military intelligence is part of the employee base.

I guess you get the surveillance you pay for. Instead of the free surveillance already offered by everyone else.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoff.../#4cd57df87208

https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoff.../#3d0b13544b24

Thanks, but no thanks. Funny though. Everything is made in China when it comes to phones. Go figure. Probably more going on than I know of. So I may just spouting from a keyboard. Ignorant like.

Unless China is unhappy with the country they're from, e.g., https://www.crisisgroup.org/who-we-a...michael-kovrig

while it's possible I doubt they'd bother trying to extradite you for anything though. The US, however...

Aren't we a tad far from reality here? Huawei are not into spyware afaict. You can bet they have been rooted, and checked. They have zero interest in spying on spots like Ireland which only exists to be rained upon by clouds as they pass.

Agreed, the whole thing is a political circus.

I think it depends. Personally I would not be worried but I wouldn't use one as a business phone if I worked for, say, a defence contractor.

I personally feel thatonce they were libelled/smeared/whatever, their only option at that point was to open source their code in some way to buyers, or whatever. Even then, I feel they were sunk. What does President dumb blonde know about code?

erm? Isn't the code open source anyhow? google capitalised on the codebase but it's still there and still open. Another party could use it... heck I'd expect a community doing just that? Oh, wait...

IIRC, this fuss began over 5G firmware using some as yet unspecified cpu, and the dumb blonde extrapolated it into phones, and any move Huawei made.

Or anything else for that matter...

ROTFL.

No Comment. Maybe that recently-disgraced UK Ambassador had a point...

All "offtopic", but he wasn't disgraced at all. The "disgrace" here is that Johnson refused to back one of our diplomats to keep favour with the US Trump administration. The real concern is that as Johnson is a US citizen by birth, there is a conflict of interests here.

I am sorry. I posted this quickly and clearly did not read the posts before it properly.

If that got loose among Conservatives (That Johnson is a 'Yank') I'm sure it would cost him votes.

Very, very off topic but I anticipate the day Boris Johnson* is both UK Prime Minister and President of The Unite States of America. Apparently, he could do so.

*for those who don't know who he is I recall my ex girlfriend's reaction to him "oh, he's a comedian?" and her surprised expression to my reply "No, he really is the mayor of London".

He possibly has the citizenship. But he makes a train wreck of anything he's entrusted with. That certainly qualifies him for American President, going by the last choice. But I hope there's no ill effects from whoever gets the PM's job for near neighbours like Ireland. Apparently we'll have the only land border between the EU & UK, but the last thing we can do is have a border at the border(!) because our Loyalists & Republicans would start using that and each other for target practice :rolleyes:

Oh, wow, erm, Ireland, erm...
Other than the explodey, ignorant terrorists I tend to have a lot of respect for the people of Ireland (I'm a bit of a Minarchist, I'd love to see the four countries have their own government).

Yeah, as if anyone could roll their own Android version from the open source version. Since you suggested it, I must ask: do you have the skills to do it, or do you think anyone can do it?

Again, when I said "but if you have the source and are willing to go to the effort no reason why you could not "roll your own" non spy version." I was referring to the likes of Huawei who most certainly have the resources to do something like that. There's a team of people doing something similar that's open source already too.

So, while I agree that "just anyone" can't go creating an OS or a version of one there are people whose hobby and whose job it is to do just that. Or do you think that only Google is capable of creating an OS?

Grinning now as snooping has taking on druthers of the original thread starter.

Software snooping bad.
Hardware snooping won't happen to me on a island so it is good.

Being pragmatic, I understand completely.
So grinning.

IIRC, Google just hired people who dreamed this up, and patched/hacked/forked a basic gnu/linux system to be rootless, and run a java interpreter. Then they went through everything removing crud and pc-only features but holding on to as much functionality as possible. They also wrote piles of screen drivers, the mobile phone section, etc. They spent several years at it, and as I had one of the first phones, I can tell you the finished product was basic, but great for what it was, and what it ran on.

A lot depends how up to date Google's OSS version is; It could be Android-1.0! If it's 8.0, they can write their own drivers, and even offer a snoop free OS to people fed up with Google (Like me). If the OSS version is version 1.0, they have a lot of work to do.

google bought Android Inc about 15 years ago, so rather than hiring people, they bought the whole outfit.

My understanding is that it was always based on the Linux kernel, at least since google's involvement, but never GNU. The C library, "bionic libc", is 3 clause BSD licenced code at least partially developed by google, but which includes NetBSD, OpenBSD and FreeBSD code (and is not based on GPL licenced GNU libc). I believe bionic libc was based on the libc from one of the major *BSD projects but not sure which.

I did a quick search of the bionic libc libc/ source directory and found:

435 occurrences of "openbsd"
359 occurrences of "netbsd"
201 occurrences of "freebsd"

That figures. Richard Stallman (say what you will about him - I assure you I do) was always very firm on Open Source. So you can't close gnu source - the copyleft thing.

The official line says it's about "freedom and choice", https://source.android.com/setup/start/licenses:


https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-...the-point.html

Boy, that guy (Stallman) does go on, and on…

I appreciate the freedom of Open source. I can roll my own kernel. I have my choices of software, and can roll my own system. I prefer to learn config files rather than GUIs, because some dweebs keep rearranging them.

Out of interest I searched for news on Huawei's OS, looks like it hasbeen named ad is already in testing:
https://www.huaweicentral.com/hongme...rating-system/

Took your link a little further
https://www.huaweicentral.com/exclus...ion-ecosystem/

One of the stated goals of Android in terms of its use of Linux as a kernel and it's choice of permissive licences elsewhere, was to isolate GPL from the rest of the OS.

The OS is being developed. Yes, they will have issues to overcome but, really, does anyone think a company backed by the Chinese government (even alledgedly) isn't capable of cloning Android?

Fixed it for ya.

thanks ;)
By the way, I'm not pro-China -- I just find the idea that a Chinese company is somehow incapable of cloning Android a little odd. Plus, I find the likelyhood of them picking up on some random email or internet post of mine and demanding my extradition a little less likely than the US (not that that is hugely likely either) but I will mention Operation Ore as an explanation as to why the US government is a potential threat to innocent people in extraditable countries.

Hmmm, this thread had legs - 44 posts so far.

So they're going to lift the Open Source Android, apply the security fixes google has already given out, continue to monitor google code, probably root their own (legit) Android phones & tablets & continue getting google updates which they can probably apply fairly handy to further versions of Harmony/HongMeng.

Sure, it will take extra coders. Chinese coders are available, and good. It makes a huge difference when you manage them well.