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BIFL Mobile Phone (piefed.social)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/buyitforlife@slrpnk.net
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Looking to replace and iPhone 11 Needs to be repairable Able to text people with WhatsApp or other third party apps Able to play music with a local mp3 player Headphone jack

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[–] 2 points 2 months ago (3 children)

But not much. If the SoC manufacturer no longer provides firmware updates for the hardware, your custom ROM will not help.

Bluetooth can be turned off, but for security issues in the modem, welll... Not if you want to use it as a phone.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    Bluetooth can be turned off, but for security issues in the modem, welll… Not if you want to use it as a phone.

    I often hear this and other comments like "If you don't upgrade your system software immediately you are already hacked" etc. But I've never seen any description of what actually can happen with a phone that goes without updates for some time - how often are vulnerabilities in the modem found for instance, and have there ever been a widely exploited attack?

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 child)

    Depends on the risk you're at. If you're in a country where having your own opinion is dangerous (Russia, for example) it's certainly different to a person in Western Europe.

    There have been successful attacks on modems and Bluetooth.

    It's about the threat model. It's complicated and nuanced and does not really fit in here.

    But regardless, there's no reason the hardware couldn't be supported much longer. Apart from capitalism, of course.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago

    Depends on the risk your at. If you're in a country where having your own opinion is dangerous (Russia, for example) it's certainly different to a person in Western Europe.

    tbh I always assume a government has the resources and access to generally undiscovered or unfixed vulns, modem firmware is just full of holes. many layers of legacy code and the least amount of eyes going over the code. you can't win against the government on a phone like this.

    when this is a concern, maybe use a laptop or tablet, with wifi connection to a hotspot device that doesn't have a mic.

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