If they come to France still check that the US SIM would work there, or that eSIM is supported. Theoretically it’s compatible but US carriers can be … finicky.
For banking if depositing check can be done simply via the Web, then the app is not needed. Might have to ask your bank. Keeping the old phone would work indeed but not the most convenient.
The discussions here are quite passionate so a bit of a reality check :
“PineStore has also discontinued the PinePhone Pro which was talked about in the last recent blog post. TLDR, sales were low”. https://pine64.org/2025/08/16/august_2025/#pinephone-pro-discontinuation
So… people here say they do want one, but clearly not like that one.
Also recently the crowd funding of https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/liberux-nexx--3 barely reached 10% of €1,434,375 Fixed Goal with just 135 backers.
So… also clearly not that one either.
So what accelerated development do people not just want to claim they do want, but actually pay for?
You’re welcome, briefly :
Feel like I keep on repeating myself here but… here is no “they” or “/e/OS people” if you do not explicitly ask for it! Nobody has to use Murena servers for ‘ecloud’ or whatever services, secure or not, they are proposing.
They might use the shittiest backend and it can be absolutely unsecure… but as long as you are not using it, who cares?
There is no point in comparing the services they provide to either Google or self-hosted, just do not use them. It’s really not that hard. It’s in fact literally easier than making an account and use them.
So… yes you can come up with problems and limitations if you want to, but the point is, again :
The whole point is that by using /e/OS one is not using Google and has a functional phone from the start. That’s it.
Everybody has different reason but what Murena does is sell phones with /e/OS pre-installed, so if one is specifically looking for a deGoogled phone because they don’t have one that already supports LineageOS and/or do not know how to install LineageOS then it’s very convenient. It’s like going to an Apple store and leaving with a phone, not downloading a ROM then installing it on a device one already has. I’m again not saying one is better or worst than the other, solely that if one is looking for a deGoogled device and they don’t have one already, it’s an easier path.
PS: note also that I didn’t compare /e/OS itself to LineageOS, I’m highlighting precisely how there is some value for some people.
Yep, in Belgium too. Can be directly at the cashier in a physical store, barber, etc or online e.g. food delivery. It’s pretty efficient and AFAICT pretty low cost. Also does not have to rely on MasterCard or VISA.
No, why do you suggest that? If one were to say something incorrect about Google or Meta, even though not only I do not work for them but even spend quite a bit of resource to get away from them, I would still say it aloud.
Here I said, multiple times, that the post that sparked this is not correct… because it simply is not true. Nothing more, nothing less.
I’m not sure I understand the question. Why would it send data to anyone if the feature is not enabled? Are people implying a commercial partnership with a third party rather than using their API?
Anyway the point is still that it’s not OK to spread incorrect information, even if people don’t like /e/OS or Murena.
They didn’t “get caught” when it’s literally written down that they do it and it’s optional, namely nobody does it except by explicitly asking for it. I know I don’t. I don’t even have that option like most people who use /e/OS and are not Premium Murena customers paying specifically for that service.
If you want a new phone consider /e/OS as you can directly buy a phone from Murena (who maintains /e/OS) and thus get something working from day 1, no tinkering.
To clarify, because there is constant FUD around /e/OS (I think the deGoogled Android crowd is VERY passionate and invests a lot of effort into picking the “right” ROM for them leading to a kind of “holy war” which tends to lose focus on what actually matters, namely leave Google!) so to clarify
Honestly I recommend this solution if you want a good compromise because IMHO
Feel free to ask questions, happy to clarify.
If something is missing from https://gitlab.e.foundation/e/os/ open an issue. It is open source.
/e/OS got caught sending voice-to-text data to OpenAI
To clarify it’s an optional STT service, not on by default if one is not using Murena services, which before sending data proxy it so it’s not associated with a specific user account, for anonymization. It even says so in the screenshot of the links post, for premium Murena service users. FUD from https://lemmy.ml/post/35472063?scrollToComments=true seems to already be working out, sadly.
Details https://doc.e.foundation/murena-voice-to-text including “This feature is exclusively available to Murena Workspace Premium users.”
FWIW it’s basically peanuts for this kind of industry. Even $1 would be too much though.
Baking apps: pin the websites
Typically if you want to check your account status sure, that work. Maybe do an IBAN transfer, if somehow 2nd step auth via their app isn’t required, but typically mobile payment, even if it’s not really mobile (e.g. scanning a QRcode on a desktop) requires their app. So in theory yes, in practice for most of the things people use banking daily it’s closer to mobile payment IMHO, which is basically owned by iOS/Android AFAICT.
I fallback to a deGoogled phone precisely because Linux phone isn’t up to my expectation in terms of convenience for now.
You can check my post history but just during the last few days :
… so yes, not there yet
PS: on “assistant” (I really think the naming is over-blowing capabilities) I have been using HomeAssistant daily for years now. I have a Nabu Casu on my shelf… and didn’t even set it up because it was either 3rd party service dependencies (not why I rely on HA) or a very complex setup. So… I would recommend not looking there, at least few months ago when I received mine, sadly.
100% get your point and indeed agree. I think verification overall is pretty much tied to iOS/(Googled)Android so my (probably naive) hope is that physical token or passkeys that are NOT platform or service dependent gain traction. That’s why I got excited when https://github.com/keycloak/keycloak/issues/23656 was recently merged. I still have to test it but anyway more and more of the services I use online (self-hosted or not) are now behind “Log in with a device” and/or WebAuthN where I feel I can properly login, using e.g. YubiKey Bio or NitroKey, without anybody in the middle “owning” my identity or at least the verification step. I believe this is pretty much the “last battle” to have secure interactions without a central (commercial or not) actor in the middle that can use this to reshape our behaviors and interactions.
Just blocked… you don’t seem to care for a proper polite conversation so no matter what you know, or think you know, that might make you special is not worth it for me. I don’t have any need for toxicity.
Murena or Iode aren’t about development or customization, it’s about being able to actually buy a phone and use it without Google services, no tinkering. You might not be the audience, you might have other criteria for what constitute privacy, but basically if you can AND want to install a custom ROM, you are not their market.
None of the actors you mentioned, e.g. LineageOS, AdGuard, MullVad, SeedVault, and all the other “OS” in the name, etc do that so it’s not relevant. I’m not saying they are not important but it’s a different product entirely.
Check my post history, I often link to Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy by Carl Shapiro and Hal R. Varian that precisely has chapters on lock-in. If you are not aware who Hal Varian is he was Chief Economist at Google. I don’t know how much you think you know about “history” but I’m sure you do not know what I did study or not on the topic.
PS: if one day Murena becomes the size of Google or Apple according to pretty much any metric, I’ll buy you a bottle of Champagne and kiss your feet to apologize of my naivety. You can archive that post.
Murena, with their current services, is in no way better than Google.
Honestly you seem to understand the technical side of things but I don’t think you fully grasp the economical scale of Google. Murena is literally nobody, like 10 guys in a small shop in Paris, the CEO walking around, few extra staff international, some contributions here and there, it’s not symbolic and I don’t want to diminish their effort but it’s really tiny. Your local supermarket probably has more staff than they do!
Meanwhile… Alphabet who owns Google is nearly ~200k people on payrolls, thousands more outsourced via 3rd party services (e.g. data annotation, social network “cleaning”, etc) and the 4th largest corporation in market capital.
Honestly the comparison is not even apple versus orange.
Same for Apple, 3rd market cap, ~150k employees.
Yet… maybe more importantly, Murena has 0 lock-in, none. Meanwhile Apple and Google literally own the mobile market. It’s practically impossible to buy a phone without at some point using one of these 2.
So finding imperfections in /e/OS and Murena is fine, again hopefully helping them to grow out of those potential problems, but the comparison … I don’t even know why do it in the first place. Murena literally can not become Google.
So… there is what is theoretically possible, what’s pragmatically feasible with your current skillset, what you believe you need and what you actually need.
If you rely on what is theoretically possible and what you believe you need you usually end up with burn out. If you focus on what’s pragmatically feasible with your current skillset and what you actually need instead you WILL disappoint strangers on the Internet but you might remain sane and surely will learn something in the process, thus both improve your skillset AND have a better understanding of what you actually need.