Based on most smartphones being very insecure. Of course, iPhones aren’t extremely secure, but the competition is practically nonexistent. Pretty much the only secure Android phones are Pixels. Samsung is considered one of the more secure manufacturers too, but according to GrapheneOS devs it’s still way behind Google.

Note that even police and government agencies sometimes have trouble getting into iPhones. They never have such troubles getting into Android smartphones, except Pixels.

This is by no means meant to advertise iPhones. It’s just a simple observation that security in smartphones is heavily lacking.

In terms of security alone, iPhones easily beat most Android phones. Which may be a fair argument in favor of iPhones. However, to ignore Apple’s policies and long history of delisting similar apps is delusional.

True, batteries are quite expensive and very much not environment-friendly when built on such a scale. Though it should be noted good solar panels last longer than 15 years. Even cheap panels can last 20 years.

This is an important point to consider. However, to me it seems somewhat separate from your previous comment.

Of course, no sane government should push for a country to rely solely on wind and solar. Ideally you have a mix of various energy sources, even potentially including some fossil fuels. Hitting that 20-30% sweetspot, as mentioned in the paper, looks to be fairly cheap and beneficial for everyone.

I’m sorry, but who is “everyone involved”?

Batteries are nice, but they’re insanely expensive at this scale and ruin the entire point of helping the environment. Carbon emissions from huge batteries are unbelievable.

Solar panels crom China made it a lot cheaper than it used to be. There are also other major advatnages, such as increased independence. You just buy a bunch of solar panels and now you can indenepdently generate energy for the next 30 years.

Good point. Linux phones, even in their current state, might be a good middle ground for people with low needs.

Although there’s two things I’d mostly be worried about.

1. Battery life. Smartphones, including Linux ones, aren’t exactly known for amazing battery life. A dumb phone would likely last several times longer on a single charge.
2. Physical durability. Even after all those years of structural improvements, smartphones remain fairly fragile. Usually I use high durability cases with my smartphones (ideally Otterbox Defender), though I don’t think anything similar is even available for any Linux phones. And of course, we all know dumb phones are generally durable enough.

Two things especially worth noting from the article.

If you have a non-Google build of Android on your phone, none of this applies.

This means that at least GrapheneOS will be unaffected for now. Other ROMs without gapps will be unaffected only as long as you don’t install gapps. Since Graphene has a sandbox for them, I’m assuming it’ll be fine. That is, unless Google decides to lock the bootloader entirely.

In September 2026, Google plans to launch this feature in Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand. The next step is still hazy, but Google is targeting 2027 to expand the verification requirements globally.

So most users worldwide still have at least 1.5 years until it’s implemented. Plenty of time to get a Pixel and install Graphene on it. Or to figure out some other plan.

Don’t get me wrong - this is insane, unreasonable and horrible news for everyone. We should push back as hard as physically possible against it. However, at the very least we still have some time to figure things out before the policy rolls out.