I’d either selfhost a Forgejo instance (which I already do) or use Codeberg (which I also do). The Cloudflare thing for selfhosting is something you need to set up on your own, though.
I am so glad that I’m using an adblocker that filters out 90% of the crap. The other 10% of the crap are killed by cookie whitelist and Javascript whitelist.
Honestly, I never really cared how I treat my batteries. Neither in my phones, or in my other mobile devices. Just plug in or put it on the wireless charging pod and forget about it. It was always other parts that failed before I noticed something related to the battery.
It’s not 2006 anymore. Batteries and battery management systems have matured – regardless of what “popular tech” magazines and video creators habitually proclaim.
In my 2 decades of using smartphones I had to replace the screen once (out ow my own stupidity of thinking I could balance everything from one room to another, which I could not, and my phone kissed the tiled floor).
The replacement, including a new screen, cost me €80 and took two days. It was carried out at an official partner store of my phone manufacturer. That's perfectly fine, considering how convenient it is to have someone else do the work for me.
You don’t need to baby your batteries anymore. The is what the battery management system is for. Just plug it in whenever you feel like – for how long you want to.
Yes, that’s awesome. Easily replaceable parts should be the default – but within reason. If I lose compactness, functionality, or performance just because I have the option to change a part, then it’s a no-go for me.
Especially with batteries. Maybe it’s just my bubble and the outside world regularly changes their phone’s batteries, but in my world I never needed to change the battery. Nor any other part.
If one wants to support the Fairphone philosophy or regularly changes parts of their mobile: go for it! But in my world the Fairphone just is a lower mid-tier device with a high-end price tag.
I’m using NetGuard in whitelist mode: all traffic is blocked, including all traffic from system applications, only apps I allow can access the Internet (I can even control if the apps are allowed to use WiFi only, Mobile only, or both).
NetGuard install itself as VPN to provide the functionality. The VPN is local-only, so apps that want to connect to the Internet, use the VPN, and then NetGuard does it’s actions, and then the regular internet connection is used for outgoing trafic via the local VPN. With this, no root access is needed.
May I ask you for the alternative launcher you are using?
Contrary to normally using free open source software only, I’m using Smart Launcher – which is pretty much non-free closed source software. But I can tolerate it because how good it is.
Security … Depends. If you want to sell the SSD, then yes, wiping the SSD is advised. You don’t need complicated random multiple-write patterns. Just make sure to wipe everything (keywords: wear-leveling, cache), you could use blkdiscard for that.
Performance-wise nothing noticeable would change. Physically, SSDs are fast enough to modify the charge traps to store the bits as needed to store files regardless of what’s in those traps (that’s quite a rabbit hole).
If you plan using the SSD for your own, you don’t need to wipe it, just repartition as needed and create the file systems in the partitions. What I do, is writing some data to the storage to destroy the partition table (dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/XYZ where XYZ is my target device – and then leave it runninf for a few seconds).
Since you’re using encryption, the common tools only see garbage and no data (i.e. file system). So simply don’t decrypt and work with the mapped partition but use the device directly.
So they basically “brag” with conforming to the rules of their home market.
Don’t get me wrong: Having long support cycles is awesome. But that is not something the WANT to do but they HAVE to do.
Battery goes bad? Just swap it
In my 26 years of using mobile phones I never ever felt the urge to swap the battery. Repairability of smartphones is such a non-issue in reality, it amazes me that people are so crazy about it.
or getting the battery replaced for $100
Speaking of which. The official shop doesn’t have a battery for the Fairfone 6. The battery for the Fairfone 5 would cost me 100 Euros (~116 USD)
What’s everyone else using?
I use a Pixel 7 Pro which has something audibly loose inside. Since everything works I don’t see any issues with whatever part has become loose. I think I will stick with it for now.
I stripped down Android to the bare minimum, use an app that blocks all data traffic except for the apps I want, and use an alternate launcher. That’s the most de-googling possible except replacing the installed Android version with something else.
It’s funny how the official Google phones are best for de-googling and causing the least amount of vendor lock-in.
I have currently 13 tabs open and I don’t see the issue. RAM is there to be used. I actually expect my programs to extensively cache stuff and use the RAM.
(The other Firefox processes for the individual tabs are cut from the screenshot.)
I’d either selfhost a Forgejo instance (which I already do) or use Codeberg (which I also do). The Cloudflare thing for selfhosting is something you need to set up on your own, though.