HACKER Q&A
📣 smk_

Are there any secure alternatives to iPhone?


After the recent revelation of the zero-click exploits targeting iPhones, I am reconsidering my choice of phone. Are there any alternative hardware designers or software systems that offer better security than Apple phones?

How does Android or its different distributions hold up? How can one best protect oneself and ones device?

  👤 RicoElectrico Accepted Answer ✓
In your threat model take into consideration that there was a "secure phone" sold with an IM app that turned out to be backdoored by the author in cooperation with FBI.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/06/fbi-sold-phones-...

👤 gtvwill
Choice of device is mostly useless. They're all the same re. Security. Which is to say their only as good as the jurisdiction their being sold/used in. And given the laws Australia has implemented, if a company sells their product here or has operations registered in Australia you can't guarantee it hasn't been backdoored.
👤 shaicoleman
Security is only as good as the weakest link. Each company that touches the phone or the software increases the attack surface.

Therefore, from a security perspective, the phones with the best security are the iPhones and the Google Pixel phones. They also generally have the quickest security updates.

If you install a custom ROM (e.g. LineageOS), you can make almost any phone reasonably secure, but that involves a lot of time and hassle. If you don't trust Apple/Google, that's probably your best option.

An alternative approach is to have a second device for security sensitive purposes, which can be locked-down, only essential apps installed, offline by default, etc.

👤 yuppie_scum
Seriously consider a risk-based approach to your security posture.
👤 feisar
use the pixel 4a and put graphine OS on it

https://graphineos.org

👤 brenda1996
yes you can select from one-plus phone