First smartphone with /e/ OS!

After a lilttle than 1 year of hard work, I’m very proud to announce that the first fully ungoogled Android smartphone on the market will be ready to ship in next June!

This will be high-grade refurbished smartphones, in limited quantities, so don’t wait to register!

Read all the details online here.

Leaving Apple & Google: How is /e/ actually Google-free?

Yesterday, the privacy-focused /e/ mobile ecosystem that we have been developing for one year, has been covered at InfoSec Handbook, with a focus on privacy concerns and on the actual “de-googlisation” of the system.

The author raised some concerns, and concluded that “While /e/ looks promising, it isn’t Google-free by now.”

Continue reading “Leaving Apple & Google: How is /e/ actually Google-free?”

From Sovereign operating systems to the Sovereign digital chain

Several years ago I read about some intiatives to build a “Sovereign operating system”. Quickly I realized that, at the age of Internet, it was a depecrated idea and a total non-sense, and instead I started to talk about the idea of the “Sovereign digital chain”.

I developed the concept in a chapter of this book “Reflections on Programming Systems” that was published in 2019 at Springer.

And since 2018 I’m trying to make it a reality with the /e/ project at https://e.foundation 🙂

EU fines Google 4.3Bn€ for Android monopoly, and it’s a good thing.

Today, we learned that the European Union has fined Google a record amount of 4.3Bn€, for illegal practises with their Android smartphone operating system.

In particular, Android is shipping pre-installed with the Google Chrome web-browser pre-installed by default, and Google search enabled by default, on every Android device. Continue reading “EU fines Google 4.3Bn€ for Android monopoly, and it’s a good thing.”

Leaving Apple & Google: a general eelo development status

Last year, I decided to leave Apple & Google: I want to free myself from the smartphone duopole, I want to regain control over my data privacy, I want to protect my freedom.

At first, I thought I would just fork Android, add a better design, remove any Google stuff, select a few privacy-compliant web services and add them to the system.

A little more than 6 months later, I realize that we’re building something really, really bigger than I had expected. This is made possible by the tremendous support I’m getting from many people around the world, and by a growing community of eelo contributors…

Continue reading “Leaving Apple & Google: a general eelo development status”

Should we be concerned about Privacy with low-level Chinese smartphone firmwares?

Since I’ve started eelo.io, at the end of 2017, I had many discussions about the privacy of Chinese smartphone firmwares. Many people told me:  if it’s technically possible to put some anti-privacy features into the firmware, they do it.

What would be the benefit of running eelo on such smartphones if their proprietary firmware drivers leak some personal data to corporates or to the Chinese government?

Continue reading “Should we be concerned about Privacy with low-level Chinese smartphone firmwares?”