Sometimes I feel overwhelmed with Phone security specifically. It's a lot of hoops to jump through and I already want to get off Meta, Google, etc.
Are dumb phones a simple way of de-googling?
Are they still on android tracking my keystrokes?
Simple texting / talk on a flip phone is looking really good nowadays.
Less private from big tech, yes.
Significantly less SECURE, with a lack of Signal. SMS and cellular calling is inherently insecure.
I used to use one for productivity / distraction free device, but now that I have pushed so many contacts to Signal, its no longer a single option.
Determine your threat model and go from there.
(My Nokia 2780 CAN host a mobile hotspot for a Signal capable device if preferred)
You can try Nokia (now made by HMD), they still have feature phones without Android.
https://www.hmd.com/en_int/feature-phones
Lol
not an expert but IMO no, not inherently private. some fraction of phone surveillance happens at the tower layer. (see, for example, 'tower dumps'). carriers used to have 'supercookies' on web requests, but they were sued by the FCC and stopped. (and supercookies don't work with HTTPS afaik).
I assume feature phones don't ship with google integrated to the OS, but google isn't the only data broker; for example, T-mobile, verizon + ATT were fined 200mm last year for selling data, including location. (regardless of what phone you buy).
looking at nokia specifically, which has been releasing some beautiful phones since the HMD handoff, the nokia 105 runs the S30 OS, which seems to be an in-house thing but does come bundled with facebook; good luck finding docs on how deeply facebook is tied into the OS.
previous generations of nokia feature phones (e.g. the 3310) ran on Yun OS, an android fork maintained by alibaba cloud; not sure about the privacy implications there but I assume that at minimum, your privacy rights on your yun OS phone are filtered through chinese law.
I'm not an expert, but if you need privacy, I'd look at a community privacy-focused OS like graphene, and think carefully about what apps you use for chat.
smaller digital footprint = less data leaking out. that doesn't mean it's completely private or secure, but it's immensely better than a smartphone that has all sorts of nasty stuff packed into it. most of the newer dumb / feature phones are built on top of aosp android BUT they are not gms-certified so you would've have to de-google it and rid yourself of gapps or bloat / spyware. if you're concerned about key logging, just change the keyboard to a foss privacy one (most new dumb phones have a way of doing this). you can't really avoid telcos, because sms is notoriously unsecure (and rcs is google's baby) but it's easier to avoid silicon valley big tech.
i daily a modded light phone 3 so i could have signal. i would recommend it.
Con Teléfonos tontos:
1- Un teléfono de los llamados "tontos"
2- Una calculadora
3- Una linterna
4- Un libro
5- Un reproductor de musica
6- Una billetera
7- Un reloj
8- Un bolso para meter todas esas cosas
9- etc, etc, etc
Con un Teléfono Inteliggente:
1- Smartphone
El problema es la educación como usuario. No el teléfono.