I really loved the previous design with the physical numpad and it seems they've opened up the platform to support more applications beyond a few blessed ones (like Signal in the past).
Really put off by this though:
> If you don’t pay for a product, you are the product. With MC03, you pay to retain your data rather than paying with it.
So you have to pay >$100/year to maintain access to your device? Why do I need to pay to retain data that is on my own device?
I recommend the MP02, with one caveat: don't buy it right now. Because there have historically been problems with Pigeon, you really ought to use Signal for Desktop at the same time as Pigeon, in case Pigeon starts having problems. But as of now you can't you can't connect the two (though Signal for Desktop keeps working fine if you already have them synced).
I've found the call quality and reliability on the MP02 to be great after a year of use.
I'm not saying that I'm approving this company or their products, but I can definitely get behind the idea of paying for OS updates.
Part of the premium we pay for an iPhone or a Mac is to finance the development of iOS/MacOS. We get the updates for "free" but we actually already paid them when we paid the device.
Meanwhile, here it's clear: you pay the device, and then you pay for the OS.
The opposite being the product like with Microsoft/Google.
Or relying on the goodwill of other people (FOSS).
If I take the example of Kagi, I saw how much impact as a customer I have/had on the product.
Meanwhile Microsoft/Google/Apple don't care.
And on FOSS I could _just_ do the things myself, but I'm not an OS dev and I already spend some time on other FOSS projects (I'm writing this message on an Linux computer).
Donations are great but they are not reliable/predictable and they don't give you more power to influence the product.
Regarding your question "Why do I need to pay to retain data that is on my own device?", according to their FAQ:
"Without an active subscription, certain core services and privacy features will be limited. To keep your MC03 fully functional, secure, and up to date, an active subscription is required."
https://www.punkt.ch/products/mc03-premium-secure-smartphone
So the phone won't brick itself and you won't lose access to your data.
But the company itself give me a bad feeling, like Proton, trying to surf the hype and doing lots of virtue signaling.
Yeah, this is the opposite of being your device. This is pretending to own a device as a service.
I'm building a portable pbx on a raspberry pi with some power banks I stick in a backpack and a dual sim 5g unlimited internet hotspot, and switch over to starlink 5g when that happens. I'll throw a media server in there (pirate everything), and use a small portable wireless streaming touchscreen. There are all sorts of useful UI and linux tools that can make it a far better experience than android or phones. If I need a camera, I'll buy a camera. I've got earbuds and bluetooth for peripherals.
2026 is the year I leave "phones" behind - not playing the subscription device game anymore. I left Windows last year. I'll get better service, real control, and no enshittification treadmill.
It's too bad it takes an inordinate amount of tech savvy to break out - Linux is well beyond good enough for grandma or the average user at this point. There's no reason beyond exploitation for profit for the kafkaesque intrusion into people's lives and data. If you've got the capability, break out.
This product is not breaking free. Same walls, different garden.
Re: media server. Yeah. I wish there was an alternative but the modern media landscape is so broken there is no other way to maintain digital copies of your shows and movies, while maintaining your own ability to curate your ow content on a plane that isn’t just another surface for those companies to drive engagement metrics. If you try to escape, you are forced into drm locked down Blu rays or even just shit out of luck in the case of a lot of direct to streaming tv. In which case you have two options, stay on the enshittification treadmill, taking more and more shit from bigass corporations who are actively poisoning the culture, or sail the seas. Or I guess just don’t watch tv. But I like tv.
> They have a fork of an old version of GrapheneOS merged with LineageOS. They heavily marketed it as being based on GrapheneOS, but it's a very outdated version. Their devices don't have remotely comparable privacy, security, usability or app compatibility to official GrapheneOS.
>> They heavily marketed it as being based on GrapheneOS
Claim not found in article. If it was so heavily marketed, that would be in the announcement since they're mentioning other partners (Threema, Proton, the extra app store it ships...), and definitely on the product page (no mention of /graph.*/ there either)
Edit: found the specs button. It says the OS is based on AOSP (Android open source project)
Searching for "site:punkt.ch grapheneos" returns results that don't exist anymore. Articles are linked in the thread which supports this as well.
> They repeatedly said they forked it from GrapheneOS in their media interviews and marketing. They didn't keep following along with our improvements and have shifted away from presenting it that way, partly because we requested it.
And that also matches what is claimed here, they used to market based on this, they don't anymore.
> You can cancel at any time. Without an active subscription, certain core services and privacy features will be limited. To keep your MC03 fully functional, secure, and up to date, an active subscription is required.
Out of curiosity (I'm definitely NOT going to buy a Phone-as-a-Service), what exactly happens when you cancel your subscription? Does the smartphone brick itself? Does it let you flash a sane operating system that doesn't treat you as a cash cow?
Most people seem to be subscribing to a cell phone already. Not us techies, but most normies seem to have expensive phones on three year ”plans” while locked to an expensive network.
Sometimes prepaid is a bit more expensive because you're paying for 28 days and not a month. You basically have 13 cycles per year instead of 12 (28*13 = 364 days)
I suspect the OP means prepaying for the year. AT&T is like $25/mo for 5GB data + unlimited everything else if you pay upfront for the whole year ($300). Prepaid MVNO plans are even cheaper.
The product page (https://www.punkt.ch/products/mc03-premium-secure-smartphone, click on "all tech specs") mentions a "SAR sensor". I have not seen that before, does anyone know what this does? Does the device try to estimate how much EM your body received while carrying it around or calling, or what is this for?
Yep, SAR stands for "specific absorption rate". These sensors are typically used to change how the antennas on the phone transmit (like how much power they use) by detecting whether the phone is held close to your body vs. sitting somewhere like on a table.
Like the coulometer they mention. This is a battery discharge sensor, nobody would mention this in the specs. SAR sensor and coulometer are standard by now.
The first thing I do when setting up new Chrome instance, is disabling almost every API in its settings, including Notifications API. You can always enable it later for a few selected websites (I'm using it for Telegram Web), and rest of the websites will just silently rejected.
Not even close to security provided by GrapheneOS, ships Android 15 and the phone looks quite ugly with that big branding on it. I'll stick with GrapheneOS and Pixels.
I was also thinking about Crypto AG because the punkt website goes a long way to not mention a single name of a human being who is involved with the company. For example the imprint in the footer and the about page does not list who is CEO of the company.
The problem in Europe is that Whatsapp has become the standard for mobile messaging, and it's only available on Android and iOS
This really nerfs the whole dumbphone movement for Europeans, which should be a key market.
I went on holiday with someone a few weeks ago who is toughing it out with a no-Whatsapp dumbphone. He missed the train home because he got locked out of the holiday cottage and couldn't get in touch with anyone.
I'm an European no-Whatsapp guy and so are my friends that I go on holiday with so no issue.
Meanwhile at the last work retreat they did everything through Whatsapp and it was so relaxing to be out of the loop.
I just checked with my roommate in the morning to get the planning for the day, and I wandered as I wished.
I missed a lot of impromptu events, sure. I also missed a few official events that changed place at the last minute. I went walking on the beach instead.
And for the events I was expected to be active in, organizers just made sure that I was where I needed to be when I needed to.
So I was able to completely relax and enjoy my stay.
In the end everybody was exhausted while I was refreshed like after actual personal holiday!
Funny, I am european and i never have used Whatsapp, and i can comunicate with everybody i need. There's also good old sms, that i think all phones still use. Anyway, doesn't he know how to make a simple phone call? Why are all comunications restricted to Whatsapp?
If that is your friend he surely had your number right and possibly others? Then why couldn't he get in touch with you or others?
Most whatsapp groups ended up being muted by almost anyone because they are an annoyance so they are hardly the place where you would ask for help anyway because virtually nobody would get notified.
Do they actually host anything at all? All I could find was their F-Droid repository with six (6) applications: https://store.aphy.app/fdroid/repo/. The rest must come from elsewhere (F-Droid's main archive?), but they don't indicate if they actually use the rent you pay to fund the third parties they depend on.
For comparison, the F-Droid archive consists of 4061 applications reviewed, built, and hosted by the F-Droid team for free.
yeah, it seems like the target market for a privacy-focused device like this are the nerds who could do it themselves and be more confident of the results
I'm really struggling to see who this phone is aimed for. Why would someone pay a subscription for their "own" phone that is cut off from the major app stores?
For years I've been so close to ordering one of their previous generation phones, and now I feel like I've dodged a bullet by not buying from this company. This new phone is a huge step in the wrong direction.
Can someone please release a nice Sidekick like device with physical keyboard that supports Signal.
I thought this was an eInk screen- all of the screenshots show a grainy black-and-white UI. I had to dig around to learn that it actually has a full-color OLED apparently.
€699 + €9.99/month for a smartphone that supposed to be a dumb phone, with a custom locked down OS. Punkt is losing the point what made their previous products successful.
I have my iphone 13 mini for 4 years, having a Punkt MC03 for the same amount of time would cost me €1058. Thanks, but no thanks.
This is a very interesting thread to read... I can't help but remember the wishes expressed in other news threads such as 'I wish I could just pay for things to not have tracking built in' / 'This vital software component is so underfunded, no wonder this happens'
Now a company offers it and every 2nd comment has the vibe of 'Why would someone pay a subscription for their "own" phone'. I guess that means the former vibe is not something most people actually want?
I'm not sure if you find it genuinely surprising that the Hacker News populace is not moved by a device that you not only have to pay rent for, but that also seemingly does not support custom ROMs/firmware.
Besides that, the software that they expect you to pay rent for is a fork of LineageOS/AOSP, but it doesn't seem to mention anywhere on the site whether they donate any of the rent to their upstreams.
I think it's an interesting model. Somehow, the maintenance needs to be funded, and that is an ongoing effort. Charging for security updates is not ideal, but I'm not sure what the alternative would be.
It seems like it would be cheaper and more effective to just keep in sync with GrapheneOS rather than maintaining a custom fork.
I understand that maintenance still isn't free in that case, but it seems like they went out of their way to make more maintenance work for themselves, and then they asked their customers to pay for it. As a potential customer, I would've rather it just come with standard GOS rather than paying yearly for a fork that probably isn't as secure.
People are willing to pay for value delivery and innovation, neither of which are even attempted in this device-, this is just reskinning and rent-seeking.
Well they really destroyed everything that I knew was Punkt: Great design, minimalist, e-ink like displays with an android cheap design, no e-ink, and Phone as a Service? are you kidding us?
If trying to hawk a subscription-based closed-source fork of open source software as privacy preserving or being "Swiss-made" weren't sufficient red flags, search the web for MP02, their last phone. Basic functionality like calling and texting often don't work, and their Signal client never work, they are selling a dream. Punkt is basically a scam
I really loved the previous design with the physical numpad and it seems they've opened up the platform to support more applications beyond a few blessed ones (like Signal in the past).
Really put off by this though:
> If you don’t pay for a product, you are the product. With MC03, you pay to retain your data rather than paying with it.
So you have to pay >$100/year to maintain access to your device? Why do I need to pay to retain data that is on my own device?
> I really loved the previous design with the physical numpad
That's their MP02, different product line, which is pretty much just talk and text plus Signal ("Pigeon" on the MP02): https://www.punkt.ch/products/mp02-4g-minimalist-phone
I recommend the MP02, with one caveat: don't buy it right now. Because there have historically been problems with Pigeon, you really ought to use Signal for Desktop at the same time as Pigeon, in case Pigeon starts having problems. But as of now you can't you can't connect the two (though Signal for Desktop keeps working fine if you already have them synced).
I've found the call quality and reliability on the MP02 to be great after a year of use.
I'm not saying that I'm approving this company or their products, but I can definitely get behind the idea of paying for OS updates.
Part of the premium we pay for an iPhone or a Mac is to finance the development of iOS/MacOS. We get the updates for "free" but we actually already paid them when we paid the device.
Meanwhile, here it's clear: you pay the device, and then you pay for the OS.
The opposite being the product like with Microsoft/Google.
Or relying on the goodwill of other people (FOSS).
If I take the example of Kagi, I saw how much impact as a customer I have/had on the product.
Meanwhile Microsoft/Google/Apple don't care.
And on FOSS I could _just_ do the things myself, but I'm not an OS dev and I already spend some time on other FOSS projects (I'm writing this message on an Linux computer). Donations are great but they are not reliable/predictable and they don't give you more power to influence the product.
Regarding your question "Why do I need to pay to retain data that is on my own device?", according to their FAQ: "Without an active subscription, certain core services and privacy features will be limited. To keep your MC03 fully functional, secure, and up to date, an active subscription is required." https://www.punkt.ch/products/mc03-premium-secure-smartphone
So the phone won't brick itself and you won't lose access to your data.
But the company itself give me a bad feeling, like Proton, trying to surf the hype and doing lots of virtue signaling.
Yeah, this is the opposite of being your device. This is pretending to own a device as a service.
I'm building a portable pbx on a raspberry pi with some power banks I stick in a backpack and a dual sim 5g unlimited internet hotspot, and switch over to starlink 5g when that happens. I'll throw a media server in there (pirate everything), and use a small portable wireless streaming touchscreen. There are all sorts of useful UI and linux tools that can make it a far better experience than android or phones. If I need a camera, I'll buy a camera. I've got earbuds and bluetooth for peripherals.
2026 is the year I leave "phones" behind - not playing the subscription device game anymore. I left Windows last year. I'll get better service, real control, and no enshittification treadmill.
It's too bad it takes an inordinate amount of tech savvy to break out - Linux is well beyond good enough for grandma or the average user at this point. There's no reason beyond exploitation for profit for the kafkaesque intrusion into people's lives and data. If you've got the capability, break out.
This product is not breaking free. Same walls, different garden.
Re: media server. Yeah. I wish there was an alternative but the modern media landscape is so broken there is no other way to maintain digital copies of your shows and movies, while maintaining your own ability to curate your ow content on a plane that isn’t just another surface for those companies to drive engagement metrics. If you try to escape, you are forced into drm locked down Blu rays or even just shit out of luck in the case of a lot of direct to streaming tv. In which case you have two options, stay on the enshittification treadmill, taking more and more shit from bigass corporations who are actively poisoning the culture, or sail the seas. Or I guess just don’t watch tv. But I like tv.
cosmic levels of spin doctoring , doesn't really give a good gut feeling , especially post anom/operation ironside
Here's what GrapheneOS said about AphyOS: https://xcancel.com/GrapheneOS/status/1893469596973220188
> They have a fork of an old version of GrapheneOS merged with LineageOS. They heavily marketed it as being based on GrapheneOS, but it's a very outdated version. Their devices don't have remotely comparable privacy, security, usability or app compatibility to official GrapheneOS.
>> They heavily marketed it as being based on GrapheneOS
Claim not found in article. If it was so heavily marketed, that would be in the announcement since they're mentioning other partners (Threema, Proton, the extra app store it ships...), and definitely on the product page (no mention of /graph.*/ there either)
Edit: found the specs button. It says the OS is based on AOSP (Android open source project)
Searching for "site:punkt.ch grapheneos" returns results that don't exist anymore. Articles are linked in the thread which supports this as well.
> They repeatedly said they forked it from GrapheneOS in their media interviews and marketing. They didn't keep following along with our improvements and have shifted away from presenting it that way, partly because we requested it.
And that also matches what is claimed here, they used to market based on this, they don't anymore.
> What happens if I cancel my subscription?
> You can cancel at any time. Without an active subscription, certain core services and privacy features will be limited. To keep your MC03 fully functional, secure, and up to date, an active subscription is required.
Out of curiosity (I'm definitely NOT going to buy a Phone-as-a-Service), what exactly happens when you cancel your subscription? Does the smartphone brick itself? Does it let you flash a sane operating system that doesn't treat you as a cash cow?
Most people seem to be subscribing to a cell phone already. Not us techies, but most normies seem to have expensive phones on three year ”plans” while locked to an expensive network.
Financing a phone is dumb for most people imo, but at least it has an explicit end where you own the phone outright.
This phone requires a subscription in perpetuity, on top of the full purchase price.
This has been made illegal years ago in Europe.
Legal in the EU but the consumer has to be notified about it.
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/PETI-CM-580731...
Network locks are not illegal AFAIK, but consumers can request an unlock.
Yeah I'd never do that. I just buy it outright.
I don't have a cell phone subscription either. I use prepaid which actually is cheaper.
Sometimes prepaid is a bit more expensive because you're paying for 28 days and not a month. You basically have 13 cycles per year instead of 12 (28*13 = 364 days)
I suspect the OP means prepaying for the year. AT&T is like $25/mo for 5GB data + unlimited everything else if you pay upfront for the whole year ($300). Prepaid MVNO plans are even cheaper.
Financing is not a subscription.
€700 for a locked down phone, excluding €10 / month subscription of a locked down OS. No thanks
It's almost like we're being punked.
or being... punkted?
The product page (https://www.punkt.ch/products/mc03-premium-secure-smartphone, click on "all tech specs") mentions a "SAR sensor". I have not seen that before, does anyone know what this does? Does the device try to estimate how much EM your body received while carrying it around or calling, or what is this for?
Yep, SAR stands for "specific absorption rate". These sensors are typically used to change how the antennas on the phone transmit (like how much power they use) by detecting whether the phone is held close to your body vs. sitting somewhere like on a table.
Most phones have them.
Like the coulometer they mention. This is a battery discharge sensor, nobody would mention this in the specs. SAR sensor and coulometer are standard by now.
"www.punkt.ch wants to send you notifications"
Why do websites still do this? It's an immediate red flag that the underlying company have no respect for their customers.
The first thing I do when setting up new Chrome instance, is disabling almost every API in its settings, including Notifications API. You can always enable it later for a few selected websites (I'm using it for Telegram Web), and rest of the websites will just silently rejected.
Not even close to security provided by GrapheneOS, ships Android 15 and the phone looks quite ugly with that big branding on it. I'll stick with GrapheneOS and Pixels.
Why this instead of a Pixel 8 or newer running GrapheneOS and no requirement for subscriptions?
Pixel 8 or 9, from 10 it's getting iffy due to Google restrictions. 11 probably won't even be supported
To find out why it's iffy, I asked an AI assistant and got the following (in the summary). Do you agree?
The "iffy" status reflects temporary development hurdles rather than a shift in Google’s openness to custom operating systems.
(Google delayed releasing the necessary source code to AOSP).
I get that this could indicate that they are dropping support in the future. But it seems to be fine, albeit delayed, for the Pixel 10?
>punkt.ch wants to send you notifications
pretty bad signal
"Website `https://www.punkt.ch` would like to show notifications."
Why? What is so important that they need me to notify about?
I hope the Swiss broke with their traditions and its not a front for the CIA this time
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG
I was also thinking about Crypto AG because the punkt website goes a long way to not mention a single name of a human being who is involved with the company. For example the imprint in the footer and the about page does not list who is CEO of the company.
The problem in Europe is that Whatsapp has become the standard for mobile messaging, and it's only available on Android and iOS
This really nerfs the whole dumbphone movement for Europeans, which should be a key market.
I went on holiday with someone a few weeks ago who is toughing it out with a no-Whatsapp dumbphone. He missed the train home because he got locked out of the holiday cottage and couldn't get in touch with anyone.
I'm an European no-Whatsapp guy and so are my friends that I go on holiday with so no issue.
Meanwhile at the last work retreat they did everything through Whatsapp and it was so relaxing to be out of the loop.
I just checked with my roommate in the morning to get the planning for the day, and I wandered as I wished.
I missed a lot of impromptu events, sure. I also missed a few official events that changed place at the last minute. I went walking on the beach instead.
And for the events I was expected to be active in, organizers just made sure that I was where I needed to be when I needed to.
So I was able to completely relax and enjoy my stay.
In the end everybody was exhausted while I was refreshed like after actual personal holiday!
Enjoy your Whatsapp!
When you say "Europe" where exactly do you mean?
My experience of not having a Whatsapp account and being in Europe is that I don't miss it.
I'm not in a few group chats with people that won't use Signal but that's it. I've never had an issue contacting any business or any indivdual.
Here in Spain you absolutely can't live without it lol. Also telegram
I live in Spain and I don't think you can't live without it.
Sure you will get a bit socially disconnected at times but that's about it.
Counter point, I had no issues on my last visit to Spain.
Funny, I am european and i never have used Whatsapp, and i can comunicate with everybody i need. There's also good old sms, that i think all phones still use. Anyway, doesn't he know how to make a simple phone call? Why are all comunications restricted to Whatsapp?
I don't understand - how could they not get in touch with anyone? Surely SMS would have still worked if they were available on WhatsApp?
Trying to do an ELIHN here...
On a holiday of 10 people, everybody exchanging numbers means 10x9/2 = 45 actions, with many of those edges between strangers (higher cost edge)
Each person adding their friend to the Whatsapp group is 9 actions, with all edges between friends (low-cost edge)
So in practice, only the second one happens. He had one other person's number, but that particular person didn't check their phone.
What the heck is an ELIHN?
Explain Like I'm Hacker News
If that is your friend he surely had your number right and possibly others? Then why couldn't he get in touch with you or others?
Most whatsapp groups ended up being muted by almost anyone because they are an annoyance so they are hardly the place where you would ask for help anyway because virtually nobody would get notified.
This is not a dumbphone and it runs Whatsapp (and any other android app) just fine.
can someone explain how a subscription-based product is a great option for privacy?
or how being locked in to a black box vpn instills a sense of having gained reliable true privacy?
It's probably to pay for all the things Google provides for free, app store hosting, review, curation, backups, synced data, etc.
> app store hosting, review
Do they actually host anything at all? All I could find was their F-Droid repository with six (6) applications: https://store.aphy.app/fdroid/repo/. The rest must come from elsewhere (F-Droid's main archive?), but they don't indicate if they actually use the rent you pay to fund the third parties they depend on.
For comparison, the F-Droid archive consists of 4061 applications reviewed, built, and hosted by the F-Droid team for free.
yeah, it seems like the target market for a privacy-focused device like this are the nerds who could do it themselves and be more confident of the results
I'm really struggling to see who this phone is aimed for. Why would someone pay a subscription for their "own" phone that is cut off from the major app stores?
I love the aesthetics of the objectives/flash looking like an induction cooktop!
For years I've been so close to ordering one of their previous generation phones, and now I feel like I've dodged a bullet by not buying from this company. This new phone is a huge step in the wrong direction.
Can someone please release a nice Sidekick like device with physical keyboard that supports Signal.
This was just announced: https://www.clicksphone.com/en/communicator
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46467057
A physical keyboard like a Treo/Palm Pre, enough storage to store all my photos and say GrapheneOS and I would be in.
Yes, I'm in the exact same location.
Dupe:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46466171
go to website, "allow punkt to send you notifications", closed website.
based on how they welcome new customers to their site, I can only assume this is the general vibe of the company also. (aggressively pushing crap)
I thought this was an eInk screen- all of the screenshots show a grainy black-and-white UI. I had to dig around to learn that it actually has a full-color OLED apparently.
I got interested and checked their website, but it gave me a bad vibe, not to mention the hefty price tag in addition to the subscription.
I find it amusing to see the Facebook, XTwitter, and Pinterest social buttons at the bottom of the article.
Also the site attempts to get a geo ping from your browser. Icky, to say the least. Makes their claims surrounding privacy seem a tad dubious.
€699 + €9.99/month for a smartphone that supposed to be a dumb phone, with a custom locked down OS. Punkt is losing the point what made their previous products successful.
I have my iphone 13 mini for 4 years, having a Punkt MC03 for the same amount of time would cost me €1058. Thanks, but no thanks.
This is a very interesting thread to read... I can't help but remember the wishes expressed in other news threads such as 'I wish I could just pay for things to not have tracking built in' / 'This vital software component is so underfunded, no wonder this happens'
Now a company offers it and every 2nd comment has the vibe of 'Why would someone pay a subscription for their "own" phone'. I guess that means the former vibe is not something most people actually want?
I'm not sure if you find it genuinely surprising that the Hacker News populace is not moved by a device that you not only have to pay rent for, but that also seemingly does not support custom ROMs/firmware.
Besides that, the software that they expect you to pay rent for is a fork of LineageOS/AOSP, but it doesn't seem to mention anywhere on the site whether they donate any of the rent to their upstreams.
I think the distaste is for rent being charged on a device that you've supposedly bought out right.
Charge a subscription or sell the phone outright but don't do both.
I feel the same way about cars where you pay for the engine or the heated seats but can't use them without paying rent.
I think it's an interesting model. Somehow, the maintenance needs to be funded, and that is an ongoing effort. Charging for security updates is not ideal, but I'm not sure what the alternative would be.
It seems like it would be cheaper and more effective to just keep in sync with GrapheneOS rather than maintaining a custom fork.
I understand that maintenance still isn't free in that case, but it seems like they went out of their way to make more maintenance work for themselves, and then they asked their customers to pay for it. As a potential customer, I would've rather it just come with standard GOS rather than paying yearly for a fork that probably isn't as secure.
I don’t think they can charge for updates, at least not in the first five years where the EU mandates that updates must be made available.
So if you dislike Google's business model you have to love John Deer's?
Yes. Don't listen to what people say they will do, pay attention to what they actually do.
People are willing to pay for value delivery and innovation, neither of which are even attempted in this device-, this is just reskinning and rent-seeking.
Has Graphene announced their 'major Android OEM to bring the OS to Snapdragon-powered flagships' [that is NOT fairphone] yet?
No, not yet.
Well they really destroyed everything that I knew was Punkt: Great design, minimalist, e-ink like displays with an android cheap design, no e-ink, and Phone as a Service? are you kidding us?
If trying to hawk a subscription-based closed-source fork of open source software as privacy preserving or being "Swiss-made" weren't sufficient red flags, search the web for MP02, their last phone. Basic functionality like calling and texting often don't work, and their Signal client never work, they are selling a dream. Punkt is basically a scam
> Like its forerunner, the MC02, the new model is a subscription-based smartphone
stopped reading there
I really wonder what the hell that is even about. It doesn't just seem like unfortunate messaging.