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Smartphones

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Iphone or android?

In a nutshell what I said about “digitalia” is “open source is better”, and this is why I prefer Android devices to the Iphone ones. Because Android smartphones can be “rooted”, so that you can take control of them, and install open source apps. And, even on a no-rooted android device you can install open source apps, and remove many other closed source ones.

The iPhones are more comfortable to use, but apart from being considerably more expensive, they are a golden cage. And I don't want to be in a cage, but I want to know what my smartphone does and be able to decide what it should or not should do.

Open-souce apps

Android smartphone have the big problem of a heavy presence of Google, owner of Android system. Google is not the devil, but his control over your smartphone, which means a control over your daily life, including sensible data, is quite annoying.

To avoid this, someone thinks to wholly “de-googlify” android smartphones: after rooting them, installing a new operating system, such as Lineage or Murena.

But not always this is possible, and in many cases it is not safe, therefore at least you should avoid as much as possible the Google control over your smartphone, removing as much as possible Google apps and installing instead open source apps.

The main repo of open-source apps is F-Droid. There you can find a lot of (almost) any kind of apps for your Android device. I said “almost”: not i.g. the banking apps, or the “istitutional” ones.

The must-have apps

to connect smartphone and PC

KDE-connect

KDE-connect is a simple, but effective way to connect smartphone and PC. It's an app both for Android and PC (Linux, Windows and something even for Mac).

With KDE-connect you can

• see the content of your device and interact with it,
• if a phone call arrives (or leaves), the multimedia players of the PC are paused; you can also use your smartphone as a remote control for media players;
• share notes: what you copy on your PC is available to be pasted on your smartphone and vice versa;
• Receive your phone notifications on your desktop computer and reply to messages
• Control music playing on your desktop from your phone
• Use your phone as a remote control for your desktop
• Run predefined commands on your PC from connected devices. See the list of example commands for more details.
• Check your phone's battery level from the desktop
• Ring your phone to help find it
• Share files and links between devices
• Control the desktop's volume using your phone
• Send SMS from your desktop

to synchronize PC and smartphone

You can share any data from your PC and your smartphone, i.g. contacts, calendar, tasks, and files.

There are many ways to do it. One is to get a free e-mail account with Murena, including calendar, tasks and a cloud. And you will be able to sync your contacts, calendar and tasks (and files) between Pc and smartphone, using i.g. Nextcloud app on your device and DAVx

other apps

The world of apps is ever changing, so I prefer speak of particular apps on the blog.

Here we can remember what features should have the main apps

• an e-mail client should be open source, multi-account, easily syncing with the PC e-mail app: such as K-9 Mail, an excellent e-mail client;
• a dialer manager should support groups be able to syncronize contacts, and to customize calls, such as Fossify Phone does;
• to write notes with your android, markdown language can be a good choice: even simple and light it can format the text (with bold, italic or headings). An app with these features is Markor;
• a good calendar app should syncronize events with your PC calendar, such Etar can do.
• a good tasks app should syncronize with your PC tasks one, and be able to show them in an advanced (good formatted) way, such jtx Board can do.