One of my friends bought a Pinephone a few years ago. At the time (and things might well have inproved since then) it was not usable as a basic reliable phone due to software/driver issues.

Maybe a phone with an unlocked bootloader with something like LineageOS could be an option.

So does rooting a phone unlock the boot loader? In other words are they sort of synonymous?

I mean if you crack one of these open anything is possible, if tasks can't be accomplished through software.

Funny my old phone died 2 or 3 days after activating this one.

Here is a nice phone with replaceable batteries, physical buttons, no spyware, and fulfills the primary function of a smartphone (ie. fashion accessory):
https://www.ebay.com/itm/285998388599

That model looks kind of complicated.

I'm glad that *you* are finding your way in this complex technological world. Though.

Until recently I only had a "dumb sim" That is just voice and sms. No data.
Actually wasn't that bad. when we did need a smart phone was always someone in the group who could help out.
I still refuse to sign up to Whatsapp. People have gotten used to either calling or SMS me, or email but know I won't see it right away.
I might miss out on a few social things but nothing important.

I don't use any social apps. A few message boards, that's all. I zap any app on this when it's starts badgering me. Don't know wut Whatsapp is.

I shut off all background data. I deleted all crap that isn't absolutely necessary. This isn't the latest version of Android (I still poop and piss in a toilet, which signifies I'm not a brainless 5g drone yet. I'm glad I can't upgrade). I need a guide to navigate through all this gunk. Goolog is a bunch of kruntz you know.

YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED MO**** ***K*R!!

oldhighgerman wrote on 2024-08-08, 02:06:

A few message boards, that's all.

And is this thread an example of what you do with your limited contact with the outside world? It appears to be pointless.

I see and interact with probably 20 times more people then you do on any given day. Unless you work at Burger King. Great work if you can get it. Loads of perks. I'm also quite personable. It's sad that you don't like me. Nor appreciate great humor. Mr. MojoBurger.

darry wrote on 2024-08-07, 02:32:

One of my friends bought a Pinephone a few years ago. At the time (and things might well have inproved since then) it was not usable as a basic reliable phone due to software/driver issues.

Maybe a phone with an unlocked bootloader with something like LineageOS could be an option.

Aside from a nasty splash screen warning about it, most of the google Pixel phones can be unlocked and used with LineageOS this way.
My (aging) Pixel 4A actually got a major android version update this way.

You can also get actually useful root access, and actually own the device, going this route.

Carriers and handset makers dont want people doing that though. They *REALLY* want to push the e-waste churn cycle, very very badly.

I never rooted a phone. I want to practice on the older units I have lying around. This is a nice phone, but really needs more memory. I could have gotten the better model for 40$ more if I had waited. But I would have been phone less for a few days as the previous unit died not long after I activated this.

Once I gain some experience rooting and opening these closed phones, I may look into upgrading the memory in this. That's assuming all models have the same circuit board and empty pads. We'll see.

It's easier to just turn on zram. It hurts battery life (as the CPU is crunching away at compressing and decompressing data), but since android is just linux underneath, it can totally use zram.

Same said pixel 4A.

LineageOS turns on zram by default.

You can see that android DOES use it.

Typically, 'average compaction' is around 2:1 with default compressor.

Lineage doesnt want the phone to be 'oroboros self-nomming', so they only define 1/2 the system ram as the max size for the swap device. In practice, you can set this much higher.

Even being highly pessimistic about the compressibility of the data in swap, it will be better than 1:1, so setting it at 100% ram size should not cause the OOM process killer to fire.

I have a NUC I have set it to 1.5x the size of RAM, and it works fine.

The tradeoff is battery life.

This is all Greek to me currently, but I'll study up. Moocho grassyarse.

Ok, basic details:

Some time ago, there was a linux optimization patch set called "CompCache", which used zlib compression to compress the data in a swap file, to make it smaller. The goal, was to reduce the size of the data that needed to be loaded from disk, so that fewer disk iops would be done when fetching from swap.

Sometime later, the idea of using this on an "Allocated as needed" ramdisk appeared, and this slowly morphed into zram.

zram is a kernel module, that produces one or more block devices of user definable sizes. It is able to use any compressor library that the system knows about, but it usually uses LZO compression by default, because it is fast at both compression and decompression.

It only allocates memory as it needs it. So, if you tell it to make a block device that is 1.5x the size of system RAM, it initially only starts using a few kilobytes of that RAM, until it gets things written into it.
Since it presents as a block device, you can do anything with it that you can with a block device. Put a filesystem on it, put a swap space on it, whatever. It acts just like a disk drive.

The nitty gritty details:

on android, there is a custom init script process that sets everything up, including configuring swap devices and loading the zram module. You need to be root, and you need to remount the root filesystem as writable (temporarily) to make persistent changes to these config files. However, you CAN do this, if you are rooted. So, persistently tuning the amount of zram supplied compressed ram swap on an aging phone to squeeze just a little more useful life out, is perfectly doable.

I still don't know what the hello you're talking about.

It seems you're indicating some form.of encryption is employable. As if you were using a VPN.

I'll figure it all out before long. Again many thanks. Monkey brains can only process so much at a time.

No, compression.

You take 1gb of information that's in RAM, squash the bejeebus out of it, and then stuff it into 512mb of space, freeing 512mb.

From the system's POV, 512mb of additional memory is available. (at the cost of the CPU being busy when you ask for the squashed data)

So this has nothing to do with foiling Goolog's nefarious schemes.

I'll either live with the phone, solder in new ram, or buy a new phone.

it kinda does?

LineageOS is a completely FOSS (community controlled) android distribution.

By default, it has 0 google tendrils in it.

What about molls?