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Except your money
It’s not every day that a new smartphone company appears, claiming to offer a device that protects your “free speech” from Big Tech. So when Erik Finman, a self-proclaimed “Bitcoin millionaire”, announced the Freedom Phone yesterday, it piqued our interest. Finman claims the Freedom Phone is “The first big setback against the Big Tech companies that attacked us [American conservatives], ” and he has a “Uncensored app store” which will offer all apps that have been banned from mainstream app stores. But is the phone really everything Finman claims to be? Let’s find out.
Before we talk about the phone itself, let’s establish some context. In the 2020 US presidential election, Google removed the Talk app from the Play Store for lack of moderation of user-generated content. On the other hand, Twitter permanently suspended the account of former US President Donald Trump for the tweets that were “In violation of the policy of glorifying violence”. These two incidents, along with several others, led many right-wingers to believe that big tech companies like Twitter, Google, Facebook and Amazon were biased against them and violated their freedom of speech. According to Finman, the Freedom Phone will help users prevent such incidents, and its announcement video specifically mentions former US President Donald Trump’s Twitter ban as a source of inspiration for the manufacture of the device.
Render of the freedom phone
Now that you know the general idea behind the phone, let’s dissect the device itself. The Freedom Phone’s official site is sparse, but it does mention that the phone works with all US domestic and international carriers, comes preloaded with conservative sites and apps, and runs a “first-to-talk operating system.” free ”called FreedomOS. (not to be confused with the custom ROM of the same name) which features a privacy tool called “Trust”. The phone is priced at $ 499, and thanks to the company’s generous affiliate program, many right-wing personalities and influencers in the United States are promoting it.
If the alarm bells are already ringing for you, then great, because it gets better from here. In an interview with The daily beast, Finman confirmed that the Freedom Phone was made by Umidigi – a Chinese smartphone brand based in Shenzhen. In fact, the phone appears to be identical to the Umidigi A9 Pro, which currently only costs $ 179.99 on Amazon. We’re not sure if there are any hardware differences between the two phones, as Finman hasn’t shared detailed specifications for the device, and we haven’t got our hands on one.
Umidigi A9 Pro
Right-wing personality Candace Owens’ Freedom Phone hands-on video reveals so-called “uncensored app store” appears to be a rebadged Aurora store. For those who don’t know, Aurora Store is an open source interface for the Google Play Store, which means all of the “PatriApp Store” apps on the Freedom Phone are likely from Google Play. If this is a well-known Aurora store, then Finman’s company has no control over its content and cannot guarantee that it will not be “censored”.
L: PatriApp Store on the Freedom Phone; A: Aurora Store
Otherwise, ArsTechnica‘s Ron Amadeo found another hands-on video that showed the phone’s app drawer, revealing many of LineageOS ‘stock apps as well as microG. The “Trust” logo displayed on the Freedom Phone’s website was already eerily similar to the one used for the LineageOS Trust feature, but looking at the hands-on video, it’s clear that the phone is indeed running LineageOS. Since this company is unlikely to have ported LineageOS to the Umidigi A9 Pro itself, it may just be using a LineageOS GSI.
From the information we have seen so far, the Freedom Phone is raising too many red flags. It clearly doesn’t offer all of the features Finman claims to offer. And the marketing surrounding it is only intended to capitalize on the idea that Big Tech is biased against the right-wing people in the United States, without offering a real solution. Whether you think Big Tech did it for you or not, the Freedom Phone isn’t worth buying. In essence, the phone is just a cheap Chinese phone with LineageOS and the Aurora store on top. For $ 499, it doesn’t offer enough value in terms of hardware and software. You’re better off buying a much cheaper phone yourself and flashing LineageOS with or without microG, which will leave you with a decent phone and several hundred dollars to enjoy your freedom.
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