Mobile Connectivity

Mobile Connectivity

August 17, 2022
Hardware, Cellular, Networking

Talking with a handful of people about mobile phones and what to do about them. There is genuine interest in using simpler devices while on the move for communication but there isn’t a ton of options. Seems like we’ve landed in a local optimum of what our devices are capable of doing and why we carry them around. These devices provide significant utility, but they also come at a cost that {mentally, behaviorally} is becoming more apparent.

Self instrumentation through the procurement of a mobile computing device (e.g. phone) and expected constant connection of that device to the internet (e.g. phone plan) has become a sort of given in the society that I interact with. The convenience of having a fully featured computing device connected to the worlds resources of knowledge and entertainment has proliferated the individual technologies and the service providers that operate networks. Adoption looks like people cycle on a 1-3 year basis with their devices and generally stick with the same service providers.

Occasionally I’ll run into people who make the distinction to use a “feature”" phone instead of a smart phone. The limited feature approach to a “feature” phone is likely thought of as a cost reduction mechanism, but with increasing awareness of digital media utilization and impacts on mental health there appears to be a growing market for reduced functionality devices.

Current State #

For several years I’ve been using Google Fi as a service provider, primarily for two reasons:

  • international travel simplicity
  • data-only SIM cards

Due to the choice of plan I’ve been using Google Pixel phones, which:

  • come with less “bloat” from the manufacture
  • have unlock-able bootloaders
  • sometimes, on a variants, have high repairability scores

For my use I’ve been attempting to create an amount of singular platform independence by swapping out the Google provide services with alternatives:

The Calyx Institute operates the CalyxOS project which:

  • has a different storefront via F-Droid or Aurora Store
  • microG for Google play service emulation
  • first class integration with signal (e.g. the dialer will prefer signal over normal voice)

I’ve been slowly moving my family over to these services to see how this holds up to their scrutiny when being inconvenienced for achieving similar features. This has felt like an interesting incremental improvement over the state we’d previously been in:

  • decreased reliance on google for data specific services
  • increase awareness/patronage of alternatives

There are some downsides to this:

  • there is no digital wellbeing equivalent on calyx, so there is no limitations on use of software by instance.
  • there is no current support for android auto
  • there has been no change in reliance on using Google as a carrier

Going Farther? #

Devices #

There is something between a feature and smart phone that may be emerging as minimalism phones of a sort. These phones are striving to allow for some amount of communication, but not the rich multimedia experiences that smart phones provide. There are some examples:

  • precursor
  • Punkt has the MP02
  • lightphone maintained fork of android with an e-ink display. Aims to be somewhere between “heavy” (smartphone) and “light” (featurephone).

There is also an interesting thought of progression between full sized computing devices, phones, and wearables: maybe wearable devices are the perfect minimal phone. Many of my friends have spoken about how use of the Apple Watch changed their usage patterns significantly for their phone.

One of the major things the simpler phones loose is mapping capability. Carrying a dedicated camera is a likely lifestyle choice, but carrying dedicated mapping hardware is more unique. Smartphones have given us the ability to combine maps with realtime awareness of the landscape (e.g. driving, occupancy), it’s hard to no longer have that available.

Several hackable phones have been popular recently:

  • fairphone is a B-Corp which aims to produce a repairable phone. CalyxOS aims to support their newest platforms.
  • pine64 aims to converge on SoC platforms and provide a long life with low cost device portfolio.

Broadband Modems #

A lot of what can be done from a software standpoint is dictated by hardware compatibility. The broadband modem landscape has made support for devices a complex endeavor, we see a lot of devices get orphaned from a release perspective due to the burden of maintaining device specific builds for the unique hardware compositions. The simplest of devices can eliminate hardware integration complexities by removing subsystems like cameras but will still have to deal with the complexity of how the modems are supported.

Plans #

There have been a proliferation of MVNO wireless communication service companies. Google Fi is likely the most well known consumer facing entity. Fi notably uses the T-Mobile network (formerly Sprint as well but there was a merger). A competitor named Allvoi uses the AT&T network. The conventional carriers are merging together, so MVNO seems to be the only real “market” to shop in.

Twilio Super SIM is aimed at IoT adoption rather than a device you’d potentially use as a modem for larger transfer (from a pricing standpoint). Twilio is unique in that their offering of other complimentary products where it’d be interesting if they would attempt to target the bring your own device consumer market.

Amazon has AWS Private 5G, but this looks to be targeting locale/regional deployments where you’d want your own “dark” wireless.

Signal Specifically #

There are several chat systems out there, but signal I think is uniquely interesting:

  • has a funded foundation for development and maintenance
  • has made some public statements about social standardization and compliance that are “progressive”
  • is clearly not trying to ascertain your social graph (or any utility from your utilization of the system)

Signal currently requires you to maintain your social graph through the use of phone numbers. There is effort to eventually move away from this dependency via a feature they call Secure Value Recovery. Currently you have to have a phone number to bootstrap yourself onto the network. With signal-cli it is possible to register an account with a virtual number (e.g. twilio), then link devices to this account.