You should also avoid buying phones preloaded with /e/ OS (sometimes branded as the Murena phones). /e/ OS in itself is extremely insecure, engaging in security bad practices that include, but are not limited to, not supporting verified boot; shipping userdebug build; shipping months-old version of Chromium; and bundling years-old version of Orbot into their operating system, then marketing it as “Advanced Privacy”. There was also a recent incident where their cloud service mishandled session keys and gave users access to other’s files, then proceeded to mislead users that the server cannot see their files, despite there being no end-to-end encryption.
You should also be very wary of low quality privacy branded phones like the Freedom Phone, BraX2 Phone, Volta Phone, and the like. These are cheap Chinese phones with the Mediatek Helio P60 from 2018, which has already reached or is near end-of-life. Needless to say, you should also avoid any vendor...
Android Tips
Android is a very secure and robust operating system out of the box. This post will be less of a “hardening guide”, but more of a non-e...
