 Welcome to another episode of me complaining about cell phones from five to twenty five minutes. I'm your host Luke So I've actually gotten a lot of questions over the years Why do I not do more videos on cell phones because I do tutorials on Linux and and You know shell scripting and all these kind of things a very obscure program sometimes So a lot of people ask why don't you do more videos on cell phones now? The reason is I'm going to explain why but it amounts to I am Extremely frustrated by the very idea of cell phones and how they work Technologically now of course, I do videos very often, you know as I sort of make fun of it I do videos a lot complaining about how people use cell phones. They use them too much. They're annoying socially stuff like that I'm not gonna be talking about that in this video. I'm gonna be talking about the narrow technological aspects Okay, now the reason I bring this up I should say you may be actually be able to tell okay the lighting is a little different It's a little more vivid back here actually everything back there is blurred. I actually got a new cell phone That that's why things look a little bit different and It's not it's not my choice. I had to get a new one for a new carrier I think this actually looks nice. I like the way it sort of looks now It was only 50 bucks after a rebate. So I'm very glad about that. I wouldn't have gotten a cell phone by choice but So when I got this phone, I went through something I've done before in the past I'm glad I was successful, but I went through the rigmarole of Taking that cell phone and making sure that I could root it and I could get rid of all the Google junk and install a free Software operating system. I installed linear Joes. I have root access on it So that you know, that's what I run on this phone And I have all the application, you know the the few applications that I actually need on a phone And I've deleted all the other junk that comes on it now Let me give you my perspective that informs my view on cell phones The fact is what determines whether you own a computer or not if you ask me It has to be if you have administrative access Exclusive administrative access if you can go on it onto a computer and install and uninstall what you want Delete what files you want sometimes even break your machine in the way that you want That means that you have you are in control of that device if you can't do that stuff But someone else can that means you are not in control Okay, now when even when it comes to Microsoft Windows 10 You still can have control of your device because you still have administrative access Okay, when you install Windows, you don't often know what programs are running They're running with some proprietary stuff, but you can still delete stuff You can randomly delete files and programs and stuff like that. You still have that right, okay? Whereas on phones for historical reasons, that is not the case when you get a phone It is a it's like a jailed environment for the user The user does not have root access and it's not just no one has root access It's that Google installs a bunch of applications that we don't even know what they're doing on a phone And they are constantly pinging Google. They're constantly doing bad things and in effect Google has Administrative access to your phone and you don't so you know when I when I look at most phones that are like this when you just get a phone That's not really your phone. That's really Google's phone. That's Google's phone It's you keep it in your pocket and it radiates your testicles all day because it is constantly pinging your location and data To Google okay, that's what a cell phone does. It is their device It's their monitoring device you might get some good stuff out of having that monitoring device But you ultimately don't have the rights to decide what's going on I know that they give you this little environment where you can disable an application But the issue is when it's proprietary software you have no idea. It's like Windows 10's fake switches Oh uninstall this that it's fake. It's it's just to make you feel good about yourself. Okay, so for me The bare minimum in terms of cell phones is a cell phone where you have rude access You can install and uninstall whatever you want you can monitor what's going on on your cell phone and Specifically you don't have anything too malicious like you know no kind of Google stuff you know, I'm not some kind of Person who says oh well, you just can't have anything Google related if you need something for work I'm not gonna counter signal that but of course, you know on my phone. I have nothing Google related I have only asteroid and asteroid applications a couple other things, but it's all all free software. Okay, that's what I have Now here is the big annoyance. You cannot easily well firstly you don't have rude access on a phone You just buy that that's the first obvious thing and phone manufacturers Software designers carriers they all conspire to make it difficult for you to actually have control over your phone Now you of course people will have bring up this cope. Oh, well, it's for your own good You might get your phone stolen, but that you know, that's the case in laptops as well, frankly So it's I don't really find that a good justification But carriers and software designers and all these people will conspire to make it difficult So just as an example when I got this phone, okay? Well firstly I order I actually originally ordered a different phone And then when it was like shipping on the way I learned. Oh, it doesn't actually work with linear Joe S And or at least, you know, it was just a modern version of the phone I have now there's no build with linear Joe S It can't do this or that, you know running on free software. So I was like, oh shoot I got to send that back. So I got this one. I'm actually glad I did because this one is cheaper So again 50 bucks with rebate So I got this phone and then I realized like oh, there are all these other tools that you know Due to the way that all of the stuff is developed like you have to realize to get rude on a device You basically have to hack your own device. You basically have to Unlock the bootloader and do some funky stuff with some funky random program that you found on github or some pageets on xda recommended you to use That's like literally written by some guy named pageete And you know, you basically hack into your own device That's the absurdity of like in order to have administrative access you have to hack into it And the thing about that is Uh, there are there are constantly new software patches every couple of months That make it more and more difficult that like, you know, get rid of the old ways that you could do things And that's why I want well, I'll go ahead and say one of the reasons I don't do videos on this kind of stuff Is first off in order to actually do videos on how do you root this phone? I'd have to actually buy a whole bunch of phones and stuff like that, which would be We're not we're not consumers here Um, so I'm obviously not going to do do that, but also If you look at videos of people doing tutorials on that you'll see a bunch of dislikes Because what happens is and you know, I'm not saying their videos are bad, but the reason they get dislikes is some new android Release a patches whatever little hack they were using before and now it doesn't work So now people can't do that or everything is different depending on your carrier depending on your Specific model the the model of phone I used to have Could not be root. Well the international version could be rooted, but not the us version, right? So I got oh finally I can root this phone That's what the internet says and then I looked at oh wait, it can't be the us version Okay, there's a little like they're just like a million little details that conspire to make it difficult for you And just in the past couple of days when I was just trying to get things working on this phone I constantly ran into this or that That wasn't going to work or couldn't work on a very specific model of phone And this is what everyone has to do just to do the bare minimum So that one of the reasons like this is why Oftentimes and I think this is justifiable frankly because uh, you know things are so bad when it comes to cell phones I my reflex is to throw up my hands in defeat and say You know what I really don't need a cell phone for this And I think that's honestly a probably even more healthy thing to say I'm not going to I'm not going to yammer about why I don't think people should use cell phones But uh, you know a lot of times like, you know people who use cell phones to like, uh, uh, you know Take notes and talk to friends and stuff And other things that you know just you could do with uh I don't know you don't need the complex technology to do that do all that kind of stuff That that's what I'm trying to say But uh, either way I just find the entire experience Extremely frustrating everything on a phone is is it's it's like this nightmare world. It's this nightmare environment It's like some kind of and I mean literally a nightmare. It's like a nightmare where you can't Accomplish what you want. There's always something that gets in your way. That's the experience. It's it's like a david lynch film It's like as bad as a david lynch film. We're like, uh, oh wow, that's actually really bad It's like there's you know one time I had this uh ex-girlfriend of mine She made me watch mall hole and drive. I like immediately wanted to break up with her It was just wow, this is like it's not even it's not even like a bad movie. It just frustrates you It just makes this is so stupid. Why why are people pretending to like this? And I sort of feel the same way about cell phones, you know, it's just one of those things where uh, nothing there's just nothing but frustration for me and um Well, I'm glad now and I will say I'm glad I this phone I have right now I'm actually very happy about it. I might even carry around carry it around with me sometimes Okay, because I it's rooted. It feels like my device. I can install what I want I uninstalled all the stupid, uh default ROMs. Oh, let me actually complain about one other thing that that just sort of annoys me Okay, I said that they're all these people. There's this community of people who are constantly, uh, you know talking about, you know Flashing ROMs and you know customizing their phone and stuff like that and the strangest thing in the world for me For me, you know the obvious reason you want to do any of that is because you want to get rid of all the Google spyware You want to be in control of your device? But there are a lot of people who are in this like ROM making community Uh, you know who do it like go through this rigmarole of you know, uh, just all this kind of stuff for Fun like they they want to I just want a custom ROM that looks cool You know and that is like the opposite of what I am like. I'm just like Why why would you make a custom ROM that just pulls all this google stuff anyway? Like what is the point if you want a a unified google experience? Just use what the cell phone looks like when you buy it Okay, if you don't care about privacy that that works perfectly Okay, who cares if you want your apps to look a little bit different I don't know maybe there is probably redditors, you know redditors who just like want to post Whatever the equivalent of unix porn is for uh, uh android that that's what I think it is So it's it's very confused like I don't I look I look at those people And I don't necessarily see allies in their mindset because most of them are just interested in phones for phones are cool Which is the opposite like I I look at phones as big As impediments as things that are constantly in my way things that are constantly annoying me I just want a functional phone and you know, and there are a lot of companies out there I know you can post them in the comments because I know you will Uh who that try and make free software phones But you know the thing about those is like they cost a thousand dollars or seven hundred dollars or something like that And uh, you know, okay, I'll I'll I'll go through two days of frustration trying to figure out how to do it Do it, you know install free software myself on my phone if I can but um, it yeah, it just drives me nuts. I don't honestly um I think that was all I was going to say I actually do I sort of want to sit around here and look at the colors I I don't know if these colors are actually going to show up on the recording. I don't know if it's like just my screen It just looks nice. I don't I don't know. I like the way it looks You know, that's why I haven't I wasn't like running around this video. I was just sort of enjoying the way it looks Um, it honestly sort of looks how it looks in real life My last camera. Okay, the the content of the video is over. I'm just going to talk now about something irrelevant But the last camera I had you probably noticed whenever I was in the sun like this It just made my my my face like perfectly white Okay, like it had really bad exposure or something like that This doesn't seem to be it's a big I should just like wear a wig in videos or something like that Maybe that uh would make things easier. Maybe I should I should just wear a hat You know, it's just because if you have that much of the same color that's light It's the big problem. But anyway, this cell phone does it better. So all right, that's it