[Discuss] Syncing Android phones directly

[kentborg at borg.org (Kent Borg)]

On 07/01/2013 10:35 AM, Richard Pieri wrote:
> By design. For all that Android is open source it's still 100% vendor 
> lock in. You can switch between various Android devices but you can't 
> leave the ecosystem without a great deal of effort. If you're not 
> ready to hand over copies of your data to Google then you shouldn't go 
> anywhere near Android. Or at least don't use it for anything that you 
> consider to be sensitive. Get a second hand Palm Treo instead. 

Until recently I used an old Palm Zire 31 as my password safe, but it 
was getting long-in-the-tooth. It already died once and I found a 
duplicate for sale on the internet. But that one is getting old, too. So 
I bought an off-brand Android phone from geekbuying.com, shipped from 
Hong Kong at an amazing total price--I think less than I paid for either 
of the Zire 31s!

It doesn't have the Play store or Google Maps, etc., but I can put apps 
on manually.  And it works. With all the radios off and basically no 
software installed on it, the idle battery life is better than the old 
Palm. It has dual SIM slots, though I have never put a SIM in there. I 
haven't let it on the internet at all: I trust it more if it is kept in 
solitary confinement. (I backup my data by turning on its wifi access 
point tethering and talking to an sshd on the phone, from my Linux 
computer. I keep it quite isolated.)

I am using it like an old Palm, and it does that quite nicely. I could 
add more apps from free sources if I wanted, but that would pollute my 
purpose.

Conclusion: An Android-ish phone makes a great super-PDA.


-kb