Conservative smartphone from a billionaire. It is supposed to offer "privacy and freedom". We've seen him somewhere before

KONSTANTY MŁYNARCZYK • 5 months ago • 1 comment

Erik Finman, a young billionaire who made money by investing in bitcoin, has just released Freedom Phone - a smartphone advertised as a response to restrictions introduced by Google, Facebook and Twitter. The $ 500 "freedom telephone", according to its creator, is supposed to equal the best telephones on the market, and also offer "privacy and freedom of expression".

Erik Finman says Freedom Phone came up with the idea when Google removed the Parler app from the Play Store, which was used by Donald Trump's supporters to coordinate the attack on the US Congress headquarters, among other things. He also mentions the fact that Facebook and Twitter "arbitrarily" imposed a ban on the publications of the former US president. He does not hide who his product is aimed at, writing that it is a phone "built by conservatives, for conservatives" and advertising it with the slogan "We not only make America great. We also make great calls" referring to the famous "Make America great again" Donald Trump.

Freedom Phone, in addition to representing conservative values, is to ensure complete freedom of software installation, and not to have services and functions that collect data about the user and abuse his privacy. The website of the project does not contain any technical parameters of the device for sale, it is only known that, according to Erik Finman, it is to be "comparable to the best phones on the market". The proprietary Freedom OS, with the PatriStore application store, where "applications banned by Big Tech" are available, is to take care of data security and freedom of speech of users.

American phone straight from China

However, when users started to check what the "telephone of freedom" really was, they were in for a big surprise. As it turns out, Freedom Phone is a proprietary phone from the Chinese company UMIDIGI & hairsp; - & hairsp; most likely based on UMIDIGI A9. In an interview with the Daily Beast website, Erik Finman admitted that UMIDIGI is the source of the smartphones he sells, without specifying which model was used as the basis, and the Freedom Phone website writes about the product in general terms: "Large memory. 6-inch screen. Great. camera. Affordable but fast. " Either way, it does not compete with the "best" in the US market, such as the iPhone or Samsung Galaxy S.

Freedom OS is also nothing new, most likely an incarnation of Lineage OS, a free and open source Android distribution.

How to profit from conservative values?

The most serious difference between the UMIDIGI smartphone and the Freedom Phone is ... the price. Suspected of being the underlying platform of the latter, the UMIDIGI A9 is available in Chinese online stores for around $ 100, while the "freedom phone" costs $ 500. If Finman chose a less equipped model as the basis for his device, the difference could be even greater. I wonder how American conservatives, persuaded to buy a low-end Chinese phone for five times its price, will feel, as the embodiment of American freedom and conservative values.