A ‘new’ phone has been announced on social media by someone who claims to be the world’s youngest Bitcoin millionaire. The Freedom Phone as it is called is touted by its creator, Erik Finman, as being free of censorship from those ‘Big Tech’ companies as well as having an ‘Uncensorable App Store’, unspecified ‘Privacy Features’, and the ‘first mass-marketable mobile operating system based on free speech’ called FreedomOS. All for the grand old price of $499 which sounds reasonable when free speech and liberty are at stake, right?
The Freedom Phone storefront lists a number of handy features such as an uncensorable App Store that will let you read whatever you want and think what you like without being censored and without your favorite apps being banned by those big tech companies.
The Freedom Phone will come with your favorite apps pre-loaded which means you’ll have easy access to apps that were banned on the Google Play Store such as Parler as well as MeWe, Rumble, OneAmerica News, and erm, Fortnite. Besides the ‘Free-Speech First Operating System’, the Freedom Phone will also sport powerful tools such as ‘Trust’ that lets you be in charge of your own device with warnings about possible threats, whatever those might be.
In terms of hardware, the Freedom Phone website says that the handset has the following attributes:
- Large Storage
- A 6-inch Screen
- A Great Camera. Not just good, but ‘Great‘
From an image on the storefront, we can discern that the Freedom Phone supports dual-SIMs and MicroSD cards, which to be perfectly fair, could be dealbreakers for some folk, so that’s a good move. We aren’t sure how much storage ‘Large’ signifies, nor the screen resolution, and the ‘Great’ camera is a total mystery*.
So far, Erik Finman and the Freedom Phone website are more than a little tight-fisted with the phone’s specifications, but it’s going to bring back free speech so what the hell. Being a phone for freedom, you might think that it’s being put together by Americans using American-made parts in a factory based in the USA and using an operating system that is untainted by the big tech companies, right?
Well, we have some news.
Thanks to David Buchanan’s discovery on Twitter and The Daily Beast, it appears that the Freedom Phone is actually made by the Chinese smartphone maker, *UMIDIGI. That’s right. The Chinese electronics company that is called UMIDIGI makes the phone that is a re-badged A9 Pro which retails for $150 on Alibaba, or even less if you buy in bulk. If you place an order for 500 units or more, UMIDIGI will throw in customized logos, packaging, and graphic customization, which explains the FreedomOS logo instead of UMIDIGI’s branding.
In an interview with The Daily Beast, Erik Finman confirmed that the phone is built by UMIDIGI but claimed that the Freedom Phone is produced in Hong Kong, whereas the brand actually manufactures it in Shenzhen, which is where the company is based. Just to clarify, Shenzhen is in mainland China and not the now Chinese-governed Hong Kong territory.
But what about the newly created FreedomOS?
We have more bad news to tell you because Ron Amadeo of ArsTechnika found a hands-on video of the Freedom Phone that revealed the presence of stock apps usually found in LineageOS. Indeed, the much-vaunted Trust logo on the brand’s website seems to be a ripoff of the LineageOS Trust feature. None of this is a surprise seeing as the Freedom Phone is running on what seems to be a bodged-up version of a generic image of the LineageOS firmware rather than an official build.
As for the app store, well it turns out it’s a hastily rebadged version of the Aurora Store which actually has Google apps available on it.
In a nutshell, the Freedom Phone is a rebadged phone made in a Communist country that runs on the Android operating system which has its roots in Google. Weirdly, for a brand that wants to cut off the big tech companies, you can pay for the Freedom Phone using Google Pay, Apple Pay, and PayPal.
In case you are wondering, here are the specifications for the UMIDIGI A9 Pro in brief:
- Mediatek Helio P60
- 6GB+128GB
- 6.3-inch HD+ display screen, 2340 x 1080 pixel resolution
- 48MP primary camera + 16MP ultra wide-angle camera + 5MP depth camera + 5MP macro camera
- 24MP front camera
- 4,150mAh battery
- 4G Dual SIM
To put it bluntly, the Freedom Phone and everything about it would appear to be a crock from top to bottom, with the ultimate betrayal being the rip-off price of asking $500 for a $150 handset with low specifications, bodged software, and little in the way of security.
We aren’t being judgy, but this phone is not a good deal unless you are the one receiving $500. And to counter Erik Finman’s claims, it’s most certainly not the ‘best phone in the world’ or ‘comparable to the best smartphones on the market’. It’s not even a great phone at $150 but at least you’ll save a few hundred bucks buying the UMIDIGI A9 Pro on Alibaba here.
Honestly, you’re better off buying a Huawei P40 Lite that has great specs and battery life, runs software that is regularly updated without all the Google stuff that censors your thoughts, and has its own curated app store. Sure, it’s made in Communist China, but so is the Freedom Phone.
