After a long preparatory phase, the Murena One privacy smartphone was launched which offers various proprietary services, reducing the circulation of data to Google should it be necessary to use its services: here are its specifications, functions and cost.
Listen to this article
Murena is a company particularly attentive to privacy that, in the past, created the Eelo operating system, a degooglised fork of Android: after having evolved it into / e / OS (version 1) and mounted it on some refurbished phones, such as the Fairphones 3 Plus and 4, the Galaxy S9 (also S9 Plus), and the Teracube 2e, has announced “its” first proprietary smartphone based on / e / OS, represented by the Murena One.
Born thanks to the creator of the Mandrake Linux distro, the Murena One (161.8 x 76.9 x 8.9 mm for 186 grams), possibly based on the Coolpad Cool S, performs with a 6.53 ″ second FullHD LCD display. the aspect ratio at 19.5: 9, with 395 PPI: the camera is placed in a hole at the top left, and reaches 25 megapixels. On the back, a small bar offers what is actually a triple camera, including an ultra-wide angle, with a main sensor of 48, a secondary of 8, and a tertiary of 5 megapixels. The fingerprint scanner is on the side.
Without cable and charger in the package, the Murena One is powered by the MediaTek Helio P60 processor, supported by 4 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage, expandable via microSD. The battery, from 4,500 mAh, charges at an unknown speed while, in terms of connectivity, we recognize the Dual SIM, 4G, GPS, a 3.5 mm mini-jack, Wi-Fi, NFC for payments and Bluetooth 4.2. The interesting aspect of the device is the software.
Here the aforementioned operating system / and / OS is adopted, a mix between LineageOS and the “open” version of Android, known as the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). For apps, Murena has provided a proprietary store, the App Lounge, which draws on F-Droid, CleanAPK and offers Progressive Web Apps (PWAs). If desired, it will also be possible to use third-party store apps with less privacy.
The Google Play Store is supported but, in using the Google Play Services, we will pass for MicroG, a library that should provide Google with less information about the user who, in any case, if desired, can use proprietary alternative solutions, such as the meta-engine Murena search, its own maps service (based on OpenStreetMap and Mozilla Location Service), its own voice assistant (Elivia-AI), a cloud service (free up to 1 GB, with 20 GB for 20 euros a year) and free subscriptions to the OnlyOffice productivity suite.
The price of the Murena One, on the official website (murena.com/shop/smartphones/brand-new/murena-one) with support for Italy, is 349 euros: the product is already sold out and, in this regard, the The company behind the initiative has set up a waiting list, via e-mail, for the related upcoming availabilities.
