Recensione sistema operativo iodé

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Content index

List of applications pre-installed on iodé
Iodé operating system review: analysis of installed applications

The iodé application is their flagship
- The other applications
Iodé operating system review: emails

After managing to get your hands on one smartphones /And/ we recently received from iode on trial for a few days a nice Samsung S9 with their operating system pre-installed. So here we are with the iodé operating system review and thanks to them for their availability!

We'll reveal something important right away: we managed to obtain a 10% discount for the purchase of refurbished smartphones just for you on the site iode.tech. You can use the code below by December 31, 2021 to get it:

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We don't earn anything and we requested it only for you, we say this for fairness. To make the review as impartial we find this condition necessary.

Let's first try to understand what we are talking about. As in the case of /And/ Also iode bases its operating system on LineageOS.

But what is LineageOS?

Let's keep it simple: it's a modified version of Android AOSP ¹, that is, the Android project without Google applications, not even the Play Store. It is therefore a de-googled Android. To to install However, some technical knowledge is required on your LineageOS smartphone and it is certainly not a path that can be taken by everyone. It is also a relatively process dangerous in the sense that there is a real possibility of breaking your smartphone forever.

And this is where they come to our rescue operating systems like iodé. Iode in fact, it sells new smartphones but also, and above all, refurbished ones. The strength of iodé is precisely this: sell a degoogled smartphone, privacy-friendly and at the same time suitable for everyone, without requiring particular technical knowledge.

Furthermore iode is based in Europe (France) and its refurbished smartphones are also fixed and created in Europe.

So let's try to discover its strengths and weaknesses.

Let's see how the opening of the package went in the meantime: the very first impression was good, nice presentation of the smartphone with the iodine box.

Once the box is opened we find the smartphone, a charger, some earphones and a beautiful plastic and wooden case personalized with the iodé writing (which they sell together with some smartphones at 14€).

It must be admitted that the first impression isn't bad: the smartphone is in good condition and has no signs of wear despite being refurbished and the personalized case is very nice and also allows you to do a bit of healthy proselytism (as soon as someone asks you what is iode? you can have fun).

But what interests us above all is the software part.

The first time you turn on your smartphone is almost identical to all Android classics just purchased (language, time zone, etc.). Obviously a Google account is not required (our goal is, in fact, the degoogling) but we are asked if we have a backup iode to be able to restore it, which is very interesting. You can do the backup at any time through the application SeedVault and you can load it onto a USB stick or a server Nextcloud if you prefer the cloud.

During activation, you can also install a series of recommended applications and absolutely not mandatory.

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Small note before we get to the applications: you will often find the word in this article Fork. What does it mean? From the our dictionary: “It is spin-off of a source code. In practice it is when a project starts from a source code to take another road, for any type of reason." In this case we are therefore talking about applications modified by LineageOS or from iode itself.

List of applications pre-installed on iodé

List of pre-installed and non-mandatory applications

To test them, we installed them all. Here is the complete list, in the order in which they are reported. In brackets you will find the name of the installed package:

iodé news

iodé news, to be updated on iodé news (com.iode.news);
updates, to keep the operating system updated (org.lineageos.updater);
iode, the fulcrum of iodé smartphones, we talk about it well below (com.iode.app);

Communication

Contacts, L'contacts application LineageOS (com.android.contacts);
Telephone, here too nothing to report, classic Android dialer (com.android.dialer);
iode Browsers, a Fork of Firefox with Qwant as Search engine default (com.iode.firefox);
QKSMS to read and write SMS (com.moez.QKSMS);

E-mail

for emails they chose to pre-install p≡p. We will talk about it in detail below (security.pEp);

App stores

Aurora Store to download applications from the Play Store anonymously (com.aurora.store);
F-Droid, to download applications Open source available on the store F-Droid (org.fdroid.fdroid);

Weather

Geometric Weather, an application weather forecast precise and sure that it will not spy on you (wangdaye.com.geometricweather);

Multimedia

Gallery, classic Android gallery (com.android.gallery3d);
AudioFX, the audio equalizer of LineageOS (org.lineageos.audiofx);
Music, the music player of LineageOS (org.lineageos.eleven);
Recorder, the recorder of LineageOS (org.lineageos.recorder);
Room, camera of LineageOS (org.lineageos.snap);

Maps and navigation

Magic Earth (com.generalmagic.magicearth);

Productivity

Calculator, the standard Android one (com.android.calculator2);
Clock, the standard Android one (com.android.deskclock);
PDF Viewer Plus to read PDFs (com.gsnathan.pdfviewer);
the excellent one Carnet for notes (com.spisoft.quicknote);
Calendar, the application Etar forked by LineageOS (org.lineageos.etar);

microG services

microG to use Google services anonymously (com.google.android.gms);

They are also pre-installed, without the possibility of choosing:

File, to manage files (com.android.documentsui);
OpenBoard, as the main keyboard.

Iodé operating system review: analysis of installed applications

That's almost all of them Open source.

We say almost because we immediately notice that they too, like /And/, they decided to use Magic Earth as a navigator. Magic Earth is a closed source application produced by a Dutch/Swiss/Romanian company ² (there General Magic) which sells maps and navigation systems on a professional level to companies and is not currently interested in retail sales to individual customers. It also has an excellent privacy policy and its application for Android contains zero tracers ³.

It is a good compromise that, as you know, we also recommend it if you are not happy with it OsmAND or Organic Maps.

As for the stores we find F-Droid And Aurora Store. The first, as you know, is the most famous alternative store to Google and contains only and exclusively safe applications and Open source.

Aurora Store instead it is used to connect to the Play Store and download free applications without having a Google account. We looked into it in more detail here if you are interested.

The two stores present: **Aurora Store e F-Droid**

Thanks to the pre-installation of microGHowever, you will be able to run many applications that use Google services. You are not obliged to activate it but it is essential if you want it to work for example Whatsapp notifications (if you are still forced to use it) or many other applications that otherwise would not work such as that of PosteID.

The iodé application is their flagship

The strong point of the iodé smartphone however, it is their main application called, precisely, iode. Unfortunately, even if it is paradoxical, their application is not yet) Open source. Their application has also recently been introduced Open source ⁴.

However, their application is based on collaborative blacklists and, according to them, connections are only intercepted locally and therefore never leave the smartphone ⁵.

But what does this application do?

iodé is really a very interesting application because monitors and analyzes all connections coming from our smartphone and automatically blocks malware, viruses, i tracers and the advertisements found. Basically it's a bit like having a TrackerControl or a Blokada customizable and pre-installed on your smartphone.

Screenshots **of the iodé application**, as you can see, blocks a lot tracers

One of the known problems of TrackerControl And Blokada, in fact, is that they occupy the only one space available for VPNs and therefore, for example, you cannot use them in combination with ProtonVPN or similar.

With this application of iode, however, being system-wide, it is not occupied space of VPNs which will therefore remain free for you to use. It is also compatible with i Private DNS (when used at system level) always for the reasons above. It is therefore a truly unique solution to solve some otherwise unsolvable problems.

So a really interesting idea and one that seems to work reasonably well. In fact, in the application you can find the history (the logs) of all blocked and unblocked requests. From version 2.2, released on November 16, 2021, you can even act directly on the individual connections ⁶.

This new option is really intuitive, you can see in the stream all the connections present in real time and if you find one that you don't like, just press on it and decide whether to:

authorize it for that app;
authorize it for all apps;
block it only for that app;
block it for all apps.

Screenshots **of the iodé application**, from version 2.2 allows you to block individual connections

Alternatively, you can enhance or not strengthen the protection for each individual app based on the predefined lists selected by iodé.

In fact, you will find a "standard" block that will hardly give you problems but will stop most of the advertisements and tracers. Furthermore, there is also a section called "Protection Reinforced” where you can activate additional protection for each app to also block social media, porn and anything else.

In our opinion, their application can also be a decisive watershed when you decide to choose between an /e/ smartphone and an iodé .

From what we seemed to understand and intuit, /And/ on paper it seems to be a more "solid" and more experienced company (they are also economic supporters of microG). iode, although very interesting, seems like a smaller reality even if it is expanding and therefore not to be underestimated.

The other applications

Let's abandon the excellent iodé application and let's see what else the smartphone contains.

In fact, we find many useful applications for standard and daily use: contacts, calendar, clock And calculator for example. Some are the standard versions of Android, while others are modified versions LineageOS.

Other iodé applications: **iode Browsers**, **Calendar** And **QKSMS**

It was chosen to read PDFs instead PDF Viewer Plus, a choice that we would like to share as it is one of the best and most complete for read PDF on your smartphone.

To surf the internet we instead find a Fork ⁷ Of Firefox called iode Browsers. One of the customizations that is usage as Search engine default of Qwant in the place of Google. They then added their own icon and the telemetry from Mozilla and others was eliminated tracers ⁸ You are obviously not obliged to use it: if you don't like it for any reason you can install a Browsers different. And this obviously also applies to all the other applications mentioned so far.

Many of the recommended applications, as you may have already noticed, we have already seen in the past. They are excellent alternatives to Google services such as Carnet And Magic Earth. So let's say that iodé seemed to be on the same wavelength as us.

Other settings that can be found on smartphones **iode**

Iodé operating system review: emails

As regards emails, however, a truly particular choice was made. In fact, they decided to pre-install p≡p, a non-standard application and different from all other programs. p≡p it is a classic and simple email client that also allows you to send encrypted emails using PGP. Essentially you can turn your email, whatever it is, into an encrypted email. You could therefore also use your Gmail to send PGP encrypted messages.

What does it mean more precisely? We don't want to go into too much technical detail, but if you want more information, we'll be waiting for you on our Telegram technical team @LeAlternativeChat, but you just need to know that the emails you exchange with those who use PGP they will be encrypted on the server and therefore inaccessible to anyone except you.

So conversations will be encrypted even if you have chosen not to have an encrypted email (like for example ProtonMail). It must be admitted that using the PGP key it's also pretty simple with p≡p, a choice that we therefore appreciate. There is also a handy red/yellow/green indicator that will tell you whether the conversation is safe or not.

Obviously you are in no way forced to use this client even if you can use it as a normal client ignoring the whole encryption part. If you don't like it you can install whatever you prefer such as K-9 Mail or FairEmail.

This obviously applies to all the applications that we talked about in this article: these are all those recommended and pre-installed by iodé ma none of these are mandatory, not even their main application.

Smartphones seem to be constantly updated, currently in fact they have all been ported to Android 11. In all this, in the unfortunate event you don't feel well, it is always possible to return to stock version of Android (the one with Google pre-installed) although this requires advanced technical knowledge ⁹.

Unfortunately, as per LineageOS and of all the alternative operating systems we've tested, some applications just don't want to work. It is the case of Intesa Sanpaolo and of Enjoy for example but there certainly can be others. It must be said that in most cases you won't have any kind of problem.

However, as per /And/, take this potential issue into account. Before purchasing one, if you think you have fundamental applications that you just can't live without, you can check our project The Alternatives | A la carte to understand whether it has already been reported or not.

Alternatively you can ask on our group Telegram, check or to the same iodé developers whether that application works or not. Finally, there is also the project Plexus.

If the review has somehow convinced you to buy a refurbished iodé smartphone, we remind you that we managed to get a 10% discount just for you on the site iode.tech. You can use the code below by December 31, 2021 to get it:

loyal alternatives