BraX2 Privacy Phone

Privacy phone that made me give up on privacy – I initially bought this because I wanted to increase my privacy online and avoid big tech surveillance but have given up caring about privacy, as with this device, it comes at the cost of a functional phone. If you have responsibilities, or dependents, or just need a phone that works and can charge, this is not the phone for you. This phone is also marketed as something to replace your existing phone, not some sort of secondary phone only, that is potentially buggy, risky, or an unfinished product that could interfere with your day to day life. This is important to take note of as there are major issues with the phone that would have made it more appropriate to sell this phone at a much cheaper price point and as more of a hobby phone for fun or for very early alpha testing etc.

Phone The Brax2 is a "Privacy" phone sold by youtuber Rob Braxman marketed as a simple and hassle free alternative to installing a custom ROM on an android device. The actual phone is a Coolpad Cool S, a cheap white label phone, that is running a fork (copy) of LunarOS, that is rebranded as BraxOS with some software changes.

Support Support for this phone and all of [Name Removed] other service or products is done through his brax.me website, in chat room styled channels that only show the last 100 messages, and have no search function. The actual "support" is provided mainly by volunteers and on occasion [Name Removed] will jump in to answer questions. This makes it very hard to keep track of messages, and see if the issue you are experiencing has been reported before.

Battery The Brax2 had extremely poor battery life out of the box, similar to early android devices from the early '10s. The FAQ section on the Brax.me website has 2 big sections about battery problems/charging problems, but somehow [Name Removed] still refers to battery/charging issues are "rare" and the result of user error and not fault of the phone.

After about 4 - 6 months the phone started showing signs of not being able to hold a charge. The battery would drain very fast and the phone would charge very slow. Now, the phone almost cannot charge and the battery drains extremely fast off charge, dropping 1 - 2 % every few minutes. The phone is essentially unusable if taken off the charger, if you need it to be turned on that is.

Trying to get support for the battery issues has mainly resulted in [Name Removed] saying it could only be "lint" in the charge port as battery issues are "rare", or it was the charger or cable, and to replace those. I've cleaned the charge port numerous times, and for a phone that mainly sits on a desk or in a draw, there has never been anything, ever, in the charge port. And after wasting money on multiple new cables and chargers, it's without a doubt most likely the battery or maybe the actual charging port is faulty, or both.

If you go in the support channel for the phone you will often see people reporting issues around the battery and charging. Some have even reported the battery coming loose inside the phone and the phone not being able to turn on. The responses from support often avoid any accountability and sometimes there is no response from support at all.

Camera The phone does have a camera, it is supposed to be 48mp, but the quality of the photos is pathetic. Often I've found myself not sending photos to people just because the quality of the photo is embarrassing. Not really acceptable from a "modern" phone in 2022/2023. Rob has said that the some camera apps on the phone might not be able to utilize the full 48mp, or something along those lines. Maybe the phone doesn't know how to use its own battery too?

Bricked phones From what I can see in the support channel, there was a update to the operating system - BraxOS - that bricked every single US model of the phone. That is, made those phones functionally unusable and turning the phones into "bricks". [Name Removed] did replace all those phones with new phones, which is honorable, but how can a minor operating system update carry such a huge risk. The fact this could happen, and did happen, just shows this phone should have never been sold as anything more than just a hobby phone or for people to test for him. Not sold as a ready to use alternative to your current phone.

Breaking widely accepted security practices [Name Removed] now goes against a widely accepted security practice of keeping apps/software up to date, by not releasing an update to the operating system, causing apps that came preinstalled on the phone, to become outdated and stuck on old versions.

He has said he will not be "forced" to do any operating system updates until they are ready. I'm assuming this is due to a fear or turning more of these phones into bricks. Although, he has recently made an announcement stating that there is an update in the works. But this has obviously been delayed for a very long time, and many people in the support channel have been asking for the ability to update these apps to their latest version, for quite some time now.

Phone reported as stolen There seems to have been at least one person who had their Brax2 phone lost or stolen, and when reporting the IMEI or some other identifying number from the device, to their local authorities, has caused problems for other Brax2 users as these phones seem to share the same IMEI across devices, or some devices at least. This is done for additional privacy reasons but this is just another high risk factor about this phone further emphasizing it should not be used as your main phone.

Cost Being in Australia, [Name Removed] highly suggests using his $55 USD shipping option to avoid big delays, instead of the cheaper option for shipping. The phone itself was about $399 USD. For the amount of time the phone was usable without issue, this seems like it is extremely overpriced.

Non major bugs There are other bugs with the actual operating system, such as the blue light filter/night light, flashing on and off sometimes. Very disturbing if using the phone late at night. And another bug where the icons from the swipe down menu/tray show as being turned off even though they are turned on.

These are not major issues, but of course reporting them in the support channel has resulted in support stating they are "rare", or just completely ignored. [Name Removed] himself didn't even know the blue light filter/night light bug was even common because the way the chat channels are setup, it makes it hard to track messages as only the last 100 messages are shown. Once when I directly addressed [Name Removed] in the support channel about the blue light filter bug being a nuisance, he stated it was rare because he had not seen others report it, but his own support volunteer jumped in and agreed it was common and had been reported many times. The bug with the swipe down menu was new and introduced with the latest update.

Summary In summary, I do not recommend this phone at the current price point. If the phone was sold at a fraction of the price and marketed as a hobby phone, then a lot of the major issues could have been overlooked. But that would still not have justified the gaslighting around the faulty battery. I appreciate what [Name Removed] is doing for the privacy community but it seems like more thought should have been put into creating a smart phone alternative, regardless if it is focused around privacy.