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Why do people not want encryption?

I was under the impression that encryption was supposed to be a good thing. Can someone explain why everyone wants it disabled?

It apparently slows the device down significantly since they did the encryption with software instead of hardware. Doing the mod simply makes it optional like it was before. Most people won't have that kind of sensitive info on their phones to really worry about it.

i dont notice any slow down thus far and i applaud the encryption.

Most people would choose faster performance over encryption. Almost ANYONE would choose to have encryption if it didn't affect performance...there's no arguing that encryption is a bad thing...it's just that performance is king for most people who don't consider their phone data to be extremely sensitive.
I think Google should have done one of two things: 1) make it optional so everyone could choose encryption or performance 2) make it so the encryption has little to no effect on performance.
Since it does strongly affect performance, the fact that it's FORCED on us is definitely a point of contention.

> i dont notice any slow down thus far and i applaud the encryption.
if you didn't then good for you. don't bother comparing your Nexus 6 with how a hated touchwizd Note4 behaves. Heck don't compare it even with the year old Nexus 5.

People don't notice any slowdowns, its only a problem for those benchmark geeks.
Yet, in all full hardware benchmarks, even a fully encrypted Nexus 6 outperforms every other phone.
Antutu is still 50k+ for example. Lol

chrisjcks said:
People don't notice any slowdowns, its only a problem for those benchmark geeks.
Yet, in all full hardware benchmarks, even a fully encrypted Nexus 6 outperforms every other phone.
Antutu is still 50k+ for example. Lol
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People have said the phone is significantly snappier after disabling it. Some may say it's placebo, but the read/write speeds are increased quite a lot, so it is believable. I personally didn't even use the phone with encryption and compared to the video reviews I've seen, mine seems to perform a whole lot better. In some vids there were noticeable delays when opening apps.

It is faster at saving files and opening my photos app without encryption. I have 3000+ pictures on my phone from that I took on my G3 and its much faster and there is almost 0 scroll lag now.

P1 Wookie said:
It apparently slows the device down significantly since they did the encryption with software instead of hardware. Doing the mod simply makes it optional like it was before. Most people won't have that kind of sensitive info on their phones to really worry about it.
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Have any developers actually dug in to the kernel to validate that it's using software encryption only? It could be that the Snapdragon 805's crypto module is just slow. Surely there has to be a way to enable hardware encryption if it's not available.

phekno said:
Have any developers actually dug in to the kernel to validate that it's using software encryption only? It could be that the Snapdragon 805's crypto module is just slow. Surely there has to be a way to enable hardware encryption if it's not available.
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I don't have time to go look because I'm about to go into work, but I believe the person that made the modded boot image was the one that figured it out.

I feel I don't need it. I have used a smartphone for years now and they could have been encrypted at any time but I chose to rely on my lock screen and the ability to remotely wipe my device. I don't want to give up the performance for something I don't feel I need. If there was dedicated hardware, which it looks like there isn't, I'd leave it encrypted. Apple, for example, uses dedicated hardware so that the encryption doesn't impact performance which means they can use encryption and still get speeds equivelant to or faster than most phones out there now.
---------- Post added at 09:03 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:00 AM ----------
chrisjcks said:
People don't notice any slowdowns, its only a problem for those benchmark geeks.
Yet, in all full hardware benchmarks, even a fully encrypted Nexus 6 outperforms every other phone.
Antutu is still 50k+ for example. Lol
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But there are videos showing the Nexus 6 performing operations slower than a Nexus 5 or did you mean it outperforms every other encrypted phone?.

The slow down is not noticeable by any significant margin. It's purely in benchmarks and possibly when installing some larger apps, you might notice it taking a bit longer than it should. After disabling encryption, it's most likely placebo that it feels faster, but the phone did not feel "slow" by any means with encryption enabled.
I just don't care enough to have my data encrypted, I don't keep anything of vital importance on my phone, so I just decided to get rid of it anyway.

Berzerker7 said:
The slow down is not noticeable by any significant margin. It's purely in benchmarks and possibly when installing some larger apps, you might notice it taking a bit longer than it should. After disabling encryption, it's most likely placebo that it feels faster, but the phone did not feel "slow" by any means with encryption enabled.
I just don't care enough to have my data encrypted, I don't keep anything of vital importance on my phone, so I just decided to get rid of it anyway.
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I'm not sure it is just benchmarks. Not based on the video at http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014...premium-price-still-comes-with-compromises/2/ anyway. App launch, boot everything seems to be slower on the encrypted device (vs an un-encrypted N5).
Maybe it was pre-release software, so dunno if the issue is still as bad

jj14 said:
I'm not sure it is just benchmarks. Not based on the video at http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014...premium-price-still-comes-with-compromises/2/ anyway. App launch, boot everything seems to be slower on the encrypted device (vs an un-encrypted N5).
Maybe it was pre-release software, so dunno if the issue is still as bad
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At least personally, I haven't noticed any real difference and the phone felt plenty quick while I was encrypted. I just wanted the piece-of-mind and wiped early so that I wouldn't be bothered later when the phone was more used and it would have been more of a hassle to wipe.

Another issue to keep in mind is the hit to battery life. If encryption is taking place in software, that's going to tax the CPU much more than if it was being done via dedicated hardware. Removing encryption will reduce CPU load, thus increasing battery life. So even if the device "feels" the same with and without encryption, you still benefit from disabling encryption.
Anecdotally, yesterday I experienced better battery life than what the reviewers were getting (about 5-6 hours of SOT). We already know that the I/O speeds are objectively faster with encryption disabled, so I'd love to see some objective tests done on battery life.

I may opt out then. I'm not a criminal or part of a sleeper cell of any kind.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N900A using XDA Free mobile app

i don't even have a lock screen.
do i need encryption?

bradputt said:
i don't even have a lock screen.
do i need encryption?
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Encryption is just another barricade protecting your data beyond a lock screen. As far as I know it basically means that even if someone manages to pull data off your phone, they won't be able to view it. Could be wrong though.

Xileforce said:
Encryption is just another barricade protecting your data beyond a lock screen. As far as I know it basically means that even if someone manages to pull data off your phone, they won't be able to view it. Could be wrong though.
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In simple terms without being all technical, it is pretty much the process where you (Point A) is communicating with a user or server (Point B). A unknown identity (government, adversary) is possible to take the data you sent to Point B but then they will have a difficult time to "decrypting" the jibberish to translate it into something that is useful.
E.G. I send the following string "Hello"
The unknown identity would receive the encrypted text as "A45K1K1JKNN" (just a example)
Read more about cryptography if you're interested.

zephiK said:
In simple terms without being all technical, it is pretty much the process where you (Point A) is communicating with a user or server (Point B). A unknown identity (government, adversary) is possible to take the data you sent to Point B but then they will have a difficult time to "decrypting" the jibberish to translate it into something that is useful.
E.G. I send the following string "Hello"
The unknown identity would receive the encrypted text as "A45K1K1JKNN" (just a example)
Read more about cryptography if you're interested.
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Thanks for clarifying it further, that's pretty much what I thought the general idea was.

[Q] To decrypt or not?

What do you guys think? What are the pros and cons to decrypting?
Thanks

Cons - security if you lose your device is lost. For me a pro is not having encryption. I don't like it tampering with my files. Performance

How much performance difference is there between the 2? Also, is there any difference in battery?

FWIW: I just decrypted 5.1 a couple of hours ago. It feels much more responsive. And the boot time is much shorter.

The encryption uses CPU cycles so obviously it will use battery but I very much doubt it would be enough for you to be able to tell a difference

wasn't their a thread talking about there being a separate chip for encryption in the 805?
and although I haven't taken encryption off, I've never seen any weird performance issues considering I have other phones and have used other phones that don't even utilize it to begin with

Thanks everyone. I decided to decrypt

A2CKilla said:
wasn't their a thread talking about there being a separate chip for encryption in the 805?
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There is hardware encryption but we're not using it yet *unless* 5.1 has introduced this. It's been software encryption til now.
A2CKilla said:
and although I haven't taken encryption off, I've never seen any weird performance issues considering I have other phones and have used other phones that don't even utilize it to begin with
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There is definitely a perceivable difference in performance. If you decrypt, it will seem more responsive. Comparing this device performance against another device in a different encryption state will not yield any reliable results.

I'm running encrypted for the first time. I don't notice really any performance difference, other than thumbnails loading in Google Photos.

Disable forced encryption with it?

How noticeable is the performance boost from disabling forced encryption?
Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk

gammaxgoblin said:
How noticeable is the performance boost from disabling forced encryption?
Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk
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I have disabled since I have had my phone-initially I have noticed my phone boots up faster-also when copy-paste-ing big files was faster....but since the latest update I think there isn't much of a difference...any way-I am still decrypted since I I like the extra drop of performance and battery life.

performance is not affected if your device is encrypted or not. thats saying that performance has nothing to do with being encrypted or not. when you decrypt, your device will read/write a bit faster, that is all. oh, and will boot up a little faster.
oh, and has even less to do with battery life. not one affect fof battery life being encrypted or not. my n6 is still encrypted, i see 5.5-7 hours sot every single day.

The difference isn't noticeable to me, so far.

gammaxgoblin said:
How noticeable is the performance boost from disabling forced encryption?
Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk
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Some people say they can notice it. I've never tried encrypted here so can't say. Read/ writes will be slower. Also it takes extra processing power to decrypt files on the fly, so if you're read / writing at the same time as doing something CPU intensive, there will definitely be a performance hit. I just cant tell you if you'll notice it.. I notice the difference in the IT industry with encryption though, so if someone says they notice it here, I would believe them.

I would go as far as saying many people that see a difference are actually seeing the boost one gets when wiping in general. Sure some are restoring after the unencrypted move but many are wiping and starting over also.

CyberpodS2 said:
I would go as far as saying many people that see a difference are actually seeing the boost one gets when wiping in general. Sure some are restoring after the unencrypted move but many are wiping and starting over also.
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It's definitely possible.. I've always noticed the difference on other devices where decrypting doesn't mean getting rid of all data and definitely noticed a difference, so there may still genuinely be those who do notice a difference on this device. I wouldn't rule it out because there really are r/w and related performance hits.

Encrypted or Decrypted?

What do you guys say, should i encrypt my phone?

ProRules said:
What do you guys say, should i encrypt my phone?
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Most users doesn't know about encryption.
The users that know about it choose decrypt for more performance.
Others wants security and choose encrypt.
It is a personal question that needs a personal answer.
My N6 is unencrypted, because I make frequently backups of the data partition. Unencrypted backup is at least twice faster.

I'll go with encrypted. If your phone is ever stolen, you'll be glad that your data is safe. For me, the possible few minutes of extra battery and imperceptible performance lags in normal use are less important to me than keeping my stuff private.
As NLBeev says, it's personal preference.

dahawthorne said:
I'll go with encrypted. If your phone is ever stolen, you'll be glad that your data is safe. For me, the possible few minutes of extra battery and imperceptible performance lags in normal use are less important to me than keeping my stuff private.
As NLBeev says, it's personal preference.
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+1

those that decrypt for performance dont realize that decrypting does nothing to increase performance. they only get a slightly faster read/write.

simms22 said:
those that decrypt for performance ...
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Maybe it is comparable with the placebo effect.

Just read an news article that in the US telecom providers will deliver new phones with anti-theft software.
The user/owner is free to activate this or not.
Google has a different point of view. The policy is to force encryption.
Q. Why does these companies care for my phone?
A. The price of the phones will raise.

Encrypt.

NLBeev said:
Maybe it is comparable with the placebo effect.
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Its not a placebo affect and its not really that beneficial to write speeds, however reads speeds go 2-3X faster... Now on small files on your phone increasing read speeds by over double the speed is probably not very beneficial because the file isnt large enough to make a substantial difference but reading/writing 4k video files etc would show increased speed over encrypted. If I am not mistaken the snapdragon 805 in the nexus 6 does not use the hardware encryption module so the CPU is taxed with the encrypting and decrypting of files harder than that of a newer cpu which had the module implemented. Just a thought.
Either way im sure it doesnt make outstanding differences in day to day for normal files but either way its a choice and it is what it is. Its been covered here multiple times if you ran a search.

misfitpierce said:
.....Its been covered here multiple times if you ran a search.
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Better is experience. I've tried encrypt and decrypt for months.
The difference I notice is during backup. It is twice faster.
The daily use is the same encrypt or not. But that's personal. No benchmark stuff etc....

As I said in my first post "possible few minutes of extra battery and imperceptible performance lags in normal use", and all the comments pretty much echo that. Calibration machines may be able to see a difference in read-write speeds, and I certainly don't dispute that, but in day-to-day usage there is little to no effect caused by encryption - except in my head with the sense of security I have with an encrypted device...

Definitely no encryption. Tested on many roms and encryption is so much slower. That has nothing to do with placebo. Starts with up to 5 secs longer boot time and ends with opening apps. I have nothing on my phone that's worth encryption and my passwords are safe. So why should I. Couldn't blame Google more for forcing it. That should be a user decision and not Googles.

We're back full circle to the original question and answer. Personally I can spare the 5 seconds to reboot, apps open quickly enough for me, and I always have plenty of battery left at the end of the day.
We have given a range of opinions, but the answer was given in the very first reply by NLBeev: "It is a personal question that needs a personal answer."
I think we're done here...

mikaole said:
Definitely no encryption. <About forced encryption>. That should be a user decision and not Googles.
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I gave up a long time ago. G. won't change - we are 'Calimero'. ?

dahawthorne said:
As I said in my first post "possible few minutes of extra battery and imperceptible performance lags in normal use", and all the comments pretty much echo that. Calibration machines may be able to see a difference in read-write speeds, and I certainly don't dispute that, but in day-to-day usage there is little to no effect caused by encryption - except in my head with the sense of security I have with an encrypted device...
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I am not encrypted. security is an illusion. to stay safe I just make sure to be random dude. Anyway, there is a significant difference in boot/shutdown times and non significant but noticeable difference in start/shut down apps. Also, opening links from twitter with chrome web view is significantly faster when you're not encrypted.
Note! these are just my observations on day to day useage with same hardware/software, exept en/decypted.

"security is an illusion. to stay safe I just make sure to be random dude"
I have absolutely no clue what that means...

If i decrypt the phone will the performance of it be better?

What will improve and should I do it? I've seen that booting up takes longer but I can live with that, what bothers me is performance in system and I'm not really worried of someone spying on me

Try it, but you probably won't notice a difference. Other than the difference in boot times they felt the same in performance. I tried both ext4 and f2fs and couldn't see a performance difference either. F2fs uses more of the storage so I switched back to ext4 and got an extra 2 or 3 gigs of storage back.

Theoretically yes but practically no. In newer phones such as the OnePlus 3T you won't really notice the difference.

Yes, but you won't notice it. Performance impact of encryption is negligible.
Encryption (at least fde encryption in Android) is about protecting your data when you lost your phone, not about protecting you from spying. Think about it that way, losing your phone is a bad thing but losing your phone AND your all your data (your contacts, chat, sms, mms, photos, call logs, app data, banking data, browser history..) is much worse. Why would you put your data in such a risk? Don't do it, it is not worth it.

Michalko5896 said:
Yes, but you won't notice it. Performance impact of encryption is negligible.
Encryption (at least fde encryption in Android) is about protecting your data when you lost your phone, not about protecting you from spying. Think about it that way, losing your phone is a bad thing but losing your phone AND your all your data (your contacts, chat, sms, mms, photos, call logs, app data, banking data, browser history..) is much worse. Why would you put your data in such a risk? Don't do it, it is not worth it.
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That's it. Also, a lot of developers keep disabling encryption in their ROMs without a reason. Since encryption has become a standard in Android, CPUs have adopted lot of changes to bring the performance impact almost to zero.

954wrecker said:
Try it, but you probably won't notice a difference. Other than the difference in boot times they felt the same in performance. I tried both ext4 and f2fs and couldn't see a performance difference either. F2fs uses more of the storage so I switched back to ext4 and got an extra 2 or 3 gigs of storage back.
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Just look at that link... For f2fs vs ext4
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2697069
Edit: if u write a big file on ur phone it need to be encrypted, so it takes more time. So basically decrypt is way faster, but u will not see any difference.
Gesendet von meinem ONEPLUS A3003 mit Tapatalk

I could care less about benchmarks for speed or performance or anything. I trust my instincts and they tell me the difference is not noticable in my daily usage.

954wrecker said:
I could care less about benchmarks for speed or performance or anything. I trust my instincts and they tell me the difference is not noticable in my daily usage.
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The only reason to decrypt that I can think of is to use MultiROM.

Kk. If u test both, f2fs and ext4 u will see a big difference in app opening or switching apps. F2fs is way faster. but that shouldn't be discussed in that thread.
Gesendet von meinem ONEPLUS A3003 mit Tapatalk

I remember reading somewhere that the SD821 has hardware encryption, unlike any earlier chip. Which means the chip is taking care of it, and not the software... eliminating any slowdown of encrypted vs not encrypted.
Can someone confirm?

Yes, indeed I confirm : I made the comparison on Oxygen 3.5.4 and there's absolutely NO difference neither in day to day usage, neither in benchmarks.
The only reason I took the decision to not encrypt is multirom.

eddymonti said:
I remember reading somewhere that the SD821 has hardware encryption, unlike any earlier chip. Which means the chip is taking care of it, and not the software... eliminating any slowdown of encrypted vs not encrypted.
Can someone confirm?
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I'm not sure about a cryptography ASIC in SD821 (at least I've never heard of it), but ARMv8 has a set of instructions made for cryptography and that makes newer Android phones around 10x faster in software encryption.

Ok thanks for the answers guys.. I remember when I had nexus 5 when I encrypted my phone it did slow down so I thought it was the same on this phone

eddymonti said:
I remember reading somewhere that the SD821 has hardware encryption, unlike any earlier chip. Which means the chip is taking care of it, and not the software... eliminating any slowdown of encrypted vs not encrypted.
Can someone confirm?
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yes but it is not used. HW encryption in Snapdragon is much slower than SW encryption.

Tweet about the crypto-engine on 820/821

eddymonti said:
Tweet about the crypto-engine on 820/821
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Maybe, but most devices are still using software encryption.

Anyone actually spent days comparing both setups or are you all simply giving examples based on benchmarks and not real life usage? My posts are based on real life NOT silly benchmarks.

GioBozza said:
I'm not sure about a cryptography ASIC in SD821 (at least I've never heard of it), but ARMv8 has a set of instructions made for cryptography and that makes newer Android phones around 10x faster in software encryption.
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every cpu cycle take battery life-- what about battery life impact ?

oTeMpLo said:
every cpu cycle take battery life-- what about battery life impact ?
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little to none