- OEMs have poured an enormous amount of resources into the camera software, Linux cameras are years behind from what I understand. - Android/iOS have thoroughly optimized the UX in all sorts of subtle ways, the big one being their keyboards. I literally can't type a single correct sentence on any of the mobile linux keyboards that I've tried because there's so much proprietary magic needed under the hood to figure out what the user is trying to say (autocorrect mostly, but I recall something about how apple also virtually adjusted the sizes of the keys to make it easier to type) - GPS, banking, and now keys for your house and car all need to work.
And all software is replicable.
What diminished the day-to-day difficulty for you? Is it because the ecosystem became more mature, or did you "crack the code" for how to interface with everything you needed from your phone? Is your use-case for a phone wildly different from that of a typical user?
It's really cool to hear that someone is successfully daily driving it and making this ecosystem work for them!
Make something novel? RTOS like response like blackberry, secure, fully opensource and such? With the era of LLM accelerated developement (don't crucify me), this wouldn't be such unreachable goal.
We would have to sacrifice bank apps but imho still worth it.
> run a desktop Linux distribution (or Windows for that matter) that supports mobile features (calling, SMS, and data)?
The above use ARM SoCs. Palm-sized x86 with cell modem? Doubt it.
Also, PinePhone is so much slower than Librem 5, which in practice feels closer to the (now discontinued) PinePhone Pro. Their specs only seem similar on paper, and only if you don't dig into the details. Though of course, Librem 5 being a 2019 design isn't a speed demon these days either - but I'm still using one and it's manageable.
They're the same specs. Pinephone Pro has more cores, ram, and storage.
> Their specs only seem similar on paper, and only if you don't dig into the details.
What do you mean?
It's difficult to just do things. Even windows feels more "free." Phone OSes are built like prisons.
Ideally Android would let you drop into a real shell, without having to deal with android sandboxing.
Regardless, I use termux and tasker to get my automations done.
It's a pretty big sandbox in my experience.
Maybe setup authentication to use a Yubikey.
NFS mounts and exports? systemd services? custom kernels?
If you're outside of the US, the availability of useable mobile OS's outside of Android and iOS is pretty abundant compared to the situation here in the US.
Not saying that's what you're doing, but I hear it often enough.
I bought mobile devices that I could root over the ones that I couldn't. I favor companies that are less shitty. I preferred Linux over Windows as main OS even when Linux was harder to use (now I think in fact might be easier). But life is made of trade-offs and I did not see particularly good arguments of why Android is "that bad". You can root some devices and one can even avoid lots of services if you don't like Google (maps, mail, etc.) - which I also do.
So for me Android manages to stay in a unstable equilibrium : good for what I need, trustful enough for some stuff (money), not more spying that others (GSM towers), some levels of customization if you really want. Could it go "evil"? Sure, but considering what happens in the world, I am more worried my neighbors would have idiotic ideas than the fact that Google will be so evil.
That's why I don't mind carrying around plastic cards, they just go in my wallet with my ID and a small amount of cash anyway.
Even if I was willing to use GPay, I don't like the possibility of my phone dying locking me out of my apartment and preventing me from paying for things.
A non problem imho.
What I would like is to take my existing iPhone 13 Pro and install a real Linux on it so I could guarantee decent hardware. You know, like we could do with pretty much any computer before smartphones.
I don't remember all the details but I had a Mac G3 around the same time I started using Linux: I don't remember the story about installing Linux no Mac hardware as being a particularly easy one.
Now I'm not saying that years after the fact, Linux wouldn't run fine on Intel Macs. But if I recall correctly it always has been a bit of a bumpy road.
That's a bit of an oversimplification that makes this sound more concerning than it is. Not that it's 100% un-concerning, but I suggest that anyone concerned about this read the linked docs. It really was designed to be quite privacy preserving, though it's obviously a difficult challenge in this context.
Keeping the name out of that data does a lot for privacy. With a name in there, you could use the data to find my name and figure out my address. Without the name in there, you don't know which point I even am without knowing some of my locations from another source.
You will need to turn off your Bluetooth if you want to stop advertising a rotating random number.
The only difference with the contact tracing is that a key, on the device, can correlate the ciphertext. I have it off because the utility was never demonstrated.
There are just too many very useful services that only work with Android/iOS. Take taxi apps for example. I've used over a dozen in the past few years, many of them local to a specific country or region that made getting around much much easier.
An old smartphone or tablet can do that job and stay in a drawer at home 99% of the time.
I mean, if they can force Microsoft to support other browsers than IE6, then why can't they force banks?
Given fair phone exists, it should now be able to get all kind of apps anyone wants.
FWIW one can also do that on stock Android or its GrapheneOS variant pretty conveniently, including storage access, am, boot background processes, etc. It is not as complete as being root on Linux proper but still.
If you're a technical guy and you feel like the android and ios are both pretty much destroyed by corporate overlords, then I sincerely invite you to try UBports or SailfishOS (from my research I find these two the most beginner friendly). The experience most certainly will hurt (at the beginning), but the sooner more people start using it, the sooner more people will start contributing to linux on phone and make our systems better. I was nervous that I would not survive without android and its entire app catalog and maps, or that a moment would come at work or in some critical situation that I would need android for some dumb reason and wouldn't be able to do something and spaghetti would fall out of my pockets, but for the last 4 years nothing like that happened. The most painful thing for me are probably the maps, but when I need long distance GPS with live traffic, I'll most certainly be driving with someone, so I just ask the passenger to navigate :) for less important voyages the unav is completely fine, there's also puremaps which I haven't tested.
People can spend their money however they choose, but I wouldn’t spend $1800 on a phone like that if you want to actually use it as a phone. And before buying it as underpowered “portable” Linux computer (the battery life is not good even though I hear suspend mostly works now), this is still outrageously overpriced even by current hardware pricing.
Boards:
M.2 Modem Module China, inquire for USA/EU options
M.2 WiFi/BT Module India, inquire for more options
It's not going to win the market, but I applaud anyone providing more choices.
Why not just use an Android AOSP distribution? SailfishOS is proprietary. It will be a lot more "locked down" than LineageOS/GrapheneOS.
AOSP does not include nor depend on Play Services.
>locking down of device trees to hinder custom ROM development
Most manufacturers do not distribute these either. The user doesn't even have a pixel so it is not relevant.
>all the AI stuff being put into the system
The AI stuff is not part of AOSP.
>or most recently (and perhaps worst), removing the ability of installing apps per your own wishing - it's become sort of like a "death by a thousand papercuts" situation.
Again that is not a feature of AOSP, but one bolted in on top of it.
I think the author would benefit much more by using a different distribution of AOSP.
AOSP doesn't even include a functional keyboard nor a proper call manager nowadays
Realistically nobody is developing apps for linux phones, so the options are android or no apps at all.
FairPhone 4 is a pretty ancient cpu. I guess it's benching a bit above the OnePlus 6/6t that has been a go-to for a good fraction of a decade now. https://browser.geekbench.com/v7/cpu/84602 https://browser.geekbench.com/v7/cpu/5200
Motorola at least seems to be moving to unlock bootloaders. ARM gpus have some ok drivers now (thanks collabora & many others), which, a decade ago seemed like way way way more than the universe was ever going to allow.
I still think Samsung, with their new mountains of market cap, should try to do better. Exynos is right there, with an RDNA GPU just begging for the world's best drivers to take advantage of the hardware you already ship. You could make a stunner! Why not try?
"The mobile linux space isn't exactly looking good right now, but it holds some promise. Ubuntu Touch managed to survive being abandoned by Canonical, and postmarket is still seeing good development even if not having great hardware adapation at the moment."
Oh, you linked to Fairphone 4, let's see:
- battery: partial
- audio: partial
- camera: partial
- fingerprint: broken
postmarketOS device support is a joke, they couldn't even get ONE vendor to support the OS..
Mainlining is very hard though so the results are expected
I highly recommend keeping an eye on postmarketOS blog. [1] It's a fun reading, and development's been really rapid lately.
What stopped me from full migration to pmOS the last time I tried it about a year ago was poor support of Magisk and Xposed in Waydroid, two things I can't imagine using Android apps without.
But! With some tricks you can get pmOS dualboot on OP6. [2] Haven't tried it, but looks amazing.
I think with the current direction and velocity, pmOS is going to get really close to Android in usability on supported hardware in the next couple of years. Except for power saving parity that never gonna happen.
[1] https://postmarketos.org/blog/
[2] https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/OnePlus_6_(oneplus-enchil...
As daily driving Linux desktop/laptops, I mostly find that android(at least samsung galaxy-flavored) is next gen of Microsoft Windows, in bad ways. At least you can "hack" the Windows to customize something by your own, android does not. Performance also questionable nowadays, not for gaming but browsing purpose for me, may drain more battery than expected. Also MS acknowledges the issues and made statements to fix while I haven't seen samsung's.
Anyway, My opinion is, If you are nerd like me, I would buy one phone that 1) can unlock the bootloader 2) can root 3) at least kernel source available, some companies do not disclose until legal? actions 4) optional, linux port-able (via community) 5) optional, officially supporting linux(not aosp)
and then buy second phone, that has great security support, e.g Apple iPhone or Google Pixel, and use it like a wallet(banking/cam/gps/... I would not like to support other vendors, what if they abandon security patches, and then phone being vulnerable). I believe more android application will be more restrictive than before in the future.
For linux, you own the hardware. Because it's open source, you can audit and harden the every aspects, e.g You might able to use proprietary bluetooth codecs, which vendor disables in android ROM. When AI era, you may able to investigate and mod stuffs which you don't fully understand. This take risks, and we have right to take the risks instead banning it.