Linux

My next phone will run Linux, even if it is inconvenient.

As soon as this phone is paid off, I'll be changing from Google Fi as well. Which sucks because it's hella cheap.

Check out postmarketOS, a real Linux distro for phones with a 10-year life cycle goal and mainline kernel support. It’s not daily-driver ready for everyone, but it frees you from Google and OEM lockdowns. If we want an open mobile future, this is the project worth supporting.

My next phone is definitely going to be a Linux phone. I don't care if it's ready. I'm ready.

tl;dr: buy a second hand pixel 8 and install GrapheneOS. It's Android, but it will get you through a few years while you wait for postmarketOS to become viable as a daily driver.

the vast majority of commenters here either have no direct experience with a Linux phone or have seen some shallow youtube "review" of a dude swiping the same two screens left/right and extrapolate a buncha shit that has no contact with reality.

presently, and in the foreseeable future, linux phones aren't an android alternative, they are just linux on the phone, i.e. they allow you to do linux shit on a handheld device.

like, the bleeding edge version of any variant (plasma mobile, gnome, phosh) isn't even close to an Android phone from like 2015, let alone a modern one.

and that's before we touch on the pillars of mobile tech like fluidity, battery efficiency, reliability, etc., none of those things are even in a remotely passable state, not to mention - using the thing to make calls. you are better off forgetting about the camera, as well.

and the reason is simple, not only is there a gargantuan discrepancy between evil corp's resources and the predominantly unpaid enthusiasts, each dev team's reimplementing shit that's already solved on another platform. apple doesn't have to do that. google as well.

then there's the idea that the javascript-backed Gnome - that has issues running fluidly on super-capable hardware - is the basis on a low-power device on which the linux mobile phone experience is built. reinventing solved shit, but in a stupid way - THREE FINGER swipe on a phone, really?

although there's a solid app base, the apps that are supposedly mobile friendly are few and far between, most are just downright unusable on a vertical screen and dog help you if launch an electron app. firefox, even with pmOS patches (useless without) is tiresome to use. you can forget about dating, ubering, banking, or even just using a messenger everybody else does.

if you're squeamish about flashing custom recoveries and ROMs, the e.g. pmOS install process is way, way, way more involved and failure prone. if you go with ubuntu touch or mobian, even more so.

finally, if you're talking about a device that you've grown accustomed to to the extent that you're using it subconsciously, swiping and multitasking and such whilst walking and dodging other pedestrians - no such thing exists over here.

I'm just tying this up because I keep reading about "switching", people are either delusional or misinformed, there's nothing (yet) to switch to.

get a couple of $50 ex-flaghips to play with, flash lineageOS on one and pmOS on the other and that should hold you over for a coupla years.

Smart phones are simultaneously such a wonder of human engineering and have become such a disappointment of human greed.

This whole situation has made me just care less about my phone, and use it less in my life while I use Linux PCs much more.

I don't see my phone as a "computer" at this point, really. It's more of a communication appliance. If I'm launching an app that's not texting, calling, GPS, or music, it's probably a replacement for a website I'd normally use on a PC.

Linux phones could change this though. The idea of your PC being your docked phone would work great for most use cases. Unfortunately though, even though I would love it I don't really see the general public jumping at the chance to get back to the desktop experience. I could maybe see a little traction in the business world.

My next phone will be a ThinkPad because it has a SIM card slot.

Unfortunately there's a lot(!) to do to make Linux enjoyable on a phone. I bought a Pinephone some years ago. And in addition to the slow hardware, the entire software/desktop experience isn't great. While everyone else has instant messengers, Linux doesn't have connected standby and emails and messages just don't arrive unless the screen is on. It wastes quite some power, and there are a bazillion small little quirks and annoyances and it's barely usable if compared to a regular smartphone. I think someone needs to invest quite some more time and money until this becomes a thing. I mean don't get me wrong, Linux and the low-level system is awesome. And it's brilliant on any server/laptop/desktop computer. It's just that there's so many things missing for a proper phone experience. And it's not just mildly inconvenient, but like people expect instant messages to be delivered...

Lets just load a e sim on the steamdeck and call it a day

I’m about a tech zero skill but I am at Lemmy for THIS news. Thank you for resisting complete shitification hegemony. Resist!

I've been a mobile dev for many years, I fell in love with the Nokia 810 with maemo which kinda got me started, but I never had one myself. I moved to OpenMoko and saved to buy a Neo. But then Android became big with Google's support and all companies rushing to have an alternative to iOS with the iPhone. Back then when Android meant openness. As much as I loved the openmoko project it had plenty of issues as a daily driver, so eventually I cracked and moved to Android with a Galaxy S2, ah, the innocence back then when one could think Google was actually different... Actually doing good and creating a great Linux phone.

I absolutely agree on all your points. It is time to kill Android as a free/open source idea if it is not dead yet. And you know what, Linux is absolutely ready to substitute anything as a mobile platform. It needs more polishing in terms of UI but Maemo nearly 20 years ago already offered a great UX IMO. Thank you Microsoft and all Nokia management for destroying it.

Now, I say Linux as a mobile platform is ready... But we all know it doesn't lack problems. What are those? The problems come from anticompetitive practices, locked hardware for chips, drivers and so on, specially all related to phone networking. The other main problem is apps which is only a small issue with all the ways there are available to make android apps run on Linux, that is... Until google comes to fuck things up with the points #3 and #4 you make. Those are the biggest threats right now, and it's no wonder Google is doing that. They are preventing the possibility of competition arising. Like I said, I have been a dev for many years, it absolutely sucks the path all tech is taking. But there are solutions, just need to have proper anticompetitive practices and protections... At least in Europe we kinda do, but more needs to be done.

The main point is, Linux as an alternative is kinda ready, if only there was a real posible competition to be had outside of being incredibly rich.

I'll consider a Linux phone as long as the following are met:

• Battery life is decent (for me this means a minimum of 24 hours of light use and no mystery drains).
• Reliable enough to not fear for my life when traveling.
• UX is polished enough to not be painful.
• Email notifications and communication apps work correctly (Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp).

If these are met, I'll buy whatever is available in a year or two.

Currently i am looking for a Jolla phone https://commerce.jolla.com/products/jolla-community-phone

They are private company but seems to be very user friendly and carefull with their dev community. What do you think about them folks?

Framework has the chance to do something really funny...

I'll switch away from Android when there's a good alternative, but I'm not very technical and need something with a nice GUI and an easy installation process. Hopefully Linux will offer something like that someday, but I don't think it's there yet.

My solution? Giving up the smartphone. They are too fragile and are high maintenance. I've simply had enough. So, I went with a Sonim XP3Plus flip phone. Mainly because the screen on the Pixel 3, the phone I went through the trouble of putting a custom ROM on and setting up just right, broke somehow inside.

Yeah, the flip phone runs Android, but it comes as a scaled down version of Android (no Google crap, or extra apps, like any app store; just the basics), so I don't have to do any modding. And I just keep my plan cheap for unlimited calling with very little data (I keep the data off anyways, so I don't care).

Basically, I've gone old school to solve a modern problem (for music, I went with an old school MP3 player). And if people can't be bothered to pick up the phone, I move on. This is where I stand now. I've had enough.

I feel like I finally have peace again after 10 years of using the smart phone. Being disconnected while outside is great.

Best part? The flip phone can last about 2 weeks on a full charge.

PS: Being completely off Google; even YouTube? Feels amazing. I've turned to Odysee, Peertube and B-chute and use those with RSS feeds. No algorithms.

This is how I solved the modern tech problem.

Ubuntu Touch has a planned release for September 24th! Eager to see what devices have a full compatibility rating to know what I'll buy next

At this point, the "best" solution might be buying one of those SBC (single board computers) that also has an android image, like orangePi or ODroid and "build" the rest of the phone on top of it. Might be the only way people can get a screen smaller than 6" as well. I say Android in this case because it has access to all the apps without needing emulation or Waydroid

OOOOORRRRR, just buy an used older phone that you know is easy to unlock and install a custom rom. Did that with a motorola G6, am happy with lineage. Not the fastest phone by a long shot, especially as newer versions of many apps just introduce more bloat because fuck you, but perfectly usable for messaging and video watching. Also has a headphone jack!

Send me back to the 90s with the flip phone. Old Nokia with a changeable battery, no malicious firmware that has spyware built in. It's just a phone.

What I really hope for is a way to install linux on any mobile device, be it Samsung, Google, One Plus or whatever, like we do with Linux… with linux it doesn’t matter which brand is your laptop… it always works, and if we can replicate that it means true freedom and also it means linux mobile phones are gonna be more fun and broader than desktop computers… cuz everyone uses smart phones.

I have a Pixel 9 Pro which is supposed to get security updates until 2031 but at the pace Google is closing Android down I wonder if it will even be viable to stay on an AOSP degoogled ROM until then.

I feel like the future is leading us to a place where we will have to reduce our mobile computing to a trusted but slow and unreliable main phone while keeping a secondary mainstream device for banking/government apps.

I don't agree!

A linux phone, or any other open source alternative, has ALWAYS been more important than the ones we've got. Being locked into an eco-system, has always been bad for the regular user. It's about companies controlling people and the market, and it should never have to be a choice between a rock and a hard place.

I really wish that the Firefox phone had gained more support. And I wish that there will soon be a linux-phone for the regular person, all over the world.

But I guess people in general keep choosing to lock themselves in, by using Google and Apple...

I imagine building on existing AOSP project like GrapheneOS or LineageOS would be the easiest path forward. There is already a decent ecosystem of open source apps available. You'd still need to figure out what to do with proprietary apps like Slack that regular people might need for day to day use.

Ultimately, the problem lies in lack of a hardware vendor willing to take make open phones that are geared towards running a custom OS on without having to jailbreak them. I really think the only way this can happen is if there was a vendor that focuses on providing a full stack open source system for mobile. Maybe a company like Liberux or even Framework will succeed at doing something like that at some point.

Liberux is using waydroid to add compatibility from what I've seen, so that may be the way forward where you have a base Linux system, and then a layer for running Android apps on top of it.

My next phone will be a Linux phone.

I was on board the Fairphone hype, and while I think they have a good message, I actually think Pine64 does exactly what they do - just without the flashy marketing. Fairphone still uses AOSP as the basis for their OSes, so there is still a risk of hardware lockout by Google. This is leaving alone other issues like no headphone jack and USB 2.0 for the latest generation's USB-C.

This is actually the same reason I think Ecosia won't succeed in the long term unless they build their own search engine. Luckily it looks like they've already started delivering results as of last month.

I should also mention that the PinePhone isn't Scott free from criticism either. Think I read somewhere that the camera is borked because the latest firmware or software update messed with the camera module functionality. No real fix for that soon, which sucks.