Apple and Google will gladly erase the works of developers to chase profits.
What about dumb phone hardware that can be connected to micro PCs? Like literally a basic as basic can be phone. Then jack that into a basic small computer to supply data/SMS connection. Think the size of a clutch, wallet or smaller?
I know it’s not the most practical option, but it would be a literal computer. Linux, Windows or otherwise. No need to reinvent the wheel.
Could be cool. Idk. Like a gun shoulder holster or something.
Or maybe I’m dumb.
Hopping Linux phones gets a spot this decade.
I Hope you are right. A european “Android” would be nice.
We need to talk about them more. A lot of the time when developers go through the efforts of actually building apps rarely do they receive attention. It causes the feelings of “why continue this if nobody else cares.”
Artists want their works appreciated.
Why not much development with newer hardwares? Most devices are 2021 or older
I think because how the older devices function is more well documented.
I’m beginning to think that my next phone will be a (relatively) dumb phone that can do bluetooth + wifi tethering to a small linux tablet.
It’s hard to find even a flip phone that doesn’t have a GPS antenna that you aren’t allowed to shut off.
Some tablets and laptops have a SIM-slot, which makes it possible to use a dataSIM. Then it has access to internet independent of your phone.
Supply side attackers giving them both a big bearhug
First of all we need a way to install linux on android phones. They’re literally souped-up Raspberry-Pis with battery backups.
Is pinephone still an option? I never got one, any alternatives?
Lol no, the pinephone had an allwinter processor that would have been fine in ~2014, cant speak to the specs of the pinephone pro, but I would imagine they were better.
The issues with the model I had were mostly hardware related. The expectation of “it just works” are being completed for the linux desktop enviroments now-ish. I have not played with my pinephone in a long while, but linux phones should still be a few years behind.
I have the original PinePhone lying around, it was honestly already a piece of crap when it came out. Laggy to all hell for me with horrible battery life. Maybe it’s gotten better since then, but I can’t recommend it
I had to re-solder my battery contacts. Ended up embedding it into a pipboy like project right after I got my first 3d printer. Its been collecting dust since.
Really, the only thing on it I would like for anyone else to adopt is the hardware switches under the back case. Looking at you Fairphone, steal that. Given the nature of mobile design in [current year], its a wonderful piece-of-mind feature that the nerds who want/can move away from apple and google would really appreciate.
i don’t think they are ready though.
It’s sort of a paradox. Low adoption leads to less resources, bug reports, developer interest, etc. and that in turn leads to low adoption.
What works for me is daily driving my linux phone, and having a used regular smartphone sitting in a drawer, turned off, until I absolutely need to run an app that is not compatible with Waydroid.
maybe for enthusiasts, but the average person isn’t making bug reports.
i would 100% own a big tablet like this to use at home, at the right price.
but then i remember i can more easily just get a used touchscreen laptop and install linux on that instead.
are the prices affordable ?
Yes, because you can buy used phones that have unlocked bootloaders to install a distro.
sorry I’m asking a lot, but does there happen to be a wiki or list of such devices ? What should I buy if I ever (rn I don’t have a mobile, only a computer with Ubuntu MATE)
I’m happy to answer questions. I would say look at Fairphone or Volla since they have the most open mainstream handsets if you’re in Europe. Though if you’re in other regions try looking at well supported used models.
https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices
https://devices.ubuntu-touch.io/
Thanks !! I really have an obsession to bookmark wikis
Is the Furiphone good? What is good and what is bad about it?
I have been using a fairphone for about 2 years and its great. I drop my phone a lot and I’ve still not broke the screen, even though it deffo needs a case. I like carrying around spare batteries, even though you can’t do that on the fp6 apparently. The camera sucks worse than phones that some of my friends have that were 1/3 of the price.
Also shiftphone is an option!
What about Pixel devices ?
It’s been years, and I still miss windowsphone so much. I knew we were fucked when they axed it and iPhone and android were already starting to stall out with a duopoly.
At one point, we had blackberry, some form of meego, Windowsphone, android and iOS, as well as niche things like jolla and sailfish.
Eh? Microsoft and Windowsphone basically killed the only real alternative to Android and iOS when they did their hostile takeover of Nokia, and Windowsphone itself was an atrocity that luckily died rather quickly.
Windowsphone itself was an atrocity that luckily died rather quickly.
“Tell me you never used Windows Phone without telling me you never used Windows Phone”
My first phone was a Windows Phone. It could send and receive calls and messages, and it had a crappy but functional web browser, but it didn’t have any of the fun apps my friends’ phones had.
Did you use Windows Phone or a phone running Windows Mobile?
There were very few Windows Phone devices. Windows Mobile, however, had a bunch. It was a PDA operating system that pre-dated iOS, Android, and Blackberry. It was a competitor to PalmOS.
Did you use Windows Phone or a phone running Windows Mobile?
Both? Pretty sure I had this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_Lumia_520
Looks like it ran the mobile version of Windows 8.
I have used WindowsPhone and it was strictly worse than Nokia’s Meego running on a N900/N9.
It was faster than Android or iOS, better optimised, had massively better features (like People Hub, Message Hub, etc), and the best cameras on the market at the time.
But, yeah, it was an “atrocity” because you couldn’t install Snapchat…
It got Snapchat in the end, there was some guy who made a whole bunch of missing apps, including a tinder app which worked better than the original.
Rudy Huyn. Ended up working at Microsoft. He was doing a bunch of apps, but I think you might be confusing Snapchat for Instagram. His Instagram app worked for a year or two, but Snapchat killed any attempt at a third party app immediately, as soon as they realised what’s going on.
“Tell me you never used an N900/N9 without telling me you never used N900/N9”
There, fixed it for you 😅
The Meego phones that Nokia had were miles ahead of WindowsPhone. I am not even talking about iOS and Android (Android was indeed also pretty bad back then).
Soooo… Your argument for “Windows Phone was an atrocity” is that a completely different OS was better?
Make it make sense.
No, my argument is that is was really bad compared to what it replaced on Nokia phones. The first Nokia WindowsPhones basically used the hardware of the N9 but with this horrible OS no one other than the Microsoft execs wanted.
Windows phones were underrated.
Which one 😁
Please let me know viable options.
Get a Pixel 8 or 9 and install GrapheneOS. The recent changes to AOSP aren’t some death knell for the project. Even if it were: using GOS on an older Pixel for the next five years or so is going to be way safer than alternatives.
I’ll grant that whether or not this matters to someone depends on their personal threat model. My counter argument is to gesture broadly at the state of things. If they think the computing device they use most often shouldn’t be their most reasonably secured and trustworthy computer then I’m not sure there’s much else to discuss on the topic.
I want to be able to recommend any of the Linux phone projects or even something like Murena’s new partnership with HIROH but they don’t solve the problems GrapheneOS does.
The best breakdown of current options I’ve found is here: https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm
Cool, but in my country when O find a used pixel 8 it usually costs around 700 USD! Too much for the hardware…
You’re absolutely correct. Living in the core of the empire or within one of its beneficiaries affords certain advantages which are made inaccessible to those outside of those regions. Your best approach is likely assuming your mobile device is compromised and only conducting sensitive activity on an inexpensive laptop you can reasonably secure.
Some secure-by-default Linux OSes I’d recommend are:
Parrot Security OS https://parrotsec.org/
Tails OS https://tails.net/
Qube OS https://www.qubes-os.org/
These are listed from most user-friendly to least. Signal has a desktop client that I’d be comfortable using on any of those three platforms.
Moving to phones made by google as a protest against google really seems weird. Sorry, but I will stick to the less secure options
This position misses the point entirely and introduces personal risk for no benefit. Buy a used Pixel if it makes you feel better about it. Then you’re upcycling.
By less secure I mean lineageos or /e/os. How does it miss the point entirely?
Neither LineageOS nor /e/OS are comparable alternatives. They’re significantly less secure than stock Android.
“I don’t want to support Google so I refuse to use their hardware with an OS which, by default, prevents Google from achieving their objectives. Instead I’ll use insecure platforms that still give Google most of what they want.”
Android and Chrome are independent from Google in the same way that AT&T is independent from the NSA. The reality is that Google does what they want with both projects. Their main line of business is surveillance and those projects facilitate their business goals. GrapheneOS is developed for the Pixel platform because of the tight integration with Android from the hardware up.
This has allowed the GOS project to build a modified OS which is stripped of the default tooling and dependencies that give Google power over the device and its user’s digital ecosystem. The same cannot be said for any other project at the moment.
Using Google’s hardware to deny them access to the reasons they developed and produced that hardware to begin with directly spits in their face. It’s more effective to buy hardware from Google, or buy one of their devices second-hand from a trusted source, and then modify it to achieve our goals while denying our would-be owners their own than to continue capitulating to their brand of Surveillance Capitalism.
I really want to understand this, but I don’t find constructive information anywhere. Everything I read either doesn’t really explain anything at all and is based on assumptions/opinions, or expect me to be a mobile os engineer.
Let’s say I have a phone with lineageos, without google play services and without gapps, with most apps installed via f-droid and only a couple from aurora store. What power does google have over me, that wouldn’t also have if I used a pixel with grapheneos?
In terms of security, If any threat involving physical access to the phone is statistically irrelevant for me, how is my phone less secure than stock android? And how would grapheneos improve my life?
To your last, it wouldn’t. Graphene is smartly designed but everyone thinks you need all that security. Most people don’t and wouldn’t notice a damn bit of difference.
Lineage is offered on far more devices and if your main goal is just degoogling you get a lot more options without giving money to Google.
There are no realistic linux options for your phone. These memes are pipe dreams by people that haven’t actually looked at how utterly incapable linux currently is at powering a smart phone for normal daily use and how these apps that they’re complaining about android and apple are removing won’t run on the linux phone in the first place.
All dreams start as pipe dreams. Every one.
Sounds like switching will mean we will lose everything we’re already losing. Might as well go ahead and quit cold turkey.
Yeah… I’m rapidly approaching the point of just learning to live without a smartphone altogether as it becomes more and more frustrating to find one that has what I want.
That is correct, currently, moving to a linux phone will lose you more than what you’re losing with Google and Apple changes.
Apps are just part of the problem. Running a full linux OS on a phone with all the normal mobile phone capabilities is also an exercise in frustration. Taking Ubuntu Touch as an example, the OS has been around since 2011, was released in 2014 and it’s list of approved phones is still minuscule. If you’re a person on VZW, that list grows even smaller as VoLTE is problematic enough to be considered impossible to get working reliably.
I truly hope that the linux phone landscape shapes up but in it’s current form, it’s actually losing ground as it’s development is slower than the hardware development and at it’s current rate, will never be a viable option.
At this point I’d rather keep my freedom and lose the convenience. If it means losing apps and horsepower, fine by me. I’m already half resigned to going back to a dumbphone. I’m also looking at options to assemble my own phone with off the shelf parts if that’s what it takes.
When you abandon freedom to achieve security, you lose both and deserve neither. - Thomas Jefferson
i hear there is actual good stuff to be done with stripped raspberry pis.
what are you looking at?
Phone calls, SMS, data as a baseline. GPS, and a way to run signal would be great. Everything else would be gravy.
My first thought was to use a pi zero as a base from which to build. Getting everything to fit in a package that fits in my pocket would be next. I can go to a machine shop to make a case from aluminium, rubber gaskets for water protection. Unfortunately I have a more than full time job and can’t really dedicate any time to figuring this out, but if there are reproducible instructions already out there, then I will be looking at that option and start getting the parts to build.
It also helps that my phone carrier is offering me a free line right now so I can run 2 phones like a drug dealer.
As read by Spock although Civilization a slightly different version attributed to Benjamin Franklin.
You saw how fast companies waffles when you hurt the money like they did with jimmy Kimmel. Greedy and souless
Exactly why self hosting and getting open source hardware is extremely important. At this point in ready to assemble a phone with off the shelf parts if that’s what it takes.
There’s options, yes. Ubuntu Touch is getting better.
AFAIK, the main bottleneck (aside from hardware support) is a working open source IMS stack. IMS is the IP Multimedia Subsystem that is responsible for things like VoLTE/VoWIFI, SMS/MMS, etc. The last time I looked at Ubuntu Touch, it only supported baseband (not sure if that’s the right term?) calls and SMS/MMS. Basically those only work in “3G” mode and won’t work if your carrier requires VoLTE.
Lack of an open source IMS is also problematic for some other Android distros as well (and why flashing a newer GSI ROM to an older handset won’t necessarily give you VoLTE).
And don’t even get me started on the complete fustercluck that is RCS 😠
Sadly VoLTE isn’t actually a standard and implemented differently by every vendor. Ubuntu Touch does support VoLTE on some of their supported devices these days, but it is an uphill battle due to the lack of a common standard.
Why isnt stolen license a thing?
That’s funny I’ve had several Android apps run fine under Linux mobile OSes.
I’m not going to say they’re ready for general public daily use but there’s no reason they one day couldn’t be? There’s a foundation there. With a good enthusiast community we could get it to the point that it’s at least useable for power users and grow from there.
I’m not going to say they’re ready for general public daily use but there’s no reason they one day couldn’t be? There’s a foundation there. With a good enthusiast community we could get it to the point that it’s at least useable for power users and grow from there.
Foundation? Well, consider me corrected, I’m clearly ready for pound town.
What’s the point in the sarcasm?
There’s never going to be some viable alternative to Android and iOS that just springs up out of nowhere fully developed ready for daily driving…
(I was echoing the other guy on the other half of your comment :P)
That’s funny I’ve had several Android apps run fine under Linux mobile OSes.
Several? Well, consider me corrected, it’s clearly ready for prime time.
Thanks for not reading any of the rest of my comment
Thank you for starting with a contrary clickbait sentence, then immediately following it up with a confirmation of my comment that linux is not suitable as a mobile OS.
You’re just a giant bundle of negativity and unpleasantness, aren’t you?
And I’m starting to notice that being a bit more common from piefed users nowadays
UBPorts is a solid foundation. It just needs more adoption and backing.
Removed by mod
https://pine64.org/devices/pinephone/ https://jolla.com/
I haven’t used either of those directly but have started looking into linux on a tablet (Plasma mobile mainly) and things are definitely rough… nowhere near the polish of Android or iOS (understandably) and the app store options are not great / hacky
I’m just getting into things here, but my guess is that if you want to try a linux phone, if you’re OK living in a world that’s closer to the first days of smartphones than the current fairly-advanced smartphone, you might only be slightly or mildly frustrated. If you’re looking for a modern smartphone experience, you’re probably going to have a bad time.
That said, the lack of viable options for smartphones is terrible and it’s somewhere I’d like to invest some time contributing to open-source projects to improve
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If the big problem is licensing proprietary protocols, wht not just make pirate distros?
Fully anonymous open source development is viable. This could happen. If done well, it could be a very good OS due to being able to do things without license concerns. The problem is: using it wouldn’t be legal. Disguise mode to seem like other OS?
Use KDE. It looks like KDE.
I can’t wait to no longer be forced to use the robber baron apple’s AppStore.
to the dismay of the stans, all sorts of cool “subversive” stuff will start popping up on iphones!
I want one. I wish any had great hardware. Like Snapdragon 8 gen 3 level soc
To add why I want great hardware. A Linux phone needs a mainstream draw and I think gaming can be it. What I see on Android going on with GameFusion and Winlator, with a real Linux phone, such a thing could be way more streamlined especially if such a device draws in way more interest in open source drivers for mobile GPUs - Adreno, Mali, PowerVR.
Besides that, I think there needs to be some default apps that are good even if not Libre or whatever. By default some company should come out with a phone that has Flathub(something that filters to applications that they declare they’re mobile disaply and touchscreen friendly), Signal, Element (something Matrix to replace Discord), and the basic applications things come with. Gallery, dialer, SMS/MMS/RCS application, camera, calendar, email client etc. The application store needs to facilitate payments in some way. Whether it’s crypto or paypal or GNU Taler or whatever. Facilitate developers to have a path to get paid for their work
Right now the only company coming close to having the software services is Proton. Company with hardware clout it missing. Don’t know if Valve would ever consider doing something with Plasma Mobile seeing as SteamOS already ships with KDE Plasma. That would be the dream. Ship it with Steam configured with FEX/proton
Steam phone when? 🤩
I wasn’t on board with your original comment until this one… Well put.
My plan going forward is to either make or buy a basic small cyberdeck type system. Using my phone as basically little more than a glorified cellular modem. Or for isolated calls or SMS.
Looking at investing in and setting up some mesh halow infrastructure at home and a couple other places to reduce the need for the cellular modem part a bit more.
Hear me out; steam deck as a phone. WE CAN BRING BACK SIDETALKING
You jest. But those of us born in the 70s and before have first-hand knowledge of this magic device.
Behold! 30 minutes of total talk time, with no curly cords or anything!
LOL a Steam Deck isn’t even that absurd.
Bring actual steam games to phones!
I just need two things myself. SMS and phone. Maps would be nice, but I can use an old phone for that.
A cyberdeck with just VOIP/SMS would be awesome.
Even something arm-based, like a Raspberry Pi, can still run a KDE instance and allow you to connect to your phone through KDE Connect. There’s definitely a lot of possibility there, as long as you’re willing to keep around an old non-flag-ship phone as a modem.
Maybe check out the Pocket Reform and look into WWAN modules with SIM cards that have service in your geographical area.
