What linux phone is closest to ready for daily use
What linux phone is closest to ready for daily use
I want to switch from android phone to linux and i want to know which phone is closest to daily driver. I only need call sms and bluetooth to work and battery should last 1 day. also working map camera and web browser app would be great. for os i have thinked to use ubuntu touch or postmarket os. Phones what i have most interested Volla phone Pixel 3a Fairphone 4 Pinephone or pinephone pro Any thoughts or ideas
I can't give you any useful advice on the phone/os, but I really think you should keep an old or cheap android phone as a backup. You never know when you are going to absolutely need some app, that is unfortunately only available on mainstream phones (android or iOS).
Maybe you can answer one for me, too. I'm not a coder or really great with computers. I use Linux because of the philosophy behind it/political reasons, and because I really love the look and feel of Gnome, and it has just about everything I need. I dual boot Windows in case my college has some program I absolutely have to have, and I'm too dumb to figure out virtual machines and wine.
Do you think Linux phones are ever going to be a viable option for someone like me? I use my phone for browsing Lemmy, gps, streaming/YouTube, audiobooks, et cetera. I don't have a lot of niche use cases, but I also don't have a lot of understanding on how to do certain things myself. I can use a terminal if I can copy/paste or have a guide.
A postmarketOS ready phone should do it. On your Linux PC you install pmbootstrap and follow the guides. Its easier than flashing android ROMs. A combination of phosh, fde and f2fs gave a secure and rock solid linux phone with the experience of near all apps known from gnome desktop.
I would advice op the same btw. but I don't know how good every phone is supported. I use a pinephone.
Currently those phones are meant for advanced GNU/Linux users and tinkerers. So you will have to learn some things or maybe ask other people for help from time to time. It might be hard and there is no guarantee that it will work for you. But if you have the patience, you could give it a try. Check out my short PinePhone review and this thread.
PinePhone, PinePhone Pro and Librem 5 should have the best GNU/Linux or postmarketOS support, but their SoCs are not be as fast and energy efficient as other modern phones. You can check my short PinePhone review and there is also some information in this thread. PinePhone's battery will last a day only if you don't use the phone much.
for os i have thinked to use ubuntu touch or postmarket os
Note that postmarketOS is not GNU/Linux, since it's based on Alpine and Ubuntu Touch is GNU/Android or something like that, since it uses the Android kernel. The most popular GNU/Linux distros are Mobian and Manjaro.
Librem 5
URGENT WARNING: Purism, the company manufacturing Librem 5, is a company you should avoid. There is a non-zero chance you will give your money away, and receive nothing. https://vid.puffyan.us/watch?v=-IjUryQOlgk
Carry on.
To be fair those were preorders and I'm pretty sure everyone did get their phone eventually. It just took a really long time. At least they don't make proprietary software like Louis Rossmann and unlike Pine64, they contribute a lot to the software development. They've created Phosh and still develop it, so it would be a shame if this company didn't exist.
https://wiki.debian.org/Mobian/Devices
I think OnePlus 6/6T and Pocophone F1 are currently the best supported Android devices, for both Mobian and PostmarketOS.
That might be true for Android phones, but GNU/Linux phones have the best support.
I'm using Poco F1 with postmarketOS and mobile data doesn't work for me. Anyone else has this problem?
I daily drive PinePhone Pro with the Pine keyboard to extend battery life. The experience is far from Android, but it's usable.
What distro do you use? Is there anything that doesn't work/works awfully? I understand the camera used to be a problem but dunno if that's still the case
I use Arch Linux ARM (with Danct repos).
Camera works and sometimes broken after suspend, but I don't use it. Audio on calls sometimes buggy. But megi resolved call issues, I updated today. Battery life is poor unless you use a keyboard. Battery indicator displays combined percentage which isn't ideal.
I wonder about this too. And instead of a secondary, backup android, can't we just emulate andoid in a vm/container under linux? Sounds crazy, but it isn't really.
I present to you https://waydro.id/
Works pretty well, but I've had issues with user input (touch screen) that made it not viable for my purposes (using Signal)
You are literally talking about sailfish os at this point. (what they do isnt exclusive to them)
https://lemmy.ml/post/12206964
jackie-chan-wtf.jpg
Someone make a Framework laptop phone ;P
MNT Reform has some interesting innovations as well.
But purely phone the problem is computing power typically.
If you can get a small enough screen say 6-7" you could always do a m.2 modem or just forego traditional for VOIP, Chatty has SIP plumbed in.
I think we should really just can the love affair with "phones"
You now have a Star Trek "Communicator" thing in your pocket. That does many communication apps, video, audio, text.
Seeing the small form factor handheld game consoles gives me hope a SFF Linux Phone Mod is close to come.
Its probably already doable if any of them can have the controller wings removed.
@electricprism @Volfase I think MNT pocket reform can already do everything. Has SIM card slot, mic and speaker. I'm not sure of OS available for it though
What would be the advantage over PinePhone or Librem 5?
Opinion Disclaimer.
PinePhone (at least v1) is no longer maintained in Mobian due to changes in tech. It was a great Dev device for it's time. The camera was terrible and it was awfly slow which isn't a surprise at its humble $200-400 price.
The device is a SBC Single Board Computer meaning the modem is soldered on the same silicon as the CPU, RAM, Storage, etc...
All Cellular modems are made by 2 international companies last I checked who all have blobs in their modems -- this is bad because it means open source can't have a fair shot at competing when you need their "blessing" to use the Cellular Internet.
Librem 5 is better in some areas worse in others. The modem is a m.2. This allows the Mainboard to cut power to the modem as desired. The modem can't be entirely turned off in other phones and as they are on the same SBC there is speculation secret commands could be used for data extraction or to activate spyware in cellphones as was recently discovered with Android and iOS. Separating the m.2 isolates the abilities of the modem module as a "firewall" being the closest comparison.
Librem 5 is also slow. The camera is better than PP. It can do phone and SMS okay but loading a webpage on it is not fun. Both devices have hotswap batteries so to speak so the charge is a nominal issue for me.
PPP is supposedly more battery intensive but manufactured in Hong Kong, which has been absorbed into China. For this reason the tech world is not as fond of their PPP as their initial PP before China absorbed them. Considering the last 4 years people are no longer "fond".
Something newer than PP or L5 is needed. Something that can do basic tasks without binary blobs wrecking The FOSS Dream.
Framework is a little big but if you see what modders have done it is a good candidate.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/handheld-gaming-pc-created-using-framework-laptop-components
Having the ability to add mics with physical kill switches and cameras with kill switches or being omitted entirely in my opinion would be optimal.
Not just having a " mute" button in the same way that when you press mute on zoom or "camera off" if the application has access to audio and video it can still capture all that audio and video when users think they are not being watched.
MNT uses RISCV and ARM SBC IIRC and modularizes a small form factor SFF device and maybe someday will rise to the occasion, or what I mean is modders have a better shot with that kind of thing.
Moving out of the Cellular space away from Phone numbers and to Element, or SIP or VOIP just makes sense for communications. It "cuts the cord" of the ATT / Bell monopoly that has plagued humans for decades.
Eventually we will see "phones" move away from cellular to satellite. This may be the jump we need to break free of all this blob nonsense cock blocking Linux.
There isn't a optimal answer just yet, like do I build a phone out of a RPI5? when RPI5 and ARMs in general have blobs.
I think major headway has been made in the software front thanks to KDE, Gnome, Purism, Mobian, PostmarketOS and others.
I think the death grip is nearly over as more SFF production capabilities are commonplace now.
A winner hasn't really been declared, hell a Steam Deck could even be modded (x86 too) to run off the shelf Linux tech and the OS could be on MicroSD and the modem could theoretically be in the m.2 slot. Purism does sell the modems for $50 on their store.
Anyways, there are more questions than answers, at least in the present tense -- Who Will Deliver? Could this be the year of the Linux Phone? Maybe for some.
I use a PinePhone (non-pro) as a daily-driver for 4+ years now. Sure it runs well. Just depends by what you mean by "linux". If you use firefox and KDE you're gonna suffer and complain about battery life.
If you're ready to work a bit to make it custom and very frugal (in my case: pmos + sxmo) and use mostly CLI and TUI applications, then you can get a lot from it. I use links -g for a majority of my browsing, tut for the fediverse, aerc, gomuks, etc. for communications. heck there is even a simplex CLI client.
It's exciting, it's customized and i find it 10x more interesting than #$%!ndroid. and i make my backups through rsync. but it's for sure a bit of work...
Does anyone know is there coming pinephone 2 or something like that? And has somebody used pinetime like or hate it?
I've been told that PinePhone 2 is not happening this year. (If AllWinner will continue to supply A64 SoCs, it might take even longer.)
Regarding SoC, the likely/obvious candidate is RK3566 - but we'll have to wait and see for the when and how. (I, personally, would love to see a PinePhone V - think PineTab V, but as a phone).
PineTime: It has nice companion apps on Mobile Linux, but I went back to my Pebble Time Steel - the always on display matters to me.
Nokia N900
@Volfase I'd say the #Pixel3a with #UbuntuTouch is up there. Some minor usability issues here and there but all the more reason to look forward to 24.04.