10mo ago

"But my friend runs a PinePhone as a daily driver"

393 comments

I wish Valve would make a Steam Phone. They seem to know how to do Linux devices.
- Valve laptop to revive the thinkpad glory days
- they don't know to make a good android app, and you want them to make an entire cellphone💀💀
  
  They made an entire Linux-powered portable game system that's revolutionizing Linux gaming at the moment...an embedded engineer is not the same skillset as an app developer. Not even close.
  
  They can do the hardware and let someone else compile the os
  
  Well, I don't want it to be android powered anyways. That's the entire point.
- Hell, I think even Raspberry Pi Foundation getting into the phone market would be a game changer too.
  
  A lot of the libcamera work done on Raspberry Pi boards is going towards improving the camera support on linux phones like the PinePhone, which is great!
  Aside from that, sadly a lot of people (including myself) are kind of fed up with Raspberry Pi, after they essentially abandoned their mission during Covid to please corporations, and are preparing to go public despite being a "charity". Broadcom, their SoC supplier, also has left a sour taste in my mouth after their purchase and mass layoffs at VMWare.
  If they created a phone it would likely end up being scalped to death, and maybe pretty pricey compared to a PinePhone
  
  If they did that, it would be sold out for years before you or I could get it.
  
  Raspberry PI can't run a mainline Linux kernel.
- I don't think you could go fast enough to catch Valve as they ran screaming from that idea.
- Maybe it'd be the first "specialty" phone with decent specs. I always get excited for these "specialty" type phones like "Linux on my PHONE? Fuck yea!"
  Until I look at the specs and it's crap every single time and then I'm just disappointed, like the PinePhone Pro has just 4GB LPDDR4 (No not even the good LPDDR4x) lmao like what is this, 2015?? Lolol
- Steam OS is proprietary, so what would be the point?
  
  Everything that matters is open source and upstreamed or on the way there. Haven't kept up with the state of things but as far as I am aware you can already run a mainline kernel on the Deck. Would love to see an open phone you can easily run your own distribution on without jumping through hoops.
  But phones are hard. An x86 phone with decent battery life is even harder. But one can dream.

Linux phones will need to run established Android apps to get users, devs won't move where there is no users, users won't move there if there aren't apps. It's almost cyclical
Right now we're working with people who are exceptions to this, users who want to experiment and devs who don't care about money.
- Waydroid runs decently on the pinephone. On a phone with better specs, it might be downright usable for proprietary apps.
  Potentially a proton-style layer could really ease transition, like on the steamdeck
  
  BlackBerry 10 was actually a pretty slick OS that supported Android apps and you could even side-load Google Play services.
  
  What if the app also want's a locked bootloader, Play Integrity, and whatever else. Like a banking app or Google Pay?
  
  Yes!
  
  Potentially a proton-style layer could really ease transition, like on the steamdeck
  But if people still use proprietary software, then what's the point? Steam OS is a proprietary operating system. Is that really what we want?
- Progressive Web Apps. Web programs broke the need for Microsoft Windows.
  
  But they're talking mainstream support and windows is much more popular.
- We need proton for Android apps
  
  We have Waydroid which is close enough. It needs some quality of life improvements for better integration with the native Linux ecosystem but it runs Android apps just fine on Linux phones.
  
  That's just a Dalvik (Java) emulator, should be viable.
- Agreed. Classic story that has been repeated several times over the years. Ecosystem is everything.
  Microsoft's Windows phones were fantastic. They had super nice hardware, high refresh rate screens, better cameras on their flagship models than iPhones at the time.
  They were sleek, fast, the Windows tile UI actually worked great on a phone touchscreen. But it didn't matter to most consumers because they didn't have apps. MS had their own business apps...and that was about it. Didn't matter that every other aspect of the phones were great, people couldn't do what they wanted to on the Windows phones, so they didn't buy them.
  I would love to see something like Proton but for .apks instead of Windows executables. If it were as easy to install and run android apps on a mobile Linux OS as it is now to install and play Windows games on Linux, we would be in a great place to see a proper Linux phone.
  
  GNU/Linux is not aimed at people who want the most features. It's made for people who value freedom above everything else.
  I would love to see something like Proton but for .apks instead of Windows executables. If it were as easy to install and run android apps on a mobile Linux OS as it is now to install and play Windows games on Linux, we would be in a great place to see a proper Linux phone.
  You mean Waydroid? I've read that it works pretty well.
- Absolutely yes! I think this is what killed the reasonably good Windows Phones. I liked them anyway. They did what phones were supposed to do and were dirt cheap. But if you searched for any of the top 50 apps you'd find some fake BS. Like when I searched for Pandora you got an app that was nothing more than a 3-4 page summary about how Pandora was the planet in James Cameron's Avatar.
- The goal of GNU/Linux is not to make it possible to run proprietary apps (but if you really need to run Android apps you can use Waydroid). It's to create a fully libre operating system that people can use.
- The hell with android apps. In my last year with Droidian, I got better replacements for any single app I used on Android!
- hot take: No.
  Linux phones just need good linux software support. And then the linux user base will switch over, and everyone who isn't simply won't use it.
  I actually genuinely do not want android developers on linux. I refuse to pay for a launcher. My entire workstation OS is developed by volunteers. Genuinely every single android app i have ever interacted with has pretty much exclusively disappointed me. It's just a bad ecosystem.
  In the same way that the linux community doesn't need the developers of every application ever on it to thrive amongst itself, the linux phone doesnt need android developers to develop apps for it. It just needs better support for linux applications that already exist.
  
  The only reason I will disagree: there's already a major FOSS ecosystem on Android. There are tons of high quality free apps that aren't FOSS
  Linux isnt even that popular on desktop, my point is that people will not move if their pre established software use case is not avaliable. I won't. I know many people who won't.
  And if there aren't users, there won't be people making quality software to cover wide variety of usecases and get support, if there isn't quality software that covers a wide variety of use cases and get support there won't be users. You need to start somewhere, it's why the windows phone failed. No devs, so no users, and because no users, no devs.
  
  There are tonnes of great foss android apps.

Everyone saying Android is completely missing the point. I mean yeah, it runs the linux kernel, but i feel like most of yall wouldn't call ChromeOS linux on the other hand.
The obvious connotations are privacy, choice, wayland/x11 support, a useful terminal, a rich foss ecosystem, and arch btw.
- ChromeOS is Linux and even starting to become it's own full blown distro.
  \ ChromeOS even uses Wayland now.
  \ Lacros
  
  But it's proprietary software, right?
- I'd agree with you in the context of standard (google) android.
  One caveat that I'd like to highlight, though, is that for me GrapheneOS and F-Droid handily achieve the privacy and rich FOSS ecosystem parts. Useful terminal depends on your definition :) but for my use case Termux fills the void.
  It doesn't feel like Linux (you can't even use Wifi and Ethernet at the same time for crying out loud) but for a relatively cheap low-power device, I like the flexibility.
  It's far enough from being a foot gun that I can give a Pixel 5 with GrapheneOS and some F-Droid apps to my grandmother and know she'll have no problems. Balancing that with having enough extensibility to scratch the itch for 99% of tinkerers is a feat to appreciate in my view.
  
  My point is really just that it is an entirely different software stack than the traditional linux experience. I cant just download the source for a standard linux app and compile it for android, it needs to be ported.
  I think pinephone and librem are the closest we have gotten to a proper linux phone. But the specs suck, and the mobile optimized app ecosystem isnt there yet. Thats the point of the op meme.
- At least there's Termux. One of the very few things saving my already limited phone experience.
- I would call anything running the Linux kernel "Linux". Granted my LineageOS phone isn't very much like my Debian PC, but they're both Linux.

I appreciate the people who daily drive pinephones. They are paving the way for when they'll be viable alternatives for the masses. (Or verifying that they won't be, we'll see.)
- Don't forget all the developers working on the kernel, camera support, modem firmware, desktop environments like Phosh and others, distro devs like Mobian or postmarketOS and others, app devs who work on supporting mobile and many other developers and contributors. Even bloggers who report on updates.

Daily drivin Manjaro (Plasma mobile) on my Pinephone Pro for over a year now. If you are not into the whole "taking pictures all the time" thing you can easiy use it as a daily driver. (This message was typed on it)
- I respond to you just because yours is the last of the "I daily drive a PinePhone" comments, but this is meant for everyone with the same opinion.
  Do you, in all honesty, feel comfortable enough with your device that you would confidently run a business solely through it?
  I'm not an influencer, so my job isn't "taking pictures all the time", but still I wouldn't rely on a Linux phone to run my business because I cannot risk:
  to miss a phone call, a text or an email;
  to run out of battery if I'm outside my office all day long;
  to have a faulty GPS should I use a navigator to meet a client;
  that Bluetooth disconnects mid-call for the 5th time in a day while I'm driving;
  that I have to take a picture to collect information and the latest update borked the camera.
  All of these things happen frequently on a Linux phone, and if you have a job where you can live through it good for you, I envy you TBH.
  On the other hand, keep in mind that it's not just the "Instagram people" that need a reliable device.
  
  Of course, everyone has different requirements on their phone, so the question if one would be comfortable running their buisness of a pine phone is quite divers.
  Phone calls, texts and E-Mails
  Text and E-Mails pretty much work as well as on every other phone. Phone calls work too, but the audio quality is below what one could expect from a modern iPhone.
  Battery
  While the battery runtime of one battery is definitely lower compared to competing devices, it is also replaceable. I usually spend my day in the office were the phone can be charged, so the battery life does not become an issue. When I am traveling I bring some extra batteries. The form factor is commonly available and batteries cost around 10 €, so I got 4 of them, which last me for ~36 hours until I have to charge them. I have so far never spend more time away from an outlet.
  GPS
  Works nowadays pretty reliable, accuracy of around 20 m is also good enough to find were I need to go
  Bluetooth
  Definitely not perfect but random disconnects happen rarely. On the other side I have an headphone jack, which always works reliably
  Camera
  Ok, this point goes to you, the camera is not usable. When taking pictures of documents I usually have to use my tablet.
  So now to the overarching question:
  Do you, in all honesty, feel comfortable enough with your device that you would confidently run a business solely through it? No, I would not feel comfortable to run a business through a phone, I need a real computer for my work. If I could only use a phone I would choose the pine phone, because at least it can run all software I require for my daily work. Connected to keyboard, mouse and a monitor it could be a slow, but acceptable work machine I can certainly imagine that there are jobs, which rely more heavily on a phone. But in these cases one should have separate work and private phones anyway
  
  I couldn't run a business on any phone, frankly. That's what computers are for.
  Also the GPS worked fine for me.
  Let me guess, Manjaro or another unstable distro is where things broke for you? Mobian did not break things on update, much like Debian on desktop. I know the person you replied to uses Manjaro, but if you want a stable experience you really shouldn't.
  And most people aren't running a business, so there's that.
  I don't deny that the user experience isn't great, it is development/early adopter hardware, but it's definitely usable as a daily driver.
  
  Missing a phone call or text is unacceptable and id consider that a fail if it came to phones everything else you mentioned wouldnt be a fail just poor quality in my opinion
  
  That's what separate work phones are for :/
- What do you use to browse Lemmy?
  
  The voyager PWA. Works really great and feels pretty much like a native app

"Android is already a Linux phone" They hated Jesus because he told them the truth.
- But it isn't GNU/Linux https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/android-and-users-freedom.html
  
  ... or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux
  
  Yes, but it is Linux. OP doesn't mention GNU.
- Android devices run deprecated Linux kernels that have a bunch of proprietary binary blobs plopped onto them, so technically "Linux", but not an easily updateable mainline kernel like most people are referring to when talking about "Linux."
  
  OK then call it what it is. You want a FOSS Linux phone.
- Not in the way they're talking.

Who's gonna tell him Android is based on Linux ?
- Nobody because everybody knows this. Android is still not what people mean when they say linux
  
  Insert "I'd like to interject for a moment" copypasta here
  
  Uhhh it definitely is. I literally have a Linux terminal running on my Android phone.
- Android is Linux, they literally use the Linux kernel. They replace most other stuff, but Linux it is.
  They even work towards mainline kernel support, making updates easier for longer times.
  Android is a good example, why "Linux" is not a good term for "Desktop Gnu+Linux".
  
  I think they use some very old and heavily modified version of the Linux kernel, so it's not the same Linux kernel we use on desktop. Then each phone manufacturer adds custom patches on top to support their hardware. GNU/Linux phones also require a custom kernel, but the community is working on upstreaming those patches, so that they can run mainline kernel some day (PinePhone Pro and Librem 5 probably already can now, but some stuff might not work).
  Yeah, using the name Linux for both the kernel and the operating system makes no sense and it's super confusing. When people say Linux when talking about the operating system, they almost always mean GNU/Linux (like Linux Mint, Arch Linux, etc). But then there is Alpine Linux, which isn't GNU/Linux and that makes things even more confusing. If I didn't know what Alpine Linux or Arch Linux was (and had no knowledge of distro names), based on their name I would assume they are some kind of fork of the Linux kernel. Arch Linux should have really been called Arch GNU/Linux and Alpine Linux should have just been called Alpine OS.

Really a shame that Nokia gave up. The N900 was a well working Linux phone. I miss it dearly.
- Ms did it to nokia
- My favorite phone by far. Absolutely loved combined messenger built into OS and that GUI is still unmatched by any OS as far as I'm concerned.
- I have fond memories of using my N900. But I would not have described it as well working :) It worked, sure, but not particularly well.
  
  It definitely worked better than a Pinephone. And even with its puny RAM it was better at multitasking than a modern Android phone.

Android is Linux.
- Modified Linux kernel, but you very well know what people mean don't you
  
  Every distro has a modified Linux kernel, Android is no different.
  
  Android is the first thing I think of when I hear Linux phone
- I think when people say "Linux phone" they mean GNU/Linux.
  
  No. Most people mean PostmarketOS, which is Busybox/musl/Linux

Okay look I get what we're trying to say here but would it be problematic if I pointed out that Android is also running Linux?
- It’s a valid point, but unfortunately your non bullshit options are limited to replacing the OS with something like Graphene or Lineage.
  The powers that be REALLY want your data.
  
  I thought you could just use the Android open source project? I thought the tracking was mostly baked into Google's flavor of Android not the open source product
- And lo, the Apocrypha were born, for they spoke the truth that no man dare admitt, lest they be marked an apostate.
- i use Arch btw
  
  I use GNU/Linux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux btw
- Isn't that like claiming all Linux, Android and MacOS are just UNIX?
  
  I mean not technically.. those products use a separent kernel that has its own development path away from the Linux kernel. Linux is just a compatible Unix kernel but I wouldn't classify it as a Unix operating system since it diverges into its own thing. Android still uses the Linux kernel not some piece of code that they developed and not some commercial Unix product
  
  Not if they don't share any heritage with Unix. Osx is the only one that fits the bill there.
  
  GNU is a recursive acronym for "GNU's Not Unix!",[6][12] chosen because GNU's design is Unix-like, but differs from Unix by being free software and containing no Unix code.[6][13][14] Stallman chose the name by using various plays on words, including the song The Gnu.[4]: 45:30
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU
- See, this is why, yet again, Stallman was right: insisting on "GNU/Linux" is necessary in order to disambiguate between the fully-Free Software OS and bastardized half-proprietary stuff like Android.
  
  Exactly. Even in this community and in this post people keep mixing Linux, GNU/Linux and Android. It's crazy that even people who use this operating system are confused. Almost always when they say Linux they really mean GNU/Linux. Linux Mint or Arch Linux are GNU/Linux. But Android isn't and it doesn't even use the mainline Linux kernel.
  The issue of freedom is a separate thing, because even most GNU/Linux distros contain proprietary software just like Android.
- I guess most ppl who are supporting the gnu/linux phone are the ones who want a similar apple like features like how the prism os had promised to provide.

I have a PinePhone. ama
- What do you miss the most?
  
  Getting laid
- How much did it cost, how long have you had it and what are the most obvious pros and cons?
  
  In the US store it costs 200$ for the original PinePhone and 400$ for the Pro version. The EU store is a little more expensive.
  I'm not the person you asked, but I've had mine for 2 years.
  Pros:
  free software and freedom (and with that increased privacy and security)
  runs the same software that you can run on desktop as long as it has an ARM build (a lot of Debian packages do) or you compile it yourself - this includes not just apps, but also terminal programs and servers
  killswitch to power off the proprietary modem for when you don't want phone carrier tracking you
  like in other modern phones the modem is isolated (here it's connected over USB)
  multiple distros to choose from
  multiple desktop environments to choose from
  replacable battery
  headphone jack
  replacement parts available in case you break something
  there are some interesting addons that you can buy (https://pine64.org/devices/pinephone/#accessories)
  microSD card slot
  you can boot from the microSD card, so distro hopping is easy
  can run Android apps through Waydroid
  Cons:
  slow - you are running modern software on an old SoC (the Pro version is faster, but still slow compared to modern phones)
  not all GNU/Linux apps have a responsive UI that works well on mobile
  some old apps might not have touch support
  short battery life - the SoC is not very energy efficient. Possible workarounds: get the keyboard addon with builtin battery (but it makes the phone bigger and heavier), carry spare batteries with you, or buy/3D print a bigger case and use a bigger battery
  runs hot
  GPS isn't super accurate
  audio quality during phone calls isn't great
  the non-pro version might not be able to run a mainline kernel, so you might not be able to install a desktop distro on it
  the Pro version should be able to run a mainline kernel, but there might be things that don't work
  experience with GNU/Linux is required
  sometimes workarounds are needed - for me, on Mobian stable sometimes the modem or wifi don't wake up from suspend and I have to reset it with a script (I added it to the apps menu for quick access, but it's still annoying)
  [on original PinePhone] bad camera and the default app can only take pictures - there is a script for recording video, but then there is no preview
  I'm not sure if you can use the camera as a webcam in most software
  [might depend on the model] video playback is not GPU accelerated, so it makes the CPU hot and drains battery and you might be limited to 1080p@30fps or 720p
  you can run a stable distro with old software and old bugs (and sometimes things change very fast) or a less stable one with current software, but then things will sometimes break after update and you will have to fix it (probably more than on desktop)
  on Mobian stable (old software) the proximity sensor acts weird during a call and sometimes you can't see the screen
  no Xbox gamepad support in Mobian stable (but Playstation gamepads work)
  they keyboard addon isn't perfect and requires some setup
  with the keyboard addon I can't plug in any USB devices to the phone and I don't know why - charging works though
  support for emergency broadcast is only just now being introduced in Phosh (https://phosh.mobi/posts/cellbroadcast)
  [original PinePhone] uses micro SIM standard instead of nano SIM
  sometimes there is screen flickering in non-pro version
  killswitches could be a bit easier to flip (they are very small)
  [on original PinePhone] poor 3D performance (even SuperTuxKart doesn't run smoothly), WebGL doesn't seem to work (at least for 3D)
  not a lot of RAM, so you can't run too many apps at once or have too many browser tabs open - you can still run Electron apps, though (just not too many at once)
  no push notifications, so if you want to be notified when you get a message in some app, while the phone is suspended, you would have to setup a script to wake the phone up periodically
  Edit: I corrected a mistake with the SIM card. I turns out that PinePhone Pro uses nano SIM and it's only the original PinePhone that uses micro SIM
- How is your battery life?
  
  lol
  
  Five
- Phosh, gnome-mobile, plasma, sxmo or "unity"?
  
  Plasma and unity both seem to be the ones I come back to. The other three I would mess with, but something about the other two always brought me back.
  
  Phosh is pretty good. I don't think Gnome Mobile is finished yet.
- what carrier are you using it on? sim or e-sim? Do you use it daily?
  
  I used mine on T-Mobile almost daily. It worked okay. Think of early Android days where everyone had their own custom rom and none of them were as smooth as you felt they should be.
- How's the Android apps bridge? Do you even use it?
  
  I haven't used it on the PinePhone or PinePhone Pro in a while, but Waydroid is solid on my OnePlus 6T with postmarketOS. Android apps that only need an Internet connection work fine. I installed microG and have push notifications working for Discord and Teams. However, notifications don't get passed through to the Linux side so they only show if you open the Android UI. Screen rotation doesn't work on Waydroid which can be very annoying. Apps that use other hardware features such as location, Bluetooth, vibration, access to calls/texts won't work properly.

I was downvoted before for suggesting the Pinetab is not a viable Android or iPad replacement. That thing doesn't even have a working wifi driver yet, you have to plug in a dongle just to connect to wifi. I'd love to have good smart devices running Linux one day, but we're not there yet.
- I think you are talking about the recent Pinetab 2 and it seems that the situation has changed: https://www.reddit.com/r/PINE64official/comments/1akjlwu/tutorial_wifi_and_bluetooth_on_pinetab_2/?rdt=46684
  The goal of GNU/Linux has never been convenience, but freedom.
  
  The thing about convenience vs freedom is that, why can't we get freedom if we choose convenience as well? I don't feel like messing around with my phone to setup the basics, and the closest thing freedom-wise would be a de-googled rooted android phone. It would be nice to have an inbetween.
  
  Good to know that there is now a testing branch for a wifi driver. That wasn't the case when I wrote the original comment I was talking about. Still, this took almost a year of selling a tablet with no working wifi. There is inconvenience and then there is a product just being in an unfinished, effectively unusable state. I don't really see how having no wifi driver is "freedom". The freedom to code my own driver? I guess, but that doesn't make for an actually usable device.

I'm quite optimistic about a usable Linux phone in the near future, maybe 5 years from now or so. When smartphones were a new thing, it was really hard for open source projects without a major company backing them to keep up with all the new developments. Hence all the projects that died out. But innovation on smartphones has basically come to a halt these days. Sure, your phone can get a little bit faster and have round displays now, but nobody cares anymore. Nothing of all that is essential. So, give it some time, we'll get there.
- I'm optimistic about the apps and desktop environments. We have made huge progress. But the problem is the hardware support. It seems that there are very few ARM SoCs, which work well with the mainline Linux kernel. So PinePhone uses a 2010 SoC and PinePhone Pro a 2016 SoC. And after all that time and despite community's efforts to upstream everything, the mainline support is still not complete and we still use custom kernels.
  https://blog.mobian.org/posts/2023/09/30/paperweight-dilemma/
  
  Yes, but that's exactly my point. The need for hardware support shrinks if the hardware doesn't change every few months. A chip from a few years ago is still very fine. That was not the case in 2009.

If your needs are very simple, and you’re willing to go without a lot of luxuries, then yeah, it could work for you.
- I don't know, but I was thinking PinePhone would be more useful when your needs rather aren't simple.
  
  Yeah, I guess specific would be a better word. Like if having a good terminal emulator and SSH client is more important to you than having access to Android apps.

I've been daily driving Ubuntu Touch on the Fairphone 4 for over a year. I love it, even if some features are lacking. Calling and text is stable, but unfortunately Volte support is still missing. Waydroid is also working great.
- I'm not sure if Ubuntu Touch is GNU/Linux, since it uses the android kernel I think. But it's not android either.

ironically, the fact that i would genuinely rather spend my money on a pinephone as opposed to an android should go to show how little i care for android devices.

it's a fun toy, not super useful but probably fun to tinker with
I've done some ungodly stuff to my android phones (even non-rooted ones, I'm totally abusing them) and I can't even imagine all the possibilities with a proper linux distro. Having a pocket pc with a full arm64 linux sounds awesome
- I daily drive it, just like some other people here. It lets you run the same software that you use on desktop. Some apps don't have a UI that works well on mobile (possible workaround: play around with scaling) and some old ones might not have touch support (you would have to use those with mouse or keyboard), but often there are mobile friendly alternatives, so it's better to use those instead. It can't replace a proper PC, even if you plug it into a monitor and it's not a fast device, but it's usable and you can do fun stuff with it. You can run CLI programs and servers, run Kali Linux (NetHunter Pro), distro hop, make hardware addons (there are some exposed pins on the back) or simply use it as phone. You just have to be an advanced GNU/Linux user, because sometimes workarounds are required.
  And when you add the keyboard addon, you can look like a true hackerman:

Hear me out: THEY ARE VIABLE TO ME

I hope its stable enough when i stop using my current phone
- Well it is stable, but it lacks most of today's I would call it "comfort-usability" but the main features are definitely working.
- Here is a recent blog post about someone's experience with PinePhone Pro: https://zerwuerfnis.org/daily-driving-the-pinephone-pro
  I have the original PinePhone and it seems to have less issues, but it's also slower and has a crappy camera.
  
  Looks like for me I will have to wait for WhatsApp to be cross-app, and the phone call audio quality will be an issue.

Between October 2018 to April 2023 I used as my daily drivers a series of phones (OnePlus One, Meizu Pro 5, Volla Phone, Xiaomi Redmi Note 9 Pro) all flashed to running Ubuntu Touch. During this time UT (Ubuntu Touch) was less developed than it is now, in that Waydroid (which allows using some Android apps over a Lineage OS container that boots on top of UT) did not yet exist, and Libertine (which allows some Linux desktop apps built for Ubuntu arm64 deb to be installed) was not as functional. And yet is still worked great for my modest needs (e.g. I don't do banking, or any kind of more advanced gaming, on my phones).
The reason I reverted last year to de-googled Android ("vanilla" Bliss ROM on a Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 Pro) is that being in the USA, the carriers here have closed or are closing down all their 3G/2G networks, and requiring VoLTE for phone calls. While UT supports LTE for mobile data without a problem, given that VoLTE is a proprietary closed protocol with implementation varying between carrier, oem and device, the only device which UT currently has VoLTE support for (and which is still shaky) is the PinePhone Pro.
Anyhoo - the UT dev community is pretty small, but definitely dedicated, and still offers some promise into the future for a nice privacy respecting alternative OS for mobile devices and tablets. Hopefully at some point VoLTE, and a few other issues gets figured out for it so I can return to using it for my daily driver - in the meantime I've got it on a OnePlus 5t as a secondary device, and on a Lenovo x306f 10" tablet.
- The loss of Dalton Durst from that team from burnout was a big hit. They've been doing work on it but I haven't seen anything approaching the output they had when he was heading it up.
  
  Dalton is an amazing and very cool guy, and when he left it was indeed a big hit to dev speed at first, but recently a few super smart and dedicated guys have been able to do a big jump in updating the base from 16.04 to 20.04 (which involved moving from upstart to systemd) and they are getting close to rebasing to 24.04 (target for this is this June in fact). Plus Waydroid support has gotten really good in the time since Dalton moved on, and snap support is getting worked on now as well.
- the only device which Ubuntu Touch currently has VoLTE support for (and which is still shaky) is the PinePhone Pro.
  I'm incredulous that this is the case. You're probably right but there's no way in hell I'm using a phone restricted to 2g or 3g.
  
  I am talking about VoLTE (Voice over LTE) which is the protocol just for making phone calls over 4g networks - NOT 4g/LTE mobile data! Ubuntu Touch has worked well with 4g/LTE mobile data for 10 years now.

My Nokia N900 ran Linux back in the day, and was a more polished experience than the iPhone it was then contemporary with. Too bad that particular line went precisely nowhere.
- Didn't it go to Sailfish OS which technically still exists?
  
  Not officially, from what I recall. That was possibly one of the plans for it's alleged successor, the N950, which turned out to be vaporware. Sailfish OS then went to be used on the first Jolla Phone, which probably sold in single digit numbers. Jolla now manufactures nothing, although they apparently continue to develop Sailfish for licensing to embedded applications, and their main deal seems to be the "Appsupport" compatibility layer for Android apps to run on Linux.

also kudos to GrapheneOS social media people patiently explaining why both purism and pine64 are pretty mid at best when it comes to hardware security
- What do you mean?
  
  Out of pocket I would assume nonfree packages and hardware shenanigans: binary blobs, etc. ..
  The latter imo is only really a concern if you're being targeted hydrate actors, and you got bigger problems then
  
  https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/111957964224325239
  https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices
  https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/111738765361100063
  https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/111676448278523353
  https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/111676423446810227
  https://social.linux.pizza/@piracyy/111712189066209594
  https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/111975424959573607

Starry-eyed me bought a pine phone and a librem5, and for both of them it was pretty much turn it on, about 5 minutes of navigating the UIs and suffering the performance, and putting it right back in the box for my own personal museum where they'll be safe and sound and kept in prime condition until they're thrown away some day when I'm dead.
- Purism has contributed a lot to the software development. They hire developers who work on Phosh (mobile desktop environment). So by buying their phone, you have at least contributed to the cause.

It would be really hard to get an established manufacture to pick up Linux as an operating system. Most people get a Samsung phone if they can afford it and a Motorola if they can't in the states.
I'd be surprised if my family has done any research before picking up a phone outside of is it a Samsung.

Bought a pine phone because it's cool.
It is not daily driver worthy at all
- out of curiosity. What were the problems you ended up experiencing? Been tempted to get one being a linux user myself.
  
  Wifi keeps waking up the phone, draining the battery, then craps out when you want to use it. The camera has like 5fps with 1998 flip phone quality. Forget about multi tasking. It connects to the cell network so calling and texting should work. Want to use an app for something? Too bad.
  That’s my experience from two years ago, I had the distro hopping sd card and tried all os versions at the time. It’s just not there yet.
  The only use I see is dropping it somewhere and then using it as a jump host over lte, but I haven’t tested that.
  
  Been too long since I last tried it. I think my main complaint was lag and responsiveness
- I use it as my only phone. It all depends on how important freedom is to you and if you are willing to sacrifice some things to get it.

I tried to daily drive a PinePhone for a long time, then a PinePhone Pro. It is not really ready. Too many dropped/failed to answer calls and missed texts. I love having a fully capable Linux PC in my pocket and am typing this on my OnePlus 6T with postmarketOS, but as a phone it is not ideal. My setup now is that I have a OnePlus 6 with stock Android and my main SIM for doing phone stuff (calls, texts, some apps, Bluetooth handsfree) and the OnePlus 6T with pmOS for Linux experimentation and doing pocket computer things (browsing, coding, SSH, VPN, testing Waydroid). I got a second cheap SIM so I can have service on both devices, but as the 6T with pmOS can't receive calls in 4G mode it really doesn't work as a phone. The PinePhones can work as a phone but the modem dropouts make it less than ideal and their battery life and performance leave much to be desired while the OP6T has fairly good performance and battery life on pmOS.
- I daily drive mine and haven't noticed any missed calls, but maybe I'm just lucky or it's the Pro version that has the issue. The battery life can be increased with extended cases, but the performance will always suck and there are lots of annoying software issues too.
  
  I had call drops on both the original and the Pro. They both use the same USB-attached modem and the modem has (had?) an issue where it would lose USB connection to the main processor sometimes, so you would just randomly lose cell connectivity. Sometimes the USB connection would restart right away and sometimes it would not and you'd have to restart eg25 manager to reboot the modem.

Damn this is timely, I just got a second hand Pinephone today

Asterisk counts as a Linux phone, right?
- Lmao, yeah, that Linux phone is definitely production ready.
- Counts as multiple Linux phones

Mobile Linux is awesome, support it. Maybe just don't try to make money selling it as a finished product yet?
- I don't think anybody is saying that. It's a product for GNU/Linux experts who either like to tinker or whose main goal is to have freedom even at the cost of convenience.

buy an iPhone
-Jobs 4:20
- I just can't get over the walled garden and shit notifications. Like, fuck Google but why can't I own my device.
- Not without real Firefox and ublock origin I won't!
  
  Grayjay is pretty cool too.

I run a pinephone daily during the first 5 or 6 months of covid but once I started going out again well... really poor camera and battery
- Can't do anything about the camera, but there are extended battery cases that you can get. I got the keyboard addon with the battery and that helps, but it's also pretty big and heavy.

I used a flip phone for years are you telling me linux phones can't make phone calls?
- Of course the can. Source: I have one.
- If you remember the special procedure needed to not fry your SIM, they supposedly can
  
  Linux phones don't fry your SIM though? Mine's fine.
  
  thats absolutely fucked, lol. Why even sell these if they cant make calls
- here

Not reliable as a daily driver but very cool

[X] doubt
(I say that as a PinePhone owner)
- What are we doubting? That their friend runs a pinephone? I agree.
  I have a pinephone and pinephone pro. and neither one has felt good enough to be a daily driver. but then again, i havent really tried using it since like february 2022 when I got the pro. maybe the software has gotten a ton better since then. (I dont have high hopes. Drew Devault has a real nice blog post about pine64 chasing devs away: here)
  Realistically all I need in a phone is password manager, phone app, camera, signal. And I dont think I ever had any of those things work in a "actually reliable and smooth enough for daily driving" state.
  
  I used a pinephone as a daily driver for a year. It served me fine. Waydroid for any android apps I absolutely couldn't go without.
  
  I have all those things working well on a Librem 5
  
  2 years is a lot of time. Things have changed a lot since then. The community and Purism are the ones developing the software. Pine64 has nothing to do with it.
  Out of all the things you just mentioned, Signal is the only one that won't work, because it requires an Android/iOS app. You can't use it on desktop by itself either. But you could try running the Android version with Waydroid. I use Matrix instead.

For those who have used each, which did you prefer, GrapheneOS or a Linux-based phone, and why?
- I have a "braveheart" pinephone (one of the first ones) and I just use it to play around with it's features, do distrohopping etc.)
  Most of the time i used an arch build with phosh. But actually I highly recommend postmarketOS, the installer is straight forward and let you build whatever you want. Actually I run postmarketOS edge with encrypted f2fs and gnome-mobile on it. gnome-mobile works better on newer phones but it is still usable.
  I prefer my grapheneOS phone because it is faster has more apps, apps are scaled correctly etc. Not too much battery drain...
  PS. I managed to run Thunderbird usable on pinephone, I just play around with look and now I simply have just the mail cards and I am able to interact with it without too much scaling issues.
  
  What is the current state of Gnome mobile? I thought that it wasn't finished yet. Is it as good as Phosh?
  PS. I managed to run Thunderbird usable on pinephone, I just play around with the look&feel and now I simply have just the mail cards and I am able to interact with it without too much scaling issues.
  Phosh comes with Geary. I haven't used it, but it looks like it should work well on mobile.
  
  I'm curious. Is the battery in the Pinephone of lesser capacity or is the system not optimised for longevity?
  
  Thanks! I'll probably go with a grapheneOS build next, I prefer battery life over most things for my use case. Thanks for the info!

GNU/Linux phones may not be, but Android/Linux is quite usable. Jesus should know the difference.
- When Android was still new, lots of people thought of it as "Linux for phones".
  
  They weren't wrong. Linux technically is the kernel. The toolkits used to build the apps are really what most people think of when they use the term though.

me rn:

...are we ignoring android?
- Yes. When people talk about a Linux phone, they mean a Linux like experience where the user is in charge and there is no data harvesting or other shitfuckery. That's not something any Android phone delivers out of the box.
  
  Do they mean GNU/Linux?
- Honestly F-droid has shown that Android has a lot of potential
- Yup

I don't think there's really anyone who'd argue against that and actually mean it.
You could install a mobile GNU/Linux Custom Rom on your Android phone.
\ Assuming you have one that's supported ofc.

Hey linux friends, what are you doing on your phones that a pinephone doesn't cut it? If I have a DSLR and don't give a shit about mobile social media, is there an issue?
- Leaving my house for over an hour
- I'd say the big issue is how much extra effort things take to do. You are relying a lot on web pages instead of applications and a lot of them don't feel really well optimized. Actions that would normally take a minute might take four minutes.
  There's some issues with native apps too. When I was using my PinePhone I don't think I was able to get music to play in the background for example. I imagine this has been fixed by now but it was still frustrating.
  
  I'll be honest, I don't know the UX and was looking to actually pick up a pine phone. I will continue my research!

Is sailfishos linux?
- Yes
  
  That works if youre kinda an enthusiast. Not saying its perfect. But it works. for context I've run a librem 5 and a pinephone and they both are not there yet imho.

I would totally daily drive a Linux phone if performance wasn't so awful. I don't care if it doesn't a have any apps. In fact, the inability to install apple or android apps is actually a positive point in my view.

What’s a daily driver?
- A device you can comfortably use in your everyday life to do what you would want from such a device. In this case a phone you can do telephone calls with, write instant messages, take photos, browse the internet, play some games. And everything without the battery dying on you. And in a manner that is not too hacky ir frustrating.
  It is possible to daily drive a Pinephone. But it's not a pleasant experience. It's better suited for unpleasant tinkering.
- The device you use every day.
  The origin is that your “daily driver” is your car for commuting to work, presumably to differentiate it from your sports car or farm truck.

I feel like people that unironically tout Linux phones as stable enough are the same people that think we can ditch Xorg, not true even though I obviously would like it to be.
- I totally see what you mean with the GNU-like Linux phones. But what issue could you have with Wayland in the year 2024?
  
  GNU-like Linux
  PinePhone and Librem 5 actually run GNU/Linux. Same software that you can run on desktop. Only Ubuntu Touch uses Android kernel I think.
  
  For me steam VR doesn't work in Wayland
  
  I feel like I might've exaggerated the chasm between ditching Xorg and adopting Linux phones, Waylands only problems are really VR (just seems to be dead end outside of SteamVR) and Nvidia feature parity though that's less to do with Wayland and more to do with Nvidia dragging their feet on Linux, theres also the odd edge case like unrecognised inputs.
- Oh, come on. Wayland is shipped by default by a lot of distros now because it's perfectly stable and usable in the vast majority of use cases and hardware. For every story about wayland falling down, I can come up with a dozen "stupid shit X11 does now because it's unmaintained and dev X tries to do something new with his app" stories. I do silly things like run 6 monitors on 2 GPUs on a Core 2Duo, and it runs like a top. If there's a problem, it's always something dumb i've done like knocked a cable than it is that Wayland has shit the bed. And it's been working like that for 2 years.
  I ran a Pinephone for a year as a DD back in the early days, it was a pain in the ass but it was possible if you were stubborn enough. But it was no Android. But then again, it wasn't Android.
  
  Spoke on it at the top reply
  
  I daily drive mine and it's not good, but I prefer that than running spyware.
- it is very easy to stop using xorg, lol

pear phones > everything

I'm daily driving Droidian for more than a year!

I'm sure PinePhone is better than the Openmoko distro was back in the day.
I used my Openmoko for a few months and happily sold it to a friend after explaining the state of the OS.

Shiftphone?

Meanwhile me absolutely running a dualboot Oneplus 6 with lineage and droidian that has had kupferos, mobian and postmarketos in the past... (yes, i distrohop my phone, so what?)

Wait till bro finds out what android is

Linux people tend to forget, that people want something that just works, why I love Linux, I have a mac and later bought an Iphone, the UX difference of using and airpod pro with an Android phone and an Iphone is just miles apart, I can literally have it in my ears, click on a video on my mac and the sound transfers, then as I go out for a walk with my dog and start a podcast, the airpods switch back to my phone without any hassle.
Before that I would have to disconnect and reconnect bluetooth multiple times to switch between the android phone and the macbook.
Granted I maybe care a lot more about good UX than normal people, but good UX like that just makes me hard.
- between the android phone and the macbook.
  Apple intentionally doesn't play well with others in order to trap you into their ecosystem.
  
  Yeah, thanks for that info, couldn't think about that myself, Except I have used non apple bluetooth earbuds with android phones for years before and it was just as shit of an experience, so I dont know, guess again?
- I switched from Windows to Linux because it just works
  
  I mean, yeah I did too quite a while ago, but thats not really whats being discussed
- I use windows and android and my earphones switch just fine between pc, phone and my car. Or should I say the audio switches with no issue between them.
- Yeah, Linux phones are cool and stuff but is there any benefits compared to using GrapheneOS? Sure, you can have more freedom on the OS level, but is it really a big benefit compared to just using GrapheneOS?
  The killswitches on the phone seem nice, but I do wonder if they're using any proprietary firmware or something to make it switch on or off?
  
  Sure, you can have more freedom on the OS level, but is it really a big benefit compared to just using GrapheneOS?
  With more freedom comes more privacy and security. I don't think GrapheneOS is entirely free software, but correct me if I'm wrong.
  The killswitches on the phone seem nice, but I do wonder if they’re using any proprietary firmware or something to make it switch on or off?
  I think they just electrically disconnect the modem (so that you don't have to trust its proprietary firmware to turn it off) or the microphone or whatever from power.

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