I’m bummed to hear about a bad experience with the Librem phone- I was hoping that would be a better experience than I had with the PinePhone which was slow and essentially broken for calling and camera usage. It may have improved since last year but at the time calls would rarely work properly, either by not connecting, failing to interrupt the session properly, or have latent echo of one or both sides of the call. They provide several distros which is nice so your results may vary.
The Search for a Free/Open Source Mobile Operating System
11–20 of 156 posts
Re: The Search for a Free/Open Source Mobile Operating System
#12It appears the /e/ phones are indeed available in Canada and the US, https://esolutions.shop/shop/e-os-teracube-2e/ Just make sure to select your language and country at the top. No support for Verizon however.
Re: The Search for a Free/Open Source Mobile Operating System
#13What about some other projects beyond Android and Linux? Sailfish OS? Tizen? KaiOS?
Technically even WebOS was open-sourced and still around as LuneOS, but its last update was Halloween 2019, so it's likely defunct.
Re: The Search for a Free/Open Source Mobile Operating System
#14Because many important apps (banking and other financial services, major shopping sites, most Authenticators ) don’t provide open source versions, I don’t see how this thing can end up be practical for daily usage. Maybe it can be useful for criminals, underground hackers, but not a normal person.
The utility of these platforms depends upon what you use your phone for rather than some amateurish classification of people.
Personally, I have never tied myself down to particular apps. What I use tends to be fairly generic and doesn't compel me to use a particular implementation by a particular company. I suspect a great number of people are like that. While my case is due to a lack of interest in the latest fads and an interest in open technologies, someone else may do so for security and privacy, while others may be interested in investing their energy in pursuits other than gadgets.
As important as technology is to the functioning of modern society, I think there is a tendency to forget that some technologies have very little lasting impact.
Re: The Search for a Free/Open Source Mobile Operating System
#15What is this about how there’s no UI to target?
Target X11 and make sure your app works on small screens with a single button mouse. That’s it.
Re: The Search for a Free/Open Source Mobile Operating System
#16Because many important apps (banking and other financial services, major shopping sites, most Authenticators ) don’t provide open source versions, I don’t see how this thing can end up be practical for daily usage. Maybe it can be useful for criminals, underground hackers, but not a normal person.
No but they have web sites that work fine.
Authenticators usually are open source.
Re: The Search for a Free/Open Source Mobile Operating System
#17Because many important apps (banking and other financial services, major shopping sites, most Authenticators ) don’t provide open source versions, I don’t see how this thing can end up be practical for daily usage. Maybe it can be useful for criminals, underground hackers, but not a normal person.
Many of us don't want banks or shopping sites on our phones.
AndOTP authenticator works great for me. I also wrote one that I use on an offline computer (TOTP is rfc6238) in case my phone dies or is unavailable for some reason.
My only gripe with my current usage of GrapheneOS is that sometimes when the notification bell goes off and I open the phone, the SMS was sent many minutes ago (up to an hour or so). I'm only presuming it's due to a lack of google services or something about GrapheneOS; but it might be the network operator.
Re: The Search for a Free/Open Source Mobile Operating System
#18Like the author, I've tried a ton of open source handheld platforms, and I've recently moved to CalyxOS for my daily driver. (And about to sell a box o' devices to help cost-justify buying a second Pixel for a backup CalyxOS device.) As Android devices go, CalyxOS seems a good choice, if you're willing to not have all the Google service conveniences. I actually found some of the UX smoother than on iPhone, and e-mail…
> There also seems to be an additional barrier of US carriers imminently requiring VoLTE, and in some cases only allowlisting a small number of models.
Is this all carriers, or just some? I know that AT&T is the main one since I'm affected by it (their whitelist arbitrarily removes my OnePlus 6 from being supported this February despite the phone supporting VoLTE), but I heard that other carriers such as T-Mobile are still working without VoLTE. Either way, the whole "requiring VoLTE" thing could even be a problem for some custom ROMs (not even GNU/Linux phones) since I believe VoLTE support is something that ROMs sometimes miss, which will be pretty bad. While I'm not a full "privacy" user (yet), I use custom ROMs for extending the lifetime of my phone and getting newer updates than I would on the stock ROM, and carrier limitations could seriously threaten a lot of things.
Re: The Search for a Free/Open Source Mobile Operating System
#19Something I'd like to have an explainer for: What is Halium, are there any compromises involved in relying on it?
Re: The Search for a Free/Open Source Mobile Operating System
#20What about some other projects beyond Android and Linux? Sailfish OS? Tizen? KaiOS? Technically even WebOS was open-sourced and still around as LuneOS, but its last update was Halloween 2019, so it's likely defunct.
> Sailfish OS? Tizen?
Those projects were a bizarre affair. There was I think Maemo, Moblin, LImo, SLP, Bada, Leste, MeeGo, Mer, Tizen, Sailfish, Nemo... all forks, merges, reforks of the same thing. They seemed to spend all their time and energy continually rebranding, forming and disbanding consortiums, creating new websites and logos. They never just got on with it. Ridiculous wasted effort when the market was possibly still just about open to them.