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I give up on free software phones (2019)

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Re: I give up on free software phones (2019)

#141

Post by harry8 »

AndyKelley wrote: post #75

I got my librem in the mail last week after waiting several years(!!) for shipping. It's complete trash. The software is shit, the battery is shit, it's expensive, low specs, completely unusable. I'm willing to compromise a lot in order to go with the free software approach, but my god, just do better. There's no excuse for how un-functional this thing is. Try harder. I had the same reaction with the pine phone a cou…

Reminder whenever this comes up that the Nokia N900 was a beautiful, functional thing running linux and Free software 10 years ago.

No really. Best phone I've ever owned. Better than apple or android. It's loss was immense.

Re: I give up on free software phones (2019)

#142

Post by harry8 »

jancsika wrote: post #33

Someone should do a Linux phone that scales way back: 1. you can dial phone numbers somehow 2. you can talk on the phone 3. you can hear the person on the other line 4. the cell reception on the phone is decent quality 5. antenna is properly placed for very good reception 6. basic SMS works, all the time 7. has been extensively tested to work with a single carrier, any other carrier is no warranty 8. boot time and sh…

The Nokia N900 made short work of all of that on all carriers in this country a decade ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N900

Re: I give up on free software phones (2019)

#143

Post by AndyKelley »

harry8 wrote: post #141
AndyKelley wrote: post #75

I got my librem in the mail last week after waiting several years(!!) for shipping. It's complete trash. The software is shit, the battery is shit, it's expensive, low specs, completely unusable. I'm willing to compromise a lot in order to go with the free software approach, but my god, just do better. There's no excuse for how un-functional this thing is. Try harder. I had the same reaction with the pine phone a cou…

Reminder whenever this comes up that the Nokia N900 was a beautiful, functional thing running linux and Free software 10 years ago. No really. Best phone I've ever owned. Better than apple or android. It's loss was immense.

tell me more?

Re: I give up on free software phones (2019)

#144

Post by crote »

AndyKelley wrote: post #143
harry8 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminder whenever this comes up that the Nokia N900 was a beautiful, functional thing running linux and Free software 10 years ago. No really. Best phone I've ever owned. Better than apple or android. It's loss was immense.

tell me more?

It had a well-polished Linux-based OS, developed in-house by Nokia. Excellent hardware for the time, and a keyboard which was a delight to use. It got pretty decent reviews - even outside of the Linux fanboy bubble.

It's just a good phone which happens to run Linux, not a mediocre phone hyped because it is one of the few Linux options available.

Re: I give up on free software phones (2019)

#146

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

muppetman wrote: post #88
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever booted AOSP on a device or VM? There is a messaging app that is part of AOSP that is not Google Messages

Yes that Google haven't updated for years and is at this point abandoned[1]. 1: https://twitter.com/MishaalRahman/status/1669026188399112192

Alright. Yes. now it is. This is all I've been trying to point out- is that there is a built in messaging app as part of AOSP. My recollection is that Google can't turn this into gMessage because then it would be distributed as part of the base OS and would require a Google account to use.

Now it's abandoned so it definitely won't be anything now.

Re: I give up on free software phones (2019)

#147

Post by crote »

Arnavion wrote: post #113
superchroma wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

typical user-hostile linux user opinion. If you're wondering why the year of the linux desktop hasn't happened yet, this is why.

The only people who wonder about the year of the Linux desktop are the people who don't use Linux :) We Linux users are happily using it already and don't really care what other people use.

As someone who has been running Linux as sole OS for over a decade now, I wouldn't say I am "happily" using it. It is acceptable and all alternatives are even worse in a lot of ways, but the Linux experience is definitely still lacking quite a bit.

Re: I give up on free software phones (2019)

#148

Post by CuriousCosmic »

xethos wrote: post #118
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also received my librem 5 recently, and it's incredibly disappointing. The software in particular is incredibly buggy and janky. When I open the app store it just fails to load things sometimes. Even the FirefoxOS device I tried a few years ago was better.

> When I open the app store it just fails to load things sometimes. Considering how many desktop linux distros fall down with this, you may be expecting too much of your beta-level phones. It's been years, yes, but power management isn't exactly easy. Just look at how bad Linux laptops were even just a few years ago - hell, look at how long it took the multinational mega-corporation to get Android's background power…

> You're right, FLOSS phones currently aren't good. But they finally exist, and that's enough for me to be excited about

Also people forget that android is still FLOSS. You don't need to be running upstream/mainline linux to be FLOSS. It's mentioned kinda off hand as "oh well running android without google sucks" in the article but graphene OS has proven that you can get a very pleasant, well ironed, and secure/hardened user oriented phone while using FLOSS for basically everything except some firmware level blobs for high end phones. And FDroid proves that we can have 90-95% of all the quality apps we could need without even installing anything google dependent (even FCM push notifications which were historically limiting can be replaced with unifiedpush) That experience contrasts with the "FLOSS phones" like the librem or pine phone which show that you can get most if not all of the hardware working without firmware blobs even if the software up the stack sucks.

So what is stopping us from just starting with one of the generic AOSP targets for graphene os and focusing it for one of these FLOSS targets?

Do we just not have the specs in the hardware with decent FLOSS support? If that's the case, doesn't that mean we are quite literally steps from the finish line?

Re: I give up on free software phones (2019)

#149

Post by Gigachad »

api wrote: post #139
BSEdlMMldESB wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no excuse, merely a conspiracy explanation: it simply cannot be permitted. somebody realized PC market/platform made a huge "mistake", letting anybody make software for them and permitting random hardware. this 'mistake' was avoided on smartphones for very pointed, clear, intentions of social control. there exists NO homebrew smartphone hardware like for PCs.

It’s not a conspiracy. It’s just economics. There is no money in it so there is no funding available for it. Things like Librem are practically basement operations compared to Apple, Samsung, and Google. Mobile software is far harder and more costly to produce than desktop because the small form factor and rapid casual use cases mean there can be zero tolerance for bad UX. The amount of effort that goes into just get…

It wouldn't surprise me if Apple has spent more time and money on the iOS keyboard than Purism spent on the entire phone + software.

Modern phones are probably the most advanced products humanity has ever produced.

Re: I give up on free software phones (2019)

#150

Post by teaearlgraycold »

AndyKelley wrote: post #75

I got my librem in the mail last week after waiting several years(!!) for shipping. It's complete trash. The software is shit, the battery is shit, it's expensive, low specs, completely unusable. I'm willing to compromise a lot in order to go with the free software approach, but my god, just do better. There's no excuse for how un-functional this thing is. Try harder. I had the same reaction with the pine phone a cou…

Honestly you're best off getting a Pixel and flashing it with AOSP.
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