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Linux phones are more important now than ever

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Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever

#71

Post by hecanjog »

Nursie wrote: post #35
hecanjog wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had the same (US) bank for 20 years, it's a small one, they have a nice web interface (and I can deposit checks through it on my laptop) but I've never run into a situation where I needed to have some smartphone app to do my banking. (I also don't have a smartphone.) Is this common with major banks? Do they not have web interfaces anymore?

A lot of major banks worldwide have apps, and they usually require un-rooted phones. People here seem to think this is some sort of Orwellian attempt to control them, but the reasons are more mundane and technical - many of them (mine included, from two countries) use security facilities on the phone to secure your accounts. For example, my HSBC UK app has replaced the little calculator thing they used to ship, and u…

> American-like banking detected... who uses checks in 2025?! :)

Yeah, fair. :-) I live in a small town, the only check I write is my rent check, which I literally walk across the street to deposit. But I still on rare occasions receive checks as well.

Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever

#73

Post by Nursie »

hecanjog wrote: post #71
Nursie wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of major banks worldwide have apps, and they usually require un-rooted phones. People here seem to think this is some sort of Orwellian attempt to control them, but the reasons are more mundane and technical - many of them (mine included, from two countries) use security facilities on the phone to secure your accounts. For example, my HSBC UK app has replaced the little calculator thing they used to ship, and u…

> American-like banking detected... who uses checks in 2025?! :) Yeah, fair. :-) I live in a small town, the only check I write is my rent check, which I literally walk across the street to deposit. But I still on rare occasions receive checks as well.

Ha. Fair enough. That sort of thing is almost exclusively done using bank transfers here in Aus.

I did receive one check this year, a refund from a company who had screwed up billing on a medical scan. For some reason they couldn't just refund it to my debit card. It was really annoying to have to get to a bank during opening hours to deposit it, but my bank here doesn't offer mobile check scanning. Some do, my old UK bank did ... oh well.

Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever

#74

Post by nextos »

akagusu wrote: post #34
debo_ wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In giant font at the top of the linked post: > apparently it needs to be said that I am not suggesting you switch to Linux on your phone today; just that development needs to accelerate. Please don’t be one of the 34 people that replied to tell me Linux is not ready.

Linux is ready, what is not ready is the ecosystem.

SailfishOS is quite polished, and there's an Android emulation API. Lots of common applications, including many banking ones, run without a problem.

It's a chicken-egg issue. The last 10% of polish won't be done till a critical mass of users adopt the platform, and vice versa.

Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever

#75

Post by neilv »

(Warning: Am only a software/product engineer, playing dilettante here, not an actual marketing/business expert.)

Awhile back, I was thinking that one pragmatic way to get this viable Linux smartphone moving might be for hobbyists to focus on getting one easily available, affordable device working fully with pure Debian or PostmarketOS (no closed drivers or other modules, and preferably no blobs) and with Purism's Phosh.

Then that would boost contributions to, and demand for, Purism's open source platform/components for Librem 5 (and whatever the successor hardware would be).

If the cheap hardware is something like PinePhone, I'm just going to handwave that maybe this device won't cannibalize much sales of Purism's premium devices, but instead the community investment into the platform will effectively generate much higher net demand for Purism's premium products. With higher volume, Purism could maybe also hit more accessible price points.

If the Purism hardware demand happens, then there may be competing hardware entrants. And they will have to compete partly on being trustworthy and aligned with the interests of the kinds of customer who want to run a non-Apple, non-Google device. Where Purism should have a head start in credibility and goodwill. The new entrants will have to contribute engineer time (possibly: pay community contractors) to getting their device to work well with this platform, and be expected to upstream all of it as open source to the platform mainline, if they want to be attractive to these customers.

(I'm not saying the cheap device has to be PinePhone; that just seemed the most likely one at the time. It could even be something like an older popular Pixel model, with many unlockable-bootloader units available cheap on eBay, for which people are able to assemble/develop open source drivers. Or maybe GrapheneOS will get their own device built, and it can also be used for this non-Android-based open Linux platform.)

Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever

#78

Post by rickydroll »

dmbche wrote: post #45
rickydroll wrote: post #39

The only thing that keeps me on Pixel is Google's astrophotography mode. Put the same quality camera (app and hardware), and I'm there. I'll get there faster if there is an Ektachrome and Tri-X film emulation setting. I miss the colors of film, but do not miss the chemistry or expense.

I'm sure I sound like and ass, but if astrophotography is the only thing tying you to your phone, why not gear for that?

Nah, not an ass. Just not up to speed yet.

Using traditional cameras (repurposed DLSRs or fancy webcams like ZWO). There is a significant hurdle, of expense, learning how to use them, and setting them up. A Pixel makes sky-wide astrophotography trivially easy with almost no setup required. Depending on how stable the camera mount is, the pixel will allow me to start over on the novice side of the scale. I've been able to take handheld pictures of the Aurora and other large sky images, such as lightning in twilight thunderstorms. If I can rest the camera somewhere stable, I can take longer exposures and even create a time-lapse of the night sky.

There's a lot to be said for pulling your phone out of your pocket and taking pictures of the sky.

Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever

#79

Post by jauntywundrkind »

I fully think an amazing consumer-targetting device could take over like a storm if done well, if ambitiously done, with an aggressive software stack.

But. I think what we should ask for now should be simpler. Let this be an alpha geek toy, let folks fiddle with some basic devices boards that can do the thing. The work on PinePhone, Mobian, others is good pioneering work, alas largely held back by there just being so few decent devices for folks to play with. The driver situation keeps making hope here impossible.

It's not a high hope, but Qualcomm has a QCM6490 chip is maybe a rare hope. A chip that is somewhat buyable by regular makers, an extended life version of the Snapdragon 778G. It's pretty modern, and comes with very featureful connectivity hardware. We're seeing variants like non-cellular Radxa Dragon Q6A in the field. Particle has a new Tachyon board you can buy with it. https://www.cnx-software.com/2024/07/31/tachyon-business-car...

It's just stunningly rare alas that folks can make systems with vaguely modern cellular chips. The cores are just not available generally. Sure it's be great to have a well produced Linux phone that is super consumer acceptable with a great OS build out, a new or revived Maemo or a Jolla Sailfish: folks who can go sign the NDAs and make a consumer device but have it be Linux. But I think for this dream to really take hold, humanity needs to be afforded some possibility to have an honest shake, some chance to be a little closer to the machine than typical cellphone bargain. The lack of cellular chip availability has been so so damning to this quest. And here is one counter-example, a crack in the wall, where I see flowers and hope grow.

There was some real nice moments where it seemed like maybe some Snapdragon cellphones in general we're getting Linux support to some level, in mainline, just for the base stuff. No cellular. Unclear to me but it seems like maybe those were just the very barest of beginnings; whether any peripherals at all work or whether there was even a screen is unclear. The trickle of releases also seems to have died off. FWIW though, I will note the previous Fairphone 5 does use the above QCM6490. https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.1-Arm-Hardware

Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever

#80

Post by Telaneo »

neilv wrote: post #75

(Warning: Am only a software/product engineer, playing dilettante here, not an actual marketing/business expert.) Awhile back, I was thinking that one pragmatic way to get this viable Linux smartphone moving might be for hobbyists to focus on getting one easily available, affordable device working fully with pure Debian or PostmarketOS (no closed drivers or other modules, and preferably no blobs) and with Purism's Ph…

> to focus on getting one easily available, affordable device working fully with pure Debian or PostmarketOS (no closed drivers or other modules, and preferably no blobs) and with Purism's Phosh.

I'm not sure how viable this is. Linux phones already opt for hardware that's as open as possible, i.e. they use parts with the most open documentation and drives, but the trade-off to that is that those parts are functionally already end-of-life when they're in the phone, either because it's an old design that's been opened up to squeeze a bit more money out of an old design, or the design was third-rate to begin with. Not to mention that the baseband side of things is closed no matter what, so the phone that's completely true to the FOSS ideals seems impossible to make no matter what. And who would buy a phone with a third-rate chip and battery life? And since very few people buy them, prices aren't able to drop any significant amount.

I understand why people aren't willing to make a devils bargain in order to make a decent phone first, and then put Linux on it second, but I can't see any other way for this to happen, other than the phone market magically becoming more open somehow. If you could install Linux on any phone, since all the drivers are already out there, then we wouldn't be in this pickle, but every single Android phone out there has a different set of drivers and very few of them are open and possible to implement without an enormous amount of work, unlike the PC world, were at this point, only the really weird stuff (and Wifi from certain vendors) doesn't have some form of Linux driver.

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