I was going through Pine64’s page again after I found the latest KDE announcement. With that said, I seem to see a lot of issues with firmware on the Pine, whilst the Librem is just plain out of budget for me. Was interested in how many people here run a Linux mobile as a daily driver, and how has your experience been?
I’m considering purchasing the Pine but I’d like a better screen, more RAM and a better CPU. Don’t know if I should wait for a new model to be released (are they even planning to do that? Is the company active?). I will only really use it to browse the Web, and might even look to desolder a couple of parts that I know I won’t use.
Thanks.
Edit: I am willing to watch content and use banking apps from the browser. Do you think it’ll be fit for me?
Edit 2: overall, I am much saddened about the state of affairs regarding private computing on the go. I desperately hope that Linux on mobile takes off, even though its incubation looks disheartening at the moment. Thank you everyone for your comments.
My problem with linux phones was the hardware. Either far too expensive or too cheap and slow. And the cellular radio is ABSOLUTELY PROPRIETARY.
I would get one at a $300 price point with 12 hour battery life that can play HD video without hiccups. Also would be nice to have open source baseband drivers in it.
I’ve got really low standards that haven’t been met.
Yeah, this.
Last legit fairly open sauce was N900.
Exactly. It is infuriating that such hardware is so expensive and/or incapable
I’ve bought a Nexus 4 to play around with Ubuntu Touch many years ago, but I really don’t think I could daily drive even a more powerful Linux phone. Many apps from messengers to banking apps are Android/iOS only, so it’d be really inconvenient to use — not to mention problems with calling and a not-so-great camera.
Almost all things I want to do on a phone are possible with a Pixel + GrapheneOS, which also makes an open source, secure and private phone OS.
Usually ssh’ing into a server through termux is all I need, altough it’d be cool to be able to plug my phone into a monitor and have a desktop with me all the time. But it being “cool” is the problem, as it’s not useful day to fay for me. If I need a pc I’ll take my laptop. I’ll probably try it at some point, but that’s many years into the future.
Man, the call problems are a dealbreaker for any phone at all, imo. Maybe not for a toy, but it’s bonkers that they’d release a phone OS that isn’t 100% call stable.
There has to be a device to develop support for calling. Since there’re multiple open source phone projects it’s also not simple to just write an implementation for them. Additionally carriers don’t work all the same (different bands, …), so it’s really not easy to solve with the few resources available. As far as I know much of the development on these phone OS is done by volunteers and pine64 isn’t a big established company either.
Copying my edit here: I am willing to watch content and use banking apps from the browser. Do you think it’ll be fit for me?
Performance and bugs might still be a problem with these relatively young projects. But if all you need is a browser I do believe it might be worth a shot.
In the EU 2FA for banking is required by law which usually comes down to either an Android/iOS app or a chipTAN device. That’s why browser isn’t an option for me. Sadly I don’t think waydroid passes the
basicIntegritycheck of AOSP [1], so emulation is out of the picture too.
I used a pinephone as my daily driver for about a month. Importantly, this was 3~4 years ago, things could be better now.
My take at the time: The battery life was bad, the phone was slow, MMS did not work, making a receiving calls was iffy at best.
I really really hope this improves/has improved over time. Android gets more and more difficult to de-google. A linux phone would solve a lot of privacy issues (not all, but some)
I hope so too. However, that doesn’t seem to be the case. The PinePhone Pro is still treated as a development device by PostmarketOS, for example
It sucks that GrapheneOS supports only Pixels and nobody came along and ported it to other devices, although less secure.
But “Android gets harder to degoogle” is not true. Pixels are just way too expensive
Pixels are just way too expensive
LOL what? The A series are some of the cheapest modern phones you can buy, and an incredible value…
Yup then that is pretty messed up. I was used to phones not costing over 200€, maybe 300
The only phones that cost that much are either several years old (in which case you can include used Pixels) or are riddled with bloatware and spyware and the absolute cheapest of materials that won’t last long enough to make buying it even make any financial sense.
Would really love to but have yet to see basic phone functionality covered in a way that isn’t a painful compromise. Stock Android is a privacy nightmare, which is why I left it. I had some fun with Cyanogenmod back in the day, maybe there’s another de-googled Android distribution around today but since I last checked I couldn’t find one that runs on modern mainstream hardware without really jumping through some crazy hoops to establish root.
Cyanogenmod became LineageOS. It can be run fully de-googled or with Gapps.
GrapheneOS is also worth looking at.
Both run on modern hardware and are super simple to install.
I would have to dispute your claims on this one. The only really modern mobiles running Lineage OS (by modern I mean released in this year and the previous year) are perhaps some European Xiaomi/Realme devices, maybe a couple of Samsungs, the last-gen OnePlus devices, and the Pixels.
As I have been complaining for a long while now, the entire custom ROM market is moving towards the Pixels, which is a dreadful move in my opinion, but what I can do
It’s mostly up to which manufacturers allow boot loader unlocking.
The pixels are somewhat a continuation of the nexus line which were more developer centric.
Motorola edge 30 runs just fine and has done practically since it launched, typing this on it now
In Europe? AFAIK Motorola’s latest devices don’t have builds on the Lineage OS website (from 2023) but I might be wrong.
Australia
Lucky
Why?
Yeah, my Motorola g73 isn’t supported.
Yeah
Will definitely give these a look, thank you for the updates.
Can you speak to your experience with any of these? Would love to hear a first hand account!
I ran Lineage on my OnePlus 5 for a few years until I replaced it with a Pixel 8 last month. The first thing I did with it was install GrapheneOS. I have not had any issues so far.
I’m not that person but I’ve been using GrapheneOS for about 8 months now. Setting up an esim was probably the worst thing I had to do but it was still relatively easy. Lmk if you got any questions
Would really love to but have yet to see basic phone functionality covered in a way that isn’t a painful compromise. Stock Android is a privacy nightmare, which is why I left it.
I’ve been using GrapheneOS for about a year now and it’s a giant leap in privacy and security (much better than iOS), with very little compromise in functionality.
Been using a Librem 5 since May, and am typing this on it now. I love it.
Nope. I would like to but as long as android does an okay job I will stick with that.
Yeah Linux phone is a pipedream as long as Android works well at all.
The fact that you can use Termux kind of makes Linux phones moot, especially since you need a very specific set of hardware
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Show me a linux phone that isn’t an expensive paperweight after 2 years.
My problem is the lack of availability of custom ROMs on new devices like the newest OnePlus and ASUS. Not the fault of the maintainers but it is what it is. I don’t want to be locked to Pixel hardware because come what may I will never trust Google on a single thing
What inconveniences have you faced from the software?
Copying my edit here: I am willing to watch content and use banking apps from the browser. Do you think it’ll be fit for me?
Forget the pinephone as a daily driver. It is nice to play around with and having linux on your phone is awesome. But you can’t really use it as a daily driver. You’ll try it and it’s going to end up in the drawer of unfinished projects. Trust me, I own a pinephone and I know other people who do.
There’s nothing wrong with it. Just like 50 mild annoyances with anything you’re trying to do with it and on top it’s super slow, compared to any other smartphone.
As I read, the phone by Purism isn’t much better and it’s really expensive.
I’d love to run a system without Google but it’s hard. I tried to run LineageOS with microg for a week or two but eventually had to install Google Play Services. Lots of hurdles with push notifications and unfortunately some apps really refused to work when they detected no play services installed. It really sadden me, to be honest. Really wanted to make it work.
Never gave Linux phones a chance, I rely too much on apps that wouldn’t be available.
I’m interested in the problems you faced. I have realised that I will need GMS/MicroG for maps, and am unclear if I can get a FOSS app to host my local mail inbox without GMS. Other than that, everything else can be done in the browser (technically even maps can be used in the browser but I digress).
Would like to know which services prevent you from leaving Google
My first attempt was to flash the stock LineageOS and then install the microg packages from the fdroid store. I didn’t manage to get that fully working, the microg self-check would have a lot of fails due to version mismatches. I never figured out why. A lot of applications complained about the lack of play services and warned me they wouldn’t work, microg was clearly not installed properly.
Then, I flashed the “LineageOS for MicroG” ROM, which is a LineageOS fork with microg already installed. I had to enable all microg services but the self-check was 100% successful out of the box. No warnings about the lack of play services, everything was mostly working. I installed all software from Fdroid when possible and Aurora Store when not possible.
Push notifications were a bit of a struggle at first but they did work. I still didn’t get notifications to work on Telegram, but “Telegram FOSS” fork seemed to work okay. For GPS/Maps I used Waze (which is technically owned by Google) and it worked flawlessly. I assume you can use other GPS application, I just didn’t do my research on this one. For email I am using Proton Mail, which worked as expected.
The problematic apps were banking/financial apps, which I guess most people can live without. I’m confident the apps would work with microg but simply refused to even start. In Portugal our interbank network developed an application called “MBWAY”, which is really ingrained in the portuguese population. Most people use it. It has a ton of cool functiontionality such as sending money to other people just by using the phone number (instantly and without fees), replacing your ATM/food cards for payments and generating virtual credit cards for online shopping.
I use MBWAY way too much (pun intended), and just decided I didn’t want to live without it. I ended up flashing stock LineageOS and their GAPPS package, which contains the play services and play store app. I still install most stuff from the Aurora and Fdroid store. The banking/financial apps are now working.
Never had such a problem with /e/ just with LineageOS, highly recommend!
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Yes, that is correct.
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I think the apps would work without Google Play services but they refuse to boot without it. Unfortunately since these are banking and finance apps the only alternative is not to use them.
I own a Poco F2 Pro, ROM support is somewhat limited. CalyxOS is insupported, it seems. When this phones starts dying I’ll probably give GrapheneOS a shot!
I used a pinephone for a week or so, but people got angry at me, because calling me was impossible. Apart from that it is a slow but very interesting device. Mine is broken now, because I somehow managed to fry the wifi chip. I used arch btw.
Thanks
I have a Mobian community edition PinePhone with postmarketOS and it is my daily driver. It suits my humble needs, but these few years have been a mixed bag. Especially with Mobian I’ve had periods of it working great, punctuated by periods with annoying issues. I stopped using the phone for a while when it suddenly stopped taking calls but I didn’t notice since there was no indication of trouble. My family reported me missing when they couldn’t reach me after a few days. Luckily that was then sorted out, but it wasn’t great. This hasn’t happened since.
postmarketOS has been pretty solid and seems to perform better than Mobian.
After a few years I’m starting to think I need a new battery, but the official store has been out of stock for a while. I’m not sure if they will ever get more parts. Communication from Pine64 has also slowed down to a crawl, which is not great. At least their official monthly blog was last updated in august. At the moment I’m somewhat skeptical of their future. We’ll see.
Be warned though: the PinePhone can browse the web and banking probably works, but watching, say, youtube is not going to be a great experience. You’re probably better off using alternative solutions like Pipeline. The PinePhone is not a powerful machine and you will have tinker every now and then.
Having said all that, if you set your expectations correctly you can probably get along with a PinePhone as your daily driver. I’m not sure if I can recommend it because there are many caveats, but in the end you know your needs and what you’re comfortable with better than I do. I like my PinePhone and I surely wish more people get Linux phones and that the ecosystem evolves.
Me, GrapheneOS!
No jokes, I found a Oneplus 3 with broken Display, will fix that and try some distros. But the choices all seem pretty bad tbh, I would like Fedora Silverblue but I guess that doesnt exist… yet.
Maybe I will try to create a custom Ublue image?
I use Kaios , Another embedded linux
Do you specifically use feature-phones?
Life is nice this way, No bzz, Everything supposed to be done by a phone is handled perfectly by this small thing and for rest (like office,game and code) I go with PC
How do you do instant messaging? Isn’t typing with that harder than average?
That’s also a thing but I use xmpp,matrix on pc (which I rarely do). BTW I forgot to mention I am full time student so…
Essentially, your usage of your mobile ends with calling?
Unfortunately, that won’t work for me since I need a browser to check my accounts and other needs on the move
Which phone?
Jiophone F220b
Does sailfish os count?
Is it for feature-phones?
for about one year i used exclusively motorola droid4 as mobile device. it runs maemo-leste: mobile linux distribution with nokia’s hildon desktop (revived maemo fremantle sources) on top of devuan linux.
i also myself maintain about ten packages in maemo-leshe repository.
but most of the people won’t use motorola droid 4 and maemo-leste.
they won’t tolerate small screen and they need their ‘apps’ for ‘banking’ or ‘twitter’ or whatever.
i do not use banking apps or twitter or reddit or instagram or whatever they use, so i don’t care.
i used pidgin on that device, even connected to ‘ms teams’ for work via pidgin.
worked more stabre than real ‘teams’ client, but of course pidgin is not the mosh usable app on a small screen.
today i use dino on it for e2e encrypted xmpp messaging. in devuan chimaera dino is old and buggy. well what can i do?
it is okay.
but how many people are ready to give up shiny androids or ioses for this cyberpunk device?
even camera doesn’t work on it.
well, it is normal for mobile linux distributions that camera doesn’t work ot most devices. if it works for photos then not for videos.
well i carry an old small point and shoot with me. i think though it is crappy it makes pdotos better than many phones do.
but i cannot recognize qrcodes with phone.
recently i am trying to use pinephone.
it is more powerful and it has more recent software in postmarketos. my environment is sxmo. it is hde best phone environment ever created, i think. but how many people will agree with me? even pinephone users prefer phosh or kde plasma or something more fancy.
what i do with pinephone?
first of all i charge it always. it is like tamagocci, if you don’t feed it it will die. so i carry a power bank with me.
it runs about six hours if i dont touch it (without suspend) and about two hours if i run dino.
in best case, if dino won’t make the device unresponsive.
i have an open source program called songrec on it, it can use shazam api and it recognizes music played around. it is a very useful app. and it is adaptive, works in both portrait and landsgape modes.
what else do i do with it? well, browse the web sometimes. but it is often a torture. and i wondur why dont i just do the same on laptop.
yeah and podcasts with gpodder-adaptive.
and radio with shortwave.
i know why i do this: i want to use mostly libre software so i am ready for inconveniences. but not many people are ready to this.
for many years i used sailfish. it is very polished. i would recommend it to ‘regular people’ instead of android.
but i do not like that it doesn’t run on mainline on most devices, so proprietary linux kernel is necessary, the ui framework isn’t libre so we cannot use an app we used to on other platform most of the time. so u r getting locked to sailfish. it is hard to leave it because u cannot take your apps with you. in order to port apps written with their silica classes one needs to rewrite the ui completely.
so i am a person who only used linux phones for years asd i know it is not easy foc regular people.
for me it is ok. i do not need much more than sxmo as environment. i only wish pinephone to not hang as often because of dino. (:
for about one year i used exclusively motorola droid4 as mobile device. it runs maemo-leste: mobile linux distribution with nokia’s hildon desktop (revived maemo fremantle sources) on top of devuan linux.
i also myself maintain about ten packages in maemo-leshe repository.
but most of the people won’t use motorola droid 4 and maemo-leste.
they won’t tolerate small screen and they need their ‘apps’ for ‘banking’ or ‘twitter’ or whatever.
i do not use banking apps or twitter or reddit or instagram or whatever they use, so i don’t care.
i used pidgin on that device, even connected to ‘ms teams’ for work via pidgin.
worked more stabre than real ‘teams’ client, but of course pidgin is not the mosh usable app on a small screen.
today i use dino on it for e2e encrypted xmpp messaging. in devuan chimaera dino is old and buggy. well what can i do?
it is okay.
but how many people are ready to give up shiny androids or ioses for this cyberpunk device?
even camera doesn’t work on it.
well, it is normal for mobile linux distributions that camera doesn’t work ot most devices. if it works for photos then not for videos.
well i carry an old small point and shoot with me. i think though it is crappy it makes pdotos better than many phones do.
but i cannot recognize qrcodes with phone.
recently i am trying to use pinephone.
it is more powerful and it has more recent software in postmarketos. my environment is sxmo. it is hde best phone environment ever created, i think. but how many people will agree with me? even pinephone users prefer phosh or kde plasma or something more fancy.
‘’‘’‘’‘’'what i do with pinephone?
first of all i charge it always. it is like tamagocci, if you don’t feed it it will die. so i carry a power bank with me.
it runs about six hours if i dont touch it (without suspend) and about two hours if i run dino.
in best case, if dino won’t make the device unresponsive.
i have an open source program called songrec on it, it can use shazam api and it recognizes music played around. it is a very useful app. and it is adaptive, works in both portrait and landsgape modes.
what else do i do with it? well, browse the web sometimes. but it is often a torture. and i wondur why dont i just do the same on laptop.
yeah and podcasts with gpodder-adaptive.
and radio with shortwave.
i know why i do this: i want to use mostly libre software so i am ready for inconveniences. but not many people are ready to this.
for many years i used sailfish. it is very polished. i would recommend it to ‘regular people’ instead of android.
but i do not like that it doesn’t run on mainline on most devices, so proprietary linux kernel is necessary, the ui framework isn’t libre so we cannot use an app we used to on other platform most of the time. so u r getting locked to sailfish. it is hard to leave it because u cannot take your apps with you. in order to port apps written with their silica classes one needs to rewrite the ui completely.
so i am a person who only used linux phones for years asd i know it is not easy foc regular people.
for me it is ok. i do not need much more than sxmo as environment. i only wish pinephone to not hang as often because of dino. (:
