Is anyone here using a (non-Android) linux Smartphone? Curious what type of phones y’all are using and what your experience has been.
Yes, running OnePlus 6 with Mobile NixOS (actually mostly just NixOS with a couple modules from mobile NixOS). I will try to make the config public when I get it into a less rough state. It’s… useable as a daily phone, but you have to be really into it to do it.
It’s not like desktop Linux where if you’re a tech enthusiast you can ignore a few rough edges and just use it like you would a more mainstream OS.
I had to flash a specific old version of OxygenOS, using almost undocumented tools, which could easily brick the phone if something went wrong, just for GPS to work. I have to recompile my kernel every time it updates. I had to write my own scripts for the hardware slider thing to work (which has a nice benefit of letting me use it for whatever I want; I want to make it switch between NORMAL and INSERT in my editor just as a laugh).
I can’t even get wire guard to work and he’s writing his own scripts for a Linux phone. How do I get this knowledge?
Honestly, it’s mostly just trying shit out, breaking your install and fixing it, and having fun. In the grand scheme of things doing all that stuff is not that difficult, mostly tedious; my day job involves more complex and often interesting problems. It’s just gluing together things which other people wrote, looking at what breaks, and either fixing it properly or just hacking it together with perl.
Finally, I can confide to you that I’ve spent half a day getting wireguard working on that very phone a couple months ago, only to find out it was because I didn’t poke the right holes in the firewall :)
When I.lernt coding backnin the 2000s we had the term “Horas de aplanar el culo” (hours of flattening ass) shit takes time, patience, perseverance and the humility of always remember that some possibly asian kid did it in a fraction of the time with a fraction of the body hair you have. But that doesn’t invalidate what you did.
I got a oneplus 6 to install nixos, but I’m currently using LineageOS as I kind of got stuck on the nixos install, and I needed a phone. I previously had nixos on a pinephone and it was cool but too slow to use seriously.
I have a second oneplus 6 with a wonky usb port, am going to try to fix that and maybe give nixos another go. Sounds like its even more hassly than I thought!
I also have a OnePlus 6 with Mobile NixOS. I haven’t been able to get audio or camera to function, so it’s just a toy on m desk at the moment. Other than that and a few UI quirks, it’s serviceable.
Audio works for me (with pulseaudio). The camera doesn’t work for me either.
I just fat-fingered myself into a need for a new phone. I’d really like to get away from Android, but I’ve yet to hear anyone say any smartphone running Linux is ready for daily driving.
😢
I have been waiting for 10 years or more. And it still isn’t. It will never be unfortunately.
I do think it will move way faster the shitter android gets.
Facts. At first there was such an enthusiastic Android crowd who was having so much fun with it. (Not to mention contributing TONS of free labor and promotion.)
And now Google is just saying “NO! NOT YOURS! WE’RE GREEN APPLE NOW!”
I hope those actual genius nerds who love user-centric tech accelerate an alternative just out of sheer spite at this point.
Tbh I would love to tinker around with my 3-year-old phone and get something working (I believe it was running Android 12 on last update), but I don’t necessarily have the time, willingness, or even knowledge of where to start. I’m a hobbyist programmer who mostly does full-stack web development these days with a sprig of application programming on Desktop. I’ve never even tried to go into mobile tech, and when I did, it was for small things like a Raspberry Pi which is essentially an ARM computer that can run mostly anything an AMD computer can. Phones aren’t like that.
Really, its a function of how many of us give these companies money to buy their hardware
So, yeah, the shittier android gets, the more of us jump ship. The more of us jump ship, the better the ecosystem becomes.
Eh they said that about desktop Linux not that long ago
I wanted PinePhone to work decently so I could daily drive it but when I got it it was already far behind from my old phone hardware-wise. PostmarketOS had run roughly. It was kinda usable but I couldn’t manage to use Signal on it (it was a desktop app that time). GPS wasn’t working either. 2 most important things for me. Battery life was also abysmal.
This was years ago though, PostmarketOS is probably much much better now. I sold that PinePhone so I don’t know its current state. I wouldn’t expect more from what I tried.
If I’m gonna get a Linux phone now, I want to see a good Android app emulation. At least until we get real alternatives. I still need a couple apps from Aurora Store. F-Droid apps have a better chance to be ported to Linux from Google Play ones anyway.
Same boat here. I still futz with my PinePhone but mostly as a portable music/video player.
Eagerly awaiting the rebirth of CalyxOS
Really sad about the Pinephone, because you know what Pine did SO WELL? The PineTime. That device is still incredible and has lasted me a long time.
It shows time, and it shows messages, even a decent heartrate monitor! Built like a tank, too. I wish more of their products could be this awesome.
I daily drive a Librem 5. First thing to note is do not expect a well polished experience. Battery life is bad, only about 4 hours of light use, and 8 or so hours if left in suspend. It can do VoLTE, send SMS, use web apps and any apps coded with libadwaita or kirigami. Other desktop apps can be forced to scale on the display, but it won’t be perfect.
I use Signal desktop as my main means of communication on the Librem 5. I have a spare normie phone for setup, but Waydroid is an option. I do use Waydroid for a few apps that have no web browser equivalent.
Idk, all I can say is, you have to really want it to live with it. I don’t do gaming or heavy social media use or anything removed that, so it is just fine for me. But it’s definitely not for everyone.
Is that battery life in airplane mode or not? Curious how long you get in airplane mode.
You could probably stretch it to 10-12 hours if you turn all the hardware kill switches to off, which activates “lockdown mode.” It turns off every sensor on the device.
I’m using Sailfish OS on a Jolla C2 phone. The OS is great, very good native software and it also runs Android apps.
How’s your experience been with the GPS? I have been using sailfish on a Sony phone and loved it but getting a GPS lock just took forever for me.
Works well enough for me, it’s comparable to my Android phones. But I’m not a heavy GPS user.
Have you done anything to get that? I have not been able to get decent GPS unless I planned 20 mins in advance
Wikipedia states the UI layer is propriertary, is that true?
Some components are proprietary. See https://docs.sailfishos.org/Develop/Open_Source/ .
Jolla is in the process of open sourcing components. See this forum post from today .
I just got myself a fairphone gen 6. I want to put postmarket OS on it, but had a kind of rough start. Haven’t gotten it working yet :(
eOS works great for me on my fairphone 5, I suspect the model 6 is similar. Just be VERY careful about the anti-rollback protection, read the install instructions carefully and follow them exactly. And don’t use the easy installer, it can brick your phone.
https://doc.e.foundation/devices/FP6/install
For everyone else, here are the supported devices:
eOS is based on aosp though.
Postmarket OS isn’t? Oh whoa, I just checked for myself, I had no idea, thought it was aosp too!
Cool, thanks for the correction.
Yeah. Seen this story before. Google will shit all over AOSP, and it will slowly start hurting more and more. Thought I’d give a full blown Linux mobile distro a go this time around. Maybe even get to contribute some
Great idea. I’m going to consider the same.
Ive got a 4. Its pretty fantastic on /e/ so far.
oneplus 6T and poco F1 on mobian and postmarketOS. SDM845 devices with 8 GB RAM and fast storage, about the peak of performance you can have nowadays for about $50 apiece. I’d encourage anyone to get a cheap device, fun to play around with and prepare for the day when it becomes viable. ubuntu touch is also possible, but since it’s halium (like android + linux VM) it wants me to downgrade to Android 9 which is virtually impossible for me; the former two run full linux kernels and don’t have that limitation - spotty hardware support, though.
performance is acceptable, the power to do almost anything you want, access whatever and whenever you want. I run it without broadband, just wifi. the cameras are unusable. since I keep the modem off, GPS doesn’t work either. so it’s a linux laptop with touch, basically. the apps are a shitshow, rarely will you find one that supports touch and adapts to the vertical zoomed-in screen.
but it’s getting better, shit’s way better now than it was only a year ago and eventually it’ll get there.
as long as you’re aware it’s not an android alternative, you’ll have a good time.
If you are, you’re usually limited to progressive web apps. Not a bad thing, just something to be aware of. That’s the reason I had to give up when I tried. Not having a decent navigation software was really hard.
For me it was battery life. The thing wouldn’t sleep properly.
Sleeps good enough for the music stream to be choppy, but not good enough to last a day.
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I wish Ununtu Touch switched name, since its neither Ubuntu nor Canonical any longer.
Hang in you mean Ubuntu touch right? There’s no such thing as Ubuntu touch?
I am also looking for a linux smart phone at the moment. I have not found many that don’t seem to be sold out, or aren’t quite there yet.
If I find anything promising I will edit.
A bit late to the party here, but today I flashed Ubuntu Touch onto a Xiaomi Poco X3, and it’s… well, it’s rough.
All the base functionality seems to be there, calls should work (not sure because I didn’t test them extensively), sms works, location/gps works, nfc is supported, camera is… passable, battery life is certainly, and noticeably worse but that’s a given - when on standby, the battery goes down roughly 8% every 5 hours, so approx. 27% per day on standby.
While I’m really glad to see how much Linux phone development sped up, they are still nowhere near daily driver status - even the phones built with Linux support in mind are not faring well from what I’ve seen. Even then, I’m keeping this Poco X3 because Android’s days seem to be numbered.
Can you use Signal on a Linux phone? I know there’s a desktop Linux client, but it relies on being activated from an Android or iPhone app to function, in my experience.
https://www.ubuntu-touch.io/apps/ can run Android apps with Waydroid. I don’t know if Signal works with this, but Android apps run with good performance using Waydroid (I just read about it, never used it myself).
I don’t have experience with mobile Linux (still on Android), but you can emulate Android apps through Waydroid and that would (probably) work. Granted, Idk if notifications would work, but that’s an option if mobile Linux can handle Waydroid. There’s also Molly, which is a signal client that doesn’t rely on Google Play Services for notifications.
Better not to use Signal. It’s intentionally made less secure by requiring a phone number.
Wire is better. Native Linux app. No phone number needed.
Signal is important to some of my contacts and its E2E encryption is excellent. The only thing the phone number gives away to the outside is “has this person used Signal in the past?”. Since it is not illegal to use Signal in my country, I’m not worried.
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What sucks is in the USA you need VOLTE for the phone to work, and I’ve not found a phone that clearly supports it
Looks like BM818 in Librem5 supports VoLTE, but might have issues with some networks.
PinePhone’s (and one of Mudita’s phone’s) EG25 modem technically supports VoLTE, but was very flaky for me (in a mid-low signal area)
FuriLabs (FLX1) seems to have VoLTE working.
Ubuntu Touch explicitly states that it does not support VoLTE.
FuriLabs was looking promising, but the new version of the phone is a downgrade in a lot of categories, and the old phone is not available anymore. Disappointing at the moment, hopefully more hardware options in future from them.
Wtf is this?
Voice over LTE, meaning in the USA we don’t have 3g anymore so the phone has to support voice over LTE
Or just use WiFi?
Not exactly useful if you’re not in an area with WiFi.
