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It all depends on your personal definitions of 'shiny' and 'work' I suppose. Current GNU/Linux phones unfortunately don’t even clear the ‘work’ threshold for me
by Valkhyr 6y ago
It all depends on your personal definitions of 'shiny' and 'work' I suppose. Current GNU/Linux phones unfortunately don’t even clear the ‘work’ threshold for me, and are far from it.
If current GNU/Linux phones work for your needs, that’s great - but sorry to say that you are not representative of all users (neither am I - that's the point, kind of - Android/iOS are mature enough to cover most users' needs). I don’t want to go into too much detail of my specific needs, but let’s just say the deficiencies boil down to (a) vastly inferior power management/battery life, (b) vastly inferior processing power in the current crop of hardware and (c) specific apps/services not being available on the platform (and likely impossible to run via Anbox because of (b)).
I would actually love to jump to a GNU/Linux phone. Less so because of freedom or privacy concerns (they are a factor, but not the dominating factor). More because I prefer the traditional desktop/general-purpose-computing OS way of doing things (file-centric vs app-centric, root access to the entire file system, development directly on the device). I would honestly be fairly happy with Android if it was pre-rooted, imposed fewer restrictions on what apps can do, and was based on a mainline kernel ideally.
I have previously used Ubuntu Touch for about a year on a secondary device, I have a Librem 5 on pre-order, and I follow development for the Pinephone somewhat closely and am tempted to get one. But for the foreseeable future I can't see a GNU/Linux smartphone replacing my Android - I'd see it as a complement to it (a tiny portable laptop).
- hanselot 6y agoI just want to ask. Is it possible to use any modern phone without signing up for an email account? Signing up for said account then forces you immediately to agree to give away all your rights?