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I want a phone I can own, like my sofa. It is out there in my living room just waiting for me to do whatever I want to do with it. My Android phone doesn't wor

I want a phone I can own, like my sofa. It is out there in my living room just waiting for me to do whatever I want to do with it. My Android phone doesn't work that way. The company behind it expects me to do certain tasks with the phone. Some tasks are open for gradual adoption, other aren't, meaning they are mandated. After all those years, I'm beginning to dislike that.

rainyMammoth 6y ago
Good point. And the company behind Android mainly wants to ensure they can get as much data from you as possible. You will never fully be able to disable the data upload to Google.
- krmboya 6y ago
  A primary requirement I've had over the past few years when purchasing a phone is whether it is supported by Lineageos. Less data is collected hopefully, without gapps installed.
  - LMYahooTFY 6y ago
    Interesting how this seems to be the common belief, but AFAIK AOSP does not do this, while ironically Lineage uses Google for connectivity servers and fallback DNS.
- LMYahooTFY 6y ago
  Source about android uploading to google? Pretty sure AOSP does not do this.
rpdillon 6y ago
This analogy perfectly captures how I feel, and it's so elegantly concise. I suspect I'll be borrowing this in future conversations...thanks!
- Terretta 6y ago
  It is perfect, since you have zero expectation your sofa should be transformed into something else, or make any provisions or concessions in its design towards looking or performing like some personalized flavor of sofa. Similarly, the sooner we get over the trope that any handset maker must be forced into selling a tiny general purpose computing device instead of an iPod PDA communicator, the better. It is what it is, let makers just make it the best, without unnecessary and less reliable modularity. Yes people want that, it’s a market segment, and so other makers can make things for that category.
paulcole 6y ago
> I want a phone I can own, like my sofa. It is out there in my living room just waiting for me to do whatever I want to do with it. The reality of this is much different. To the average person buying a Linux phone, their new sofa has 3 legs on Tuesday, they can only invite 2 friends to sit on it if it’s an odd number day, and sometimes the fabric glows in the dark. 1% of the time it works exactly how they dreamed and 99% of the time it’s frustrating. But they own it and can fix all those problems if they’re so inclined! Or they can be at the mercy of people who can fix those problems and hope they don’t see the random glow in the dark fabric as a feature and that they don’t prioritize the problems they’re having over the problems they’re having. Or they can buy an iPhone or flagship Android phone and have it work exactly like they want it to 99% of the time and be frustrating 1% of the time. The average person’s iPhone/Android is the sofa in their living room just waiting to be used.
- ekianjo 6y ago
  No average person is going to buy a Linux phone anytime soon. Lets be realistic.
  - regularfry 6y ago
    Ambiguous parsing: (average person) (buying a Linux phone) != average (person buying a Linux phone)
- shakna 6y ago
  > The average person’s iPhone/Android is the sofa in their living room just waiting to be used. Except, it isn't. Because at random times the sofa company comes in and reorganises the way the cushions are positioned. And then they take away the ability to use the tilt function. Then, because they really need to know how they use the couch, they'll start tracking when you sit and lie on the couch. So when you have your day off and its outside the scheduled expectations, when you sit on the couch they suddenly come over and put locks and chains on the couch because it clearly wasn't you who was using the couch. Most people just accept this, because what are you going to do? Buy a couch that doesn't have tilt or cushions? You want those! You don't want a wicker chair, you want a comfy couch, so you have to deal with the couch company making life hell every so often. Because there isn't an alternative for the average person. I field calls from my parents at least once a week about something that has "broken". The tech support is like pulling teeth, because everything is hidden from the user. They don't know what they did wrong and all that they want is for it to "work". And half the time I can't help them - because the phone doesn't belong to them and the OS or apps has decided that X feature is no longer worth supporting, and force-updated them to the latest version. Rolling back to the version that did work is difficult or impossible.

rainyMammoth 6y ago

Good point. And the company behind Android mainly wants to ensure they can get as much data from you as possible. You will never fully be able to disable the data upload to Google.

krmboya 6y ago
A primary requirement I've had over the past few years when purchasing a phone is whether it is supported by Lineageos. Less data is collected hopefully, without gapps installed.
- LMYahooTFY 6y ago
  Interesting how this seems to be the common belief, but AFAIK AOSP does not do this, while ironically Lineage uses Google for connectivity servers and fallback DNS.
LMYahooTFY 6y ago
Source about android uploading to google? Pretty sure AOSP does not do this.

rpdillon 6y ago

This analogy perfectly captures how I feel, and it's so elegantly concise. I suspect I'll be borrowing this in future conversations...thanks!

Terretta 6y ago
It is perfect, since you have zero expectation your sofa should be transformed into something else, or make any provisions or concessions in its design towards looking or performing like some personalized flavor of sofa. Similarly, the sooner we get over the trope that any handset maker must be forced into selling a tiny general purpose computing device instead of an iPod PDA communicator, the better. It is what it is, let makers just make it the best, without unnecessary and less reliable modularity. Yes people want that, it’s a market segment, and so other makers can make things for that category.

paulcole 6y ago

> I want a phone I can own, like my sofa. It is out there in my living room just waiting for me to do whatever I want to do with it. The reality of this is much different. To the average person buying a Linux phone, their new sofa has 3 legs on Tuesday, they can only invite 2 friends to sit on it if it’s an odd number day, and sometimes the fabric glows in the dark. 1% of the time it works exactly how they dreamed and 99% of the time it’s frustrating. But they own it and can fix all those problems if they’re so inclined! Or they can be at the mercy of people who can fix those problems and hope they don’t see the random glow in the dark fabric as a feature and that they don’t prioritize the problems they’re having over the problems they’re having. Or they can buy an iPhone or flagship Android phone and have it work exactly like they want it to 99% of the time and be frustrating 1% of the time. The average person’s iPhone/Android is the sofa in their living room just waiting to be used.

ekianjo 6y ago
No average person is going to buy a Linux phone anytime soon. Lets be realistic.
- regularfry 6y ago
  Ambiguous parsing: (average person) (buying a Linux phone) != average (person buying a Linux phone)
shakna 6y ago
> The average person’s iPhone/Android is the sofa in their living room just waiting to be used. Except, it isn't. Because at random times the sofa company comes in and reorganises the way the cushions are positioned. And then they take away the ability to use the tilt function. Then, because they really need to know how they use the couch, they'll start tracking when you sit and lie on the couch. So when you have your day off and its outside the scheduled expectations, when you sit on the couch they suddenly come over and put locks and chains on the couch because it clearly wasn't you who was using the couch. Most people just accept this, because what are you going to do? Buy a couch that doesn't have tilt or cushions? You want those! You don't want a wicker chair, you want a comfy couch, so you have to deal with the couch company making life hell every so often. Because there isn't an alternative for the average person. I field calls from my parents at least once a week about something that has "broken". The tech support is like pulling teeth, because everything is hidden from the user. They don't know what they did wrong and all that they want is for it to "work". And half the time I can't help them - because the phone doesn't belong to them and the OS or apps has decided that X feature is no longer worth supporting, and force-updated them to the latest version. Rolling back to the version that did work is difficult or impossible.