7 ms·

Anyone know of any good Linux phones. Mine is going to be dead soon and for a while I liked Pixel because it didn't have all the Samsung or Motorola or anytime

by hpoe 5y ago

Anyone know of any good Linux phones. Mine is going to be dead soon and for a while I liked Pixel because it didn't have all the Samsung or Motorola or anytime else bloatware, but with what Google has been doing I'd prefer a full Linux phone. I've looked a Librem but $1500 is kind of hard to justify when I have all my other expenses that come with a young family. Anyone have any suggestions?

ekianjo 5y ago
The Pinephone is a nice phone, but still in beta and underpowered to say the least.
- jcun4128 5y ago
  But it is $200 haha but yeah agreed on poor performance Though it was cool installing/running VS Code on it
  - WrtCdEvrydy 5y ago
    I'm a Moto G-Series guy... still running my G7.
- Krisjohn 5y ago
  It's so cheap, just get one.
  - ziml77 5y ago
    The environmental impact of buying something they'll toy around with for 5 minutes and never touch again isn't cheap.
    - fsflover 5y ago
      The environmental impact of having no alternative to the duopoly is much larger.
domano 5y ago
For your use case i would recommend getting an android phone that has good support for a custom rom of your choice. IMHO all the straight-up linux phones are not capable of replacing a smartphone for everyday use.
LukeShu 5y ago
> I've looked a Librem but $1500 is kind of hard to justify Huh, did you accidentally look at the price of a Librem laptop? The Librem 5 phone USD$800. (But $800 is still kind of hard to justify, especially with "wait more than a year").
- drewzero1 5y ago
  Maybe they're thinking of the Librem 5 USA? Priced at $2k, also pretty hard to justify even if I do kind of admire what they're trying to do with it.
m4rtink 5y ago
I have been using the officially supported Sailfis OS on Sony Xperia devices for years as my main device: https://jolla.com/sailfishx/ https://jolla.com/sailfishx/ The idea is you buy one of the supported Xperia phones, buy a Sailfish OS license and flash it on the phone. The license you bought pays for continued software updates (new features & security fixes) as well some external software they integrate (predictive typing support & android app emulation support). Yeah, if the native Sailfish OS apps are not sufficient for you, it can also run most Android apps via an emulation layer. So while Sailfish OS is not fully open source unfortunatelly, it's at the moment IMHO the best mobile Linux distro available on easy to get modern hardware. Ideally over time fully open source distros and more open hardware take over but till then Sailfis OS can serve as a good "bridge", AZ it has since the Jolla company taking care of it was started by the ex N900/Maemo/MeeGO crew.
- loosescrews 5y ago
  Also note that Sailfish is fairly inexpensive. My current Sailfish phone (Xperia 10) cost me ~$200 USD new including the license from Jolla.
- mempko 5y ago
  I am using Sailfish OS with Sony XA2. It's my daily driver and has been for years. Jolla still releases updates with new features and UI fixes. They also have been upgrading their Android support and most of the apps I care about work well. Going to buy the Sony 10 II once they release support for it.
- stiray 5y ago
  Same here. Sony Xperia 10 plus and sailfish os. Daily driver, used all the time. I also have Cosmo Communicator in a drawer - it could be useful but not having camera on phone in linux is a no go. I am trying to get linux on my phone since HTC Blueangel (Ångström linux was the first booting from SD card) and it was always barely usable. Sailfish works so great that it was no brainer to pay those 50 euros for license. Fingerprint reader, camera, bluetooth (as common painpoints for linux on phone) are all working flawlessly. I had to reverse 1 android application that I really need (banking app) and remove safetynet checks but beside that, zero issues. And I dont any other application from android ecosystem that I dont have here as native (and far less battery draining) version. I hope that Jolla will continue its great work and I really hope they start supporting some other phones like Huawei. I am sick of google and its toxic, spyware driven ecosystem. I dont have issue paying for useful application or operating system. But having operating system that is preinstalled with google spyware and than 99% of applications you try to install try to steal your data (not to mention that they all ignore GDPR) is not acceptable.
foolmeonce 5y ago
I would suggest an Android One or econo-level Google Phone using adb to delete google bloatware, choosing a qualcomm or something that looks not totally encumbered so it might be possible to transition to Linux when the 3 years are up.
Lev1a 5y ago
> Motorola [...] bloatware What do you mean? I've had a couple Motorola phones from the G series (G1 and G4 and currently an AndroidOne) and AFAICT it's been pretty much stock Android apart from: - an app for support enquiries (with diagnostic functionality for the screen, sensors etc.) which I've actually used before, - one app you could opt-in to to get something like product newsletters from Motorola (I don't care for spam) - and since the AndroidOne an app for audio EQ (which I don't really need/use). All of these don't even use 80 MB of the internal storage (64 GB) so I don't really know where you get the "bloatware" from.
- ericlewis 5y ago
  It’s bloat because those don’t need to be there.
  - esperent 5y ago
    It just seems strange for you to single out Motorola which is one of the companies with the least bloatware unstalled.
  - Lev1a 5y ago
    Those apps stay out of your way if you don't wanna use them and they barely use 0.1% of the internal storage. I'd hardly call that bloat given the "Samsung Experience" I once had on one of those GalaxyNote 10.1 tablets. It was slow (basically everything in any app lagged), the OS was a non-upgradable Android 4.3 or 4.4 with heaps of Samsung BS constantly running and replacing standard apps (e.g. the browser). Also that tablet one day just would not charge anymore after ~1.5-2 years of fairly light use (reading, some video streaming, things like that).
derekp7 5y ago
Only options I know of are a couple crowd funding ones, and Linux is a secondary option on them (they are Android primarily). The ones from Planet Computers can run sailfish, and I've read that FXtec is coming out with a new model that supports ubuntu touch as a first class citizen.
fsflover 5y ago
> I've looked a Librem but $1500 It costs $800, not $1500.

by hpoe 5y ago

ekianjo 5y ago

The Pinephone is a nice phone, but still in beta and underpowered to say the least.

jcun4128 5y ago
But it is $200 haha but yeah agreed on poor performance Though it was cool installing/running VS Code on it
- WrtCdEvrydy 5y ago
  I'm a Moto G-Series guy... still running my G7.
Krisjohn 5y ago
It's so cheap, just get one.
- ziml77 5y ago
  The environmental impact of buying something they'll toy around with for 5 minutes and never touch again isn't cheap.
  - fsflover 5y ago
    The environmental impact of having no alternative to the duopoly is much larger.

domano 5y ago

For your use case i would recommend getting an android phone that has good support for a custom rom of your choice. IMHO all the straight-up linux phones are not capable of replacing a smartphone for everyday use.

LukeShu 5y ago

> I've looked a Librem but $1500 is kind of hard to justify Huh, did you accidentally look at the price of a Librem laptop? The Librem 5 phone USD$800. (But $800 is still kind of hard to justify, especially with "wait more than a year").

drewzero1 5y ago
Maybe they're thinking of the Librem 5 USA? Priced at $2k, also pretty hard to justify even if I do kind of admire what they're trying to do with it.

m4rtink 5y ago

I have been using the officially supported Sailfis OS on Sony Xperia devices for years as my main device: https://jolla.com/sailfishx/ https://jolla.com/sailfishx/ The idea is you buy one of the supported Xperia phones, buy a Sailfish OS license and flash it on the phone. The license you bought pays for continued software updates (new features & security fixes) as well some external software they integrate (predictive typing support & android app emulation support). Yeah, if the native Sailfish OS apps are not sufficient for you, it can also run most Android apps via an emulation layer. So while Sailfish OS is not fully open source unfortunatelly, it's at the moment IMHO the best mobile Linux distro available on easy to get modern hardware. Ideally over time fully open source distros and more open hardware take over but till then Sailfis OS can serve as a good "bridge", AZ it has since the Jolla company taking care of it was started by the ex N900/Maemo/MeeGO crew.

loosescrews 5y ago
Also note that Sailfish is fairly inexpensive. My current Sailfish phone (Xperia 10) cost me ~$200 USD new including the license from Jolla.
mempko 5y ago
I am using Sailfish OS with Sony XA2. It's my daily driver and has been for years. Jolla still releases updates with new features and UI fixes. They also have been upgrading their Android support and most of the apps I care about work well. Going to buy the Sony 10 II once they release support for it.
stiray 5y ago
Same here. Sony Xperia 10 plus and sailfish os. Daily driver, used all the time. I also have Cosmo Communicator in a drawer - it could be useful but not having camera on phone in linux is a no go. I am trying to get linux on my phone since HTC Blueangel (Ångström linux was the first booting from SD card) and it was always barely usable. Sailfish works so great that it was no brainer to pay those 50 euros for license. Fingerprint reader, camera, bluetooth (as common painpoints for linux on phone) are all working flawlessly. I had to reverse 1 android application that I really need (banking app) and remove safetynet checks but beside that, zero issues. And I dont any other application from android ecosystem that I dont have here as native (and far less battery draining) version. I hope that Jolla will continue its great work and I really hope they start supporting some other phones like Huawei. I am sick of google and its toxic, spyware driven ecosystem. I dont have issue paying for useful application or operating system. But having operating system that is preinstalled with google spyware and than 99% of applications you try to install try to steal your data (not to mention that they all ignore GDPR) is not acceptable.

foolmeonce 5y ago

I would suggest an Android One or econo-level Google Phone using adb to delete google bloatware, choosing a qualcomm or something that looks not totally encumbered so it might be possible to transition to Linux when the 3 years are up.

Lev1a 5y ago

> Motorola [...] bloatware What do you mean? I've had a couple Motorola phones from the G series (G1 and G4 and currently an AndroidOne) and AFAICT it's been pretty much stock Android apart from: - an app for support enquiries (with diagnostic functionality for the screen, sensors etc.) which I've actually used before, - one app you could opt-in to to get something like product newsletters from Motorola (I don't care for spam) - and since the AndroidOne an app for audio EQ (which I don't really need/use). All of these don't even use 80 MB of the internal storage (64 GB) so I don't really know where you get the "bloatware" from.

ericlewis 5y ago
It’s bloat because those don’t need to be there.
- esperent 5y ago
  It just seems strange for you to single out Motorola which is one of the companies with the least bloatware unstalled.
- Lev1a 5y ago
  Those apps stay out of your way if you don't wanna use them and they barely use 0.1% of the internal storage. I'd hardly call that bloat given the "Samsung Experience" I once had on one of those GalaxyNote 10.1 tablets. It was slow (basically everything in any app lagged), the OS was a non-upgradable Android 4.3 or 4.4 with heaps of Samsung BS constantly running and replacing standard apps (e.g. the browser). Also that tablet one day just would not charge anymore after ~1.5-2 years of fairly light use (reading, some video streaming, things like that).

derekp7 5y ago

Only options I know of are a couple crowd funding ones, and Linux is a secondary option on them (they are Android primarily). The ones from Planet Computers can run sailfish, and I've read that FXtec is coming out with a new model that supports ubuntu touch as a first class citizen.

fsflover 5y ago

> I've looked a Librem but $1500 It costs $800, not $1500.