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I've considered it but, sadly, the reasons to not do that are increasing rather than decreasing. Off the top of my head: Can't use a public transport here with
by Aachen 2y ago
I've considered it but, sadly, the reasons to not do that are increasing rather than decreasing. Off the top of my head:
Can't use a public transport here without the app. They recently put a little animation on the ticket screen so that you now need to record a video instead of a screenshot as backup for when the app logs you out again; it also only runs on big tech and is only legally obtainable via the big tech stores (no apk download, for example). Germany is really big on privacy and free software but Deutsche Bahn is... very privatised, let's say
Which phone would function as the base installation of Signal, and does Signal Desktop work properly on 5" extreme-DPI screen?
Can I make and receive calls on those devices without being in data/WiFi range? I don't have full coverage at home on either of those and would drop if SIP clients are the solution for that
I also like having a decent camera in the same device. Tried Fairphone before and that was be very borderline (resold it for size reasons in the end); the FOSS software simply isn't there
Exceedingly few games are made for GNU/Linux on screens as tiny as these. Would need to run Android emulation to play virtually any mobile game, including the ones I currently enjoy
I don't think desktop OpenStreetMap software exists with even half the features as I use in OsmAnd, and for editing JOSM sounds not very nice to use on mobile as compared to, say, StreetComplete (different purposes; I use JOSM on desktop but not on a 5" touchscreen)
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The only solution I've found that balances usability, stability, and the freedom to run what you want is the vendor's stock Android (e.g. for the camera app and lockscreen shortcuts) with Magisk and Linux Deploy. From there, you can merge desktop tools like restic for backups with mobile apps running smoothly. The market doesn't seem geared towards people like us, though
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y agoFWIW... > Can't use a public transport here without the app. Does it run under waydroid? > Can I make and receive calls on those devices without being in data/WiFi range? I'm pretty sure that is supposed to work
- Aachen 2y agoI learned of Waydroid yesterday in the NewPipe thread, haven't had a chance to look into it yet! It sounds cool but so far emulators have always been unusably slow. Since it's not being presented as some major breakthrough, I don't expect it to be better than Google's official emulator. Still planning to take a look, though And good to know they're supposed to work with regular gsm networks! Didn't find much on a quick search, so I wasn't sure. I assume it requires specific hardware and software, like a Purism rather than flashing a distribution onto the phone model you like?
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y agoWaydroid isn't a VM, it runs parts of the Android software stack directly on the real kernel on bare metal. So perf should be good. As to cell connectivity / telephony: Honestly I'm not super familiar, I just see it mentioned sometimes; I'd suggest asking in the postmarketos matrix chat. I suspect it works in a somewhat general sense but might need some work per device to get drivers working or something like that.