Is anyone here using a (non-Android) linux Smartphone? Curious what type of phones y’all are using and what your experience has been.
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.
I just ordered a pinephone, haven’t received it yet. The pinephone is the best native option in the U.S right now but you can get some unlocked smartphones with better hardware and install Linux it’s just a bit of a headache.
The general consensus is that it’s pretty low power, being one of the only chipsets that has publicly available design docs for it. It’s a mid tier 2015 era chipset. It a bit slow but works as a phone. You can probably emulate android apps in it.
Sony Xperia III with Sailfish OS flashed on it. Running Android emulation for a few apps like local public transport, K9 Mail. No Google.
Nice thing its easily programmable in Python / Guile / Rust. Plus has a FLOSS Linux app store.
I also have a Gemini PDA with a physical keyboard, which runs Sailfish as well. It’s nice to use vim on it.
Is sailfish OS a better experience than postmarketOS in general?
I wish… and I did try. You can see my post history but basically PinePhone and PinePhone Pro sitting neatly on the shelf.
They work. Sure, but between battery life or rather power management, lack of camera on the Pro, lack of MIPS on the base model to use Android apps via Waydroid, I had a lot of fun tinkering, but for me these are not daily drives.
For now I’m stuck with deGoogle Android thanks to /e/OS pre-installed by Murena on a CMF Nothing 1. It’s neat thanks to F-Droid, Termux, KDE Connect, GadgetBridge, etc but overall I’d much rather be on Linux proper. If there is a path please do share.
I daily drive Ubuntu Touch on a Fairphone 5. It’s not without quirks, but I like the experience. Many practical and nice native apps, Android app support through Waydroid, banking and things that would require Google Play verification I solve through the browser. Fairly good battery life, VoLTE is solved for the FP5 and some other models (which has been an issue with many Linux phones) and the community is very active solving issues and helping each other day and night.
Warning: the devs of waydroid said it should never be trusted for sensitive use, due to security issues
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.
FYI there’s !linuxphones@lemmy.ml and !linuxphones@lemmy.ca if you’re looking for more enthusiasts
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 have a pinephone for wifi and my SIM is in a CatB40 that only does calls/sms.
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 :)
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 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.
😢
Huh, I’ve never noticed you write a message without the need to replace a “th” before.
Sometimes, sentences come togeþer wiþ so many in a row I feel self-conscious. More rarely, I produce one, or none.
You become hyper-aware of how heavily English relies on “th” when you walk þis paþ.
Did you ever read that book that was written without using the letter “e”? Now there’s something on which English - the word itself even - depends.
la disparition?
A book without it? I couldn’t show the world a short post not including it! Why though? This is so hard for our brains. 💀
for fun I would say, although I must add that making a short post without including a awfully common part of our common language is a task that can be brought about without too much labor.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
I have a Xiaomi Mi A2 that I ran ubuntu touch on. The camera didn’t work, and it was based on ubuntu 16.04. They’ve dropped support for it now. It was not ready to be a daily driver.
I should be getting a poco x3 nfc in the mail tomorrow. It should have excellent support on both postmarketos and ubuntu touch. I don’t expect it to be a daily driver, but I can’t get the idea out of my head. I don’t like where iOS and Android are headed.
