I'm fascinated, ongoingly by a Linux phone. I spent effort making many versions of the Sharp Zaurus cellular(ish) back in the day, even going as far as writing a sync tool for Evolution back in 2003. I'd love a Linux cellphone. My needs are very simple, and I'd love to know the state of anything that can (and with stability).
1. Be a decent phone (voice, sms)
2. Contacts/Mail/Calendar sync
3. Run android apps that require voice (Telegram, Signal, WhatsApp, etc)?
4. Take pictures + videos (not even at a high level)
5. eSIM
Everything else is gravy. But those 5 items are the base requirement that I personally have for a phone. Every time I dip in, it's at best unclear.
The Sony Xperia 10 III with Sailfish meets all of these requirements except eSIM. If you wait ~1yr, the next Sailfish phone should support eSIM. The Sony Xperia 10 III Lite is the first Xperia to support eSIM, so it seems likely that more models of the next generation will support it. Note that if you want eSIM because you really want dual SIMs, there is a dual-SIM version of the Sony Xperia 10 III.
I wish these projects would spend a bit more time on their marketing. The shop.jolla.com site requires you to login before you can view details about any of the items for purchase; they probably lose 90% of users right there. There are no links or descriptions pre-login to what Sailfish X actually is.
When you google for "sailfish X", the first link is the incomplete one above. The second link goes to a 404. The third link is the official sailfishos.org site, which has one sentence of description: "Sailfish X is Jolla’s officially supported downloadable version of Sailfish OS for selected devices." followed by a link to the above incomplete shopping site.
I get that this is a market for techies right now, but even so they're losing sales just by a lack of focus on basic usability in their web presence.
I don't think what people actually want is a "linux phone". IE, something that runs a semi-conventional linux userspace.
I think what they want is a privacy protecting smart phone built on open source components. Also, Android is based on a driver and BSP model that is quickly going to be replaced with Fuchsia/Zircon
I want my mandated banking apps, voice calls, Telegram, WhatsApp, OSMAnd, Street View, SMSes, Firefox, an email client, one day of battery, WiFi, in a smallish form factor (let's say a bezel less original iPhone SE) and light (that phone again.) I don't think I'll ever get that in a not Android, not iOS phone.
> I don't think I'll ever get that in a not Android, not iOS phone.
Of course not, those apps nowadays do on-device checks in the TrustZone environment to verify with Google’s servers that you’re actually running a phone that’s approved by Google with a supported OS version in a supported configuration. Customization? Competition? Who cares!
> Street View
Considering just how much Google has tried to hurt Windows Phone by not supporting it with their own apps and services and even preventing others from making Windows Phone apps for their services, you’ll definitely never see Street View support on a non-Google non-Apple phone.
Your issue isn’t one that can be solved by open source volunteers. Your issue is one of monopolies and control.
If by "not Android" you mean "without Google", then I'm happy to report that I've been using /e/OS for over an year without any major issue, which I believe was possible to install in some of the Sony "mini" models.
> I think what they want is a privacy protecting smart phone built on open source components.
I don't think so. If the smart phone was about protecting privacy, the amount of functionality that has to be disabled (or rather: not there) has to be insane.
I mean the whole motivation for Google to sink money into Fuchsia is not to diversify into the embedded space it is obvious they want full vertical control from the Zircon Kernel all the way up to user space.
A lot harder to degoogle if your device is nothing but google...
> they want full vertical control from the Zircon Kernel all the way up to user space.
Of course, I have been saying that for years.
Contrary to the 'Fuchsia is only an experiment', 'Fuchsia is going to be shut down' coping crowd, in fact, Google has been much further than once thought with developing Fuchsia and it is going to start with replacing Linux with Zircon in ChromeOS next, probably in 3 to 4 years.
Also explains why they already have the Chrome browser running in Fuchsia. So there is no doubt that they are intending to use Zircon in ChromeOS.
I think that makes sense too, and don't think that kind of "control" is necessarily bad. I've often written "dependencies" myself even though existing solutions exist so I have (full) control over them, and can do exactly what I want with them. I was reading an interview with SQLite creator Richard Hipp the other day, and he said pretty much exactly the same. It gives a lot of freedom.
I would like an Android portable 'phone' (I never call but want mobile internet) that can switch to Linux when in 'desktop mode' (so what Samsung has with DeX but then Linux), built on 'open' hardware. Fully open would be the best, but I know this is not (yet) possible.
The Astro Slide is the closest I have seen to the form factor I want (I had (and still have; they all work still) all versions of the Psion back in the day), but, while it runs Linux, it cannot easily switch between them and the hardware is not open.
I am really not very interested in 'as flat as possible'; replaceable batteries would be great, as would switches to physically switch off comms/cams be (like the pinePhone has but I would like them more easily accessible).
DeX had an Ubuntu 16.04 desktop in a container, developed with Canonical. It was beta and run on Galaxy Tab S 5e and few other models.
It was discontinued with the upgrade to Android 11.
Ah! I did not know that; I only used DeX a few times. But yes, something like that indeed. Shame they always discontinue things like that. I understand it, but still a shame. We need more diversity and Android simply isn't productive enough for me even though it's getting very close. I prefer Linux anyway for the customizing, so the combination would be excellent.
I used it primarily as a great ssh terminal, better than any Android app I used so far (but ConnectBot is good). I worked on a Rails and on a Node app on there, fixed a server for a customer when in a hotel on the other side of the world.
I'd rather reverse the setup. Linux first with phone calls and SMSes, an Android emulator or whatever for the apps that nobody will ever develop for Linux (banking OTPs, etc.) But I don't feel optimistic. I think that the only reasonable chance is that today's hardware (which is good enough even for mid level phones) will get so cheap and firmware so available (FOSS or supported) that somebody will use it to make a decently sized and light phone with Linux.
Seems a SFOS or Murena or Fairphone smartphone might suffice (not sure about eSIM). I am sure the Planet Cosmo Communicator and Planet Astro Slide have eSIM. With Waydroid you can even run Android applications on a Pinephone. What I like about Pinephone and Librem 5 is hardware killswitches. There's also the Steam Deck, it runs Arch.
All of these have different pros and cons. For example, some of these don't have a keyboard (which you may or may not care). But all have BT or USB and therefore could use a keyboard.
I ran LOS + microG on FP2 for a while, but back then without Gotify and Gotify-UP. With these I believe you can have notifications with top control, without using the Google framework.
An idea I had for this is a case that would fit two identical phones. Old models that have good Linux support and are cheap - say, the OnePlus 6t. Plenty of performance. One can run Linux (hell, people got Windows x86 running on it, it even runs old AAA games, wow), the other can work as an Android phone. Or both, mix and match, software is up to you.
It can work as a mini laptop, dual screen tablet/phone thing (cheapo Galaxy Z?), multi SIM phone, desktop computer (via USB), other use cases. It's niche, you can buy two used phones, arguably more "green" than a new device that needs new hardware, etc.
The case itself would have to be high quality, with a custom hinge design, otherwise it would be kinda shit. But it can likely still be smaller and cheaper than PocketReform for example, even if you integrated a battery and USB/HDMI hub.
I want the freedom to do whatever I want, and however I want to my machine. I can do all of this on my Android(s). I can install debian on my Android with x11 in a sandbox and work if I need to (and have). But what I want again - is freedom.
I want to be able to replace my desktop. I don't need much power (most of the things that require performance I do on a remote machine anyway), so being able to do whatever with my phone on the road and then plug it into a monitor and have a desktop Linux would be perfect. The pinePhone can do but it cannot switch from Android to Linux that readily and also, I don't need much power, but the pinePhone is just really not good enough for anything I use a smartphone for (which is not calling).
The single msat resource-intensive GUI app I have on my laptop is Firefox. (The second, Emacs + language servers.)
Without a way to discard and resurrect applications, the way Android does, I don't think a device in a mobile phone form factor could last for a reasonable tine.
> Without a way to discard and resurrect applications, the way Android does
Well, there obviously are handheld devices that are underpowered and definitely are not even close to any modern Android phone, like for instance, the OpenPandora. And yet it was (probably is tbh) capable of doing everything I needed for many years (I used it while travelling into 2019) without issues. Which includes browsing. It's not comfortable because it's so slow, but it works and I rarely have anything crash on it (which is why i'm very surprised the pinephone is so crash prone) while I worked extensive periods on time on it (the battery life is amazing and I can replace the battery); when travelling, I code on 9-12 hour plane rides on it.
And before that, there was the Zaurus, which also had no issues like this; it ran fine on very constraint hardware. I took it on my travels to the US to work on (and send photos from my camera sd card to my family back in the Netherlands) about 20 years ago with a linux distro on it. That was definitely phone form factor. Lovely machines actually outside the keyboard (but still better than without keyboard).
It seems very possible to me to make a good experience on a handheld in a mobile phone form factor, because it has been done.
Modern phones have gigabytes of memory. A normal Xorg DE with typical desktop apps does just fine these days (I know, because I run fluxbox on my Pinephone. I'm on it now in fact with a number of apps running including firefox with 6 tabs open.) What you're saying was true in the days of 512mb phones but those are long over and modern Android couldn't fit there anymore either.
Memory may be relatively plentiful, but CPU is not, if you want decent battery life.
This is why suspending and re-activating applications smoothly is important. There must be a standard way to tell the app: "you'll stop executing in 5 seconds, save your state" and "you are thawed after a long period of inactivity". I suspect that this may already be present to support sleep and hibernation.
OSes have done this since before Personal computers. If you write a garbage app that's being scheduled more often than it should be you'll write a garbage app that gets thawed out more often than it should be. All of this Android crap doesn't actually solve any real problems.
On Linux, when your program blocks waiting for an event (from Xorg, its tty etc) it uses zero cpu. That's why you can leave well written apps open on a device like this. I've run out of X11 Window IDs (there's a cap in a #defined constant if you check the source) because of this. My laptop from 10 years ago had excellent suspend and the OS was very stable (I often went half a year without powering it off.) Since I have a habit of accumulating Xterm windows I would eventually open more than the limit. This never noticeably affected battery life because if they're just sitting at any sort of prompt they never get scheduled (except to redraw damaged portions of the window.)
1. Be a decent phone (voice, sms) 2. Contacts/Mail/Calendar sync 3. Run android apps that require voice (Telegram, Signal, WhatsApp, etc)? 4. Take pictures + videos (not even at a high level) 5. eSIM
Everything else is gravy. But those 5 items are the base requirement that I personally have for a phone. Every time I dip in, it's at best unclear.