I was going through Pine64’s page again after I found the latest KDE announcement. With that said, I seem to see a lot of issues with firmware on the Pine, whilst the Librem is just plain out of budget for me. Was interested in how many people here run a Linux mobile as a daily driver, and how has your experience been?
I’m considering purchasing the Pine but I’d like a better screen, more RAM and a better CPU. Don’t know if I should wait for a new model to be released (are they even planning to do that? Is the company active?). I will only really use it to browse the Web, and might even look to desolder a couple of parts that I know I won’t use.
Thanks.
Edit: I am willing to watch content and use banking apps from the browser. Do you think it’ll be fit for me?
Edit 2: overall, I am much saddened about the state of affairs regarding private computing on the go. I desperately hope that Linux on mobile takes off, even though its incubation looks disheartening at the moment. Thank you everyone for your comments.
My problem with linux phones was the hardware. Either far too expensive or too cheap and slow. And the cellular radio is ABSOLUTELY PROPRIETARY.
I would get one at a $300 price point with 12 hour battery life that can play HD video without hiccups. Also would be nice to have open source baseband drivers in it.
I’ve got really low standards that haven’t been met.
I looked into this for myself but I was told a lot of what has already been said here and decided to go with a pixel + graphene OS .
I’m probably sticking with this type of setup until there’s a proper Linux phone that can be easily used as a daily driver.
I think the key is patience. One day I think we’ll have something that will be able to daily drive Linux that won’t feel like you’re using the alpha release of android.
I mean GrapheneOS is probably the most secure OS on the planet and also privacy friendly. Android is annoying sometimes but its pretty okay and the security standards are veeery high
True. That’s why I chose graphene in the end. Ib liked the idea of the multiple user profiles to sandbox certain activities to a disposable profile and the fact that if I need Google play I can sandbox that as well by running it as a regular system app on it’s own profile…
So far it’s been pretty good. I think my only complaint is I can’t get my Chromecast devices to connect. I got my Google TV to connect but all Chromecast devices refuse to pair for some reason but that pales in comparison to the headaches I’d get trying to daily drive a Linux phone. But I’m big on Linux (I use it as a daily driver on my computer) so I’m patiently waiting for a daily driver worthy Linux phone. 🤞
Graphene also is way easier to use their google play sandbox then messing around with microg and shit on lineage. I’d love to see the sandbox stuff ported to lineage or similar but I imagine its pretty baked into graphene. Since I care a little about privacy but also just want my phone to be rooted so I can do whatever I want with it. Oh well maybe someday.
I’ve bought a Nexus 4 to play around with Ubuntu Touch many years ago, but I really don’t think I could daily drive even a more powerful Linux phone. Many apps from messengers to banking apps are Android/iOS only, so it’d be really inconvenient to use — not to mention problems with calling and a not-so-great camera.
Almost all things I want to do on a phone are possible with a Pixel + GrapheneOS, which also makes an open source, secure and private phone OS.
Usually ssh’ing into a server through termux is all I need, altough it’d be cool to be able to plug my phone into a monitor and have a desktop with me all the time. But it being “cool” is the problem, as it’s not useful day to fay for me. If I need a pc I’ll take my laptop. I’ll probably try it at some point, but that’s many years into the future.
Man, the call problems are a dealbreaker for any phone at all, imo. Maybe not for a toy, but it’s bonkers that they’d release a phone OS that isn’t 100% call stable.
There has to be a device to develop support for calling. Since there’re multiple open source phone projects it’s also not simple to just write an implementation for them. Additionally carriers don’t work all the same (different bands, …), so it’s really not easy to solve with the few resources available. As far as I know much of the development on these phone OS is done by volunteers and pine64 isn’t a big established company either.
Copying my edit here: I am willing to watch content and use banking apps from the browser. Do you think it’ll be fit for me?
Performance and bugs might still be a problem with these relatively young projects. But if all you need is a browser I do believe it might be worth a shot.
In the EU 2FA for banking is required by law which usually comes down to either an Android/iOS app or a chipTAN device. That’s why browser isn’t an option for me. Sadly I don’t think waydroid passes the basicIntegrity check of AOSP [1], so emulation is out of the picture too.
Banking 2FA can be done by SMS too, which is secure enough.
A world in which banking requires us to install spyware on our mobile computers is not a world we should accept.
I used a pinephone as my daily driver for about a month. Importantly, this was 3~4 years ago, things could be better now.
My take at the time: The battery life was bad, the phone was slow, MMS did not work, making a receiving calls was iffy at best.
I really really hope this improves/has improved over time. Android gets more and more difficult to de-google. A linux phone would solve a lot of privacy issues (not all, but some)
It sucks that GrapheneOS supports only Pixels and nobody came along and ported it to other devices, although less secure.
But “Android gets harder to degoogle” is not true. Pixels are just way too expensive
Pixels are just way too expensive
LOL what? The A series are some of the cheapest modern phones you can buy, and an incredible value…
Yup then that is pretty messed up. I was used to phones not costing over 200€, maybe 300
Forget the pinephone as a daily driver. It is nice to play around with and having linux on your phone is awesome. But you can’t really use it as a daily driver. You’ll try it and it’s going to end up in the drawer of unfinished projects. Trust me, I own a pinephone and I know other people who do.
There’s nothing wrong with it. Just like 50 mild annoyances with anything you’re trying to do with it and on top it’s super slow, compared to any other smartphone.
As I read, the phone by Purism isn’t much better and it’s really expensive.
Yeah, I think so, too. It doesn’t have to be this way. I mean this is mainly due to the way ARM hardware works, lack of good drivers, maintenance and dedication by the manufacturers of that hardware. And everything is quite fragmented. In theory we could have a hardware platform that has good open-source drivers and is well-supported. The Pinephone was an attempt to establish one platform that people could focus on. But it has quite some limitations and also hardware/design issues.
And Linux isn’t quite there yet. I mean I love Linux and it can run on embedded devices very well. But things like connected standby (for example receiving chat messages while the hardware sleeps and saves power) just isn’t implemented in a desktop environment that was made for computers. And also not in a chat application that was made for computers. So, set aside the hardware and driver issues, we have another issue with Linux software that wasn’t made to run on smartphones.
There is a way around that and that is to add those capabilities to the Linux kernel. And also give applications means to stay connected in the background, adapt to different screen sizes, rotate the screen and evict themselves from RAM. It’s kind of what Android is. It builds upon the Linux kernel and adds lots of stuff that is specifically useful on smartphones.
I hope someday some of those techniques get adopted into the mainline Linux kernel and also the frameworks the desktop software uses.
I hope so too. I wouldn’t be as mad if Android was open and we could put it on different devices, but we can’t. Manufacturers lock their devices in so many ways.
Thanks for your great reply
