Linux phones are still behind android and iPhone, but the gap shrank a surprising amount while I wasn’t looking. These are damn near usable day to day phones now! But there are still a few things that need done and I was wondering what everyone’s thoughts on these were:
1 - tap to pay. I don’t see how this can practically be done. Like, at all.
2 - android auto/apple CarPlay emulation. A Linux phones could theoretically emulate one of these protocols and display a separate session on the head unit of a car. But I dont see any kind of project out there that already does this in an open-source kind of way. The closest I can find are some shady dongles on amazon that give wireless CarPlay to head units that normally require USB cables. It can be done, but I don’t see it being done in our community.
3 - voice assistants. wether done on device or phoning into our home servers and having requests processed there, this should be doable and integrated with convenient shortcuts. Home assistant has some things like this, and there’s good-old Mycroft blowing around out there still. Siri is used every day by plenty of people and she sucks. If that’s the benchmark I think our community can easily meet that.
I started looking at Linux phones again because I loathe what apple is doing to this UI now and android has some interesting foldables but now that google is forcing Gemini into everything and you can’t turn it off, killing third party ROMS, and getting somehow even MORE invasive, that whole ecosystem seems like it’s about to march right off a cliff so its not an option anymore for me.
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tap to pay, voice assistants, carplay…everything I hate about modern phones. Don’t threaten me with a good time, Linux.
You may not like tap to pay or CarPlay but I and a lot of others do.
It’s a deal breaker for me to not have these two features in a product I’d like to spend hard earned money on.
But those features are not OS implementation issues. They are simply hardware driver issues.
RCS text messaging is another to consider, at least in the US. The carriers implanted it in a proprietary way, so only Apple and Google apps have it. It’s a poor substitute for an IM/chat app and not private and secure like it was promised due to poor implementations, but it’s still far better than plain SMS. I still have people I can’t get to use Signal or another secure IM app.
The Android Auto is the only one I’d be sad about. I love not having to use my phone’s screen for navigation and the navigation built into most cars is crap and expensive to keep maps and data updated. I like being able to use any navigation app, though Google Maps/Waze is still the only one I’ve found that has both live traffic info, which is extremely important with my city, and reading the street names rather than just “turn left” it says “turn left on some street” so I don’t have to look at the screen as much.
I use GrapheneOS and that’s what I won’t be able to replace once I finish my Immich and Home Assistant self host setups to replace Google Photos and Google Home/Nest, but st least they are sandboxed a bit.
Though Google has been moving to make it even more difficult to use their apps on these alternate OSes. Like I just found that Google Photos latest version pops up a not closeable error screen if it doesn’t have full “photos and video” access. Doesn’t work with the limited access or storage scopes that come with GrapheneOS, at least for now. I have photos I don’t want google to scan and index even if they are not being uploaded, which they do now. It’s obviously a ploy to get access to your data since it used to work fine. Now, I just use the mobile website instead until I have time to get Immich totally working and get people to switch if they want to see my stuff or share with me.
I think JMP.chat supports RCS, and it lets you text through Cheogram or another XMPP client. I believe it also upgrades the connection if both users are using Cheogram similar to Signal when it supported SMS
This is like a google voice number? Do they do VoIP and voicemail transcription, because I don’t have a replacement for Google voice yet.
Edit: yes they do voip, voicemail, and transcriptions, but they do not do RCS yet. When they do, I might consider switching, especially if I can use their voicemail for my regular number, like gv.
JMP does not (yet) support these features:
- RCS, which allows for video calls over the phone network.
This is awesome because I don’t want or need any of those things. If this is all that’s missing, I think I’m ready for a Linux phone when my android dies.
Which phone did you find where these are the only problem you encountered? I don’t care about any of these things and haven’t been finding any usable Linux phones.
What problems have you had?
They’re slow and clunky as fuck for starters. Cellular is very spotty.
Do you have a good alternative I can look into? I really, really, really want them to work. The only usable Linux phone I’ve seen is Jolla, but I’d much rather have Mobian or Arch on mobile or some other fully FLOSS alternative
I’m too deep into the android ecosystem, sadly, but if I found a good Linux phone I’d try it.
3 - voice assistants. wether done on device or phoning into our home servers and having requests processed there, this should be doable and integrated with convenient shortcuts. Home assistant has some things like this, and there’s good-old Mycroft blowing around out there still. Siri is used every day by plenty of people and she sucks. If that’s the benchmark I think our community can easily meet that.
Of all the things that my phone is supposed to be able to do this is the one thing I never touch. It has never worked better for me than just doing it with my own two thumbs.
Does anyone actually use their voice to control their phone (not voice typing)?
That’s funny, I never use 1 and 2, but I use 3 often.
I used to use tap to pay, but I recently acquired one of those adhesive credit card holders that has obviated my need for to pay.
I have an old car and just have my phone in a holder if I need to see turn by turn directions. Unfortunately the credit card holder fucks with the phone stand a little bit, but it mostly still works. The few times in my life I used android auto I disliked it.
I most often use voice assistant to ask for a song to play on Spotify. This was really convenient with “hey google” while I was driving or had my phone in my pocket listening to headphones, but I live without it these days.
I was wondering what everyone’s thoughts on these were:
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It doesn’t work on GrapheneOS either, so I got separate devices I carry with me that do the tap-to-pay instead, and they’ve been a godsend. They’re super compact as well and came for free when I opened the accounts.
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I don’t own a car, on ebike I use my screen.
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Normally I use my fingers. If they’re not available I yell cuss words at my phone until they’re available again.
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Voice assistant through homeassistant is great. You can plug into an AI. There are guys using the SIP plugin to dial chatgpt from a landline.
Of course, you can also self host AI models if you have the hardware. I’m not there myself yet… but the tech is ready.
I fallback to a deGoogled phone precisely because Linux phone isn’t up to my expectation in terms of convenience for now.
You can check my post history but just during the last few days :
- replied to “Why did PinePhone fail” as I have 2 of these https://lemmy.ml/post/35398519/20774482
- discussed on banking apps, authentication bottlenecks on iOS/Android https://lemmy.ml/post/35398519/20854067
… so yes, not there yet
PS: on “assistant” (I really think the naming is over-blowing capabilities) I have been using HomeAssistant daily for years now. I have a Nabu Casu on my shelf… and didn’t even set it up because it was either 3rd party service dependencies (not why I rely on HA) or a very complex setup. So… I would recommend not looking there, at least few months ago when I received mine, sadly.
…they still have Linux phones?
“Damn near usable day to day” - what I’ve been hearing about Linux since the beginning of time
Maybe not true for phones, but the linux desktop IS usable day to day, and I’d say this has been true for atleast the last 5 years. KDE and GNOME are both fully fledged desktops, and with the popularity of snaps and flatpaks there isn’t really alot getting in the way of software installation either. Even wine/proton has come so far I don’t see the “linux bad for gaming” as an actual excuse anymore.
I started using linux exclusively on desktop in 2021 and I’m not any kind of programmer or anything, just a regular user. :)
Yeah that’s what I’m saying, desktop finally seems to be there so we can expect phones to get there in a mere 20-25 years when everyone is using Neuralink or whatever
So in other words they’re perfectly suited for day to day use?
I have zero need for any of the janky bullshit features you listed, so this is great news!
Literally my reaction. What is a good Linux phone to try?
This is pretty cool, the fact that you can run android apps on Waydroid is awesome. I might try POST-marketos on an old s9 I have lying around.
Android is open source, or big part of it. If Android auto part is open source (I am not sure), someone could in theory use this to have car mirroring. I think it’s a very useful feature that no one is forced to use. I don’t see why some people are against it in the comments
a quick Google returns some projects listed but I didn’t dig in
Missing those things would be a feature for me.
I’m much more worried about having a usable battery life and having basic phone functions like WiFi calling and MMS work.
I see vo-LTE generally doesn’t work at all either.
I agree that missing these things are features IMO.
Typing this reply from SailfishOS with working VoLTE, MMS and all the things. Occasionally I have to restart a service but overall its pretty good
Tap-to-pay and car assistance are must-have in today’s world. 10-15 years ago, no. Today, yes. Bank apps is the other thing that can’t be done either (because bank apps want a “certified” system to run on). Here in Greece, it’s required you have a bank app on your phone to go with your daily life.
Yes, we all want a simpler life, like it was in the past, so we can envision an OS system that “it’s good enough”. But reality is not on our side. Linux as an open source community phone OS, made by non-commercial/non-corporate entities, can’t be an OS for the masses. It just won’t tick any boxes for them in today’s world. The current Linux phone OSes could be contenders 15 years ago, but not today.
I’ve never used tap to pay. I don’t want any banking info on my phone. In the US, we don’t need any payment apps. Cash and cards work just fine and never run out of battery power.
There’s no way I would ever connect my phone to a modern car with anything other than an aux cable or a bluetooth adapter that plugs into the headphone jack. They gather up all the data they can an do who knows what with it.
The US is not the world though. That’s something Americans need to learn. And having a solution for a single country does not work in the long run for that project. Not in the domain of OSes and phones. Either it’s universal, or it’s doomed to be a niche thing.
The only people that don’t use tap to pay in my area are grannies. And you do seem very old school since the last time I saw an aux cable was 10 years ago.
Are they must haves? I don’t use tap to pay, pretty useless feature for me.
Cars? I don’t want or need android auto. Bluetooth is the only thing I care about.
Navigation on the device is good enough for me, it doesnt need to use the screen.
I have no interest in mobile banking, but that could be an issue if people are used to sending money to each other instantly via a bank app.
Absolutely must haves for me personally, I use each probably daily. I don’t carry any cards with me and exclusively use tap to pay.
Tap to pay is a choice, with a viable alternative.
You could choose to NOT use tap to pay, carry a bank card, and it would have basically no impact on your ability to conduct your life.
But I agree the banking app itself is a big problem, and something that cannot be lived without.
You can also choose NOT to have a phone at all… Or a bank account.
Just because you personally don’t find something needed doesn’t mean it’s true for others.
It is a choice, but one that I find important to adopting an alternate. I keep my wallet slim on purpose. Telling people their choices are wrong because you don’t agree with them is not going to get widespread adoption which is important for the long term health and success of such a ambitious project.
Not to berate you but this is a bit of a Linux-pilled response.
Tap to pay and Android auto are conveniences that are of importance to a lot of people. Not everyone chooses to use it, but losing those features will mean Linux phones will exclude a significant proportion of the population that would otherwise be open to using them.
Cards are inconvenient
If you actually see what needs each country has for phones (by law), and also what needs normal users have, you would change your mind. It’s not just about one user here, one user there that doesn’t need these features, but the whole. I have an e/OS Murena phone (very private foss android fork) for example that I can’t use here in Greece because it doesn’t do banking (the bank app doesn’t work). Additionally, here in Greece we need gov apps (e.g. to get prescriptions, and to not have our ID with us all the time). These don’t run on “foss” versions of android (let alone clear linux OSs).
Yeah that would make me pretty damn angry. What about people who don’t have phones at all, what are they supposed to do?
No country should require the technology of 2 monopolies by law.
Navigating on a 6" screen is pretty annoying after getting used to the larger one.
“must-have” is subjective.
Yes these things are required to achieve wide spread adoption but I personally could do without them.
widespread adoption means you can get things like contributors who will then work on optimising battery life and other fundamentals.
Sure, but I feel like most people in this thread are evaluating what devices are viable for their own personal use right now.
Widespread adoption would be great, but I’m not evaluating whether a device is presently viable for widespread adoption.
I think problem number 1 might be solvable if GNU Taler succeeds in europe as the digital euro backend. https://taler.net/
Of course this would only apply to people in the EU, but who knows, others might follow.
Never heard of it. I’m not from Switzerland, but what is this exatly and how can I support it?
Switzerland has GNU Taler. They launched it there a few months ago, lucky for you. Check its website: https://taler-ops.ch/de/
You just kind of need to wait for merchants to use it. Could become mainstream somewhere around 2028.
From wikipedia:
GNU Taler is a free software-based microtransaction and electronic payment system. Unlike most other decentralized payment systems, GNU Taler does not use a blockchain. A blind signature is used to protect the privacy of users as it prevents the exchange from knowing which coin it signed for which customer.
The wallet is like cryptocurrency wallets in that when you lose it (lose your cryptographic keys or phone), you lose all the money inside of it. So you must keep it safe like your own physical wallet. It works with NFC, so it can replace Google Pay or Apple Pay or whatever.
It also works offline, which is awesome. Though you do need to be online sometimes to refresh your digital money or they expire and become unspendable. The expiry is set by the GNU Taler operator.
Do keep in mind that receivers are NOT anonymous. Only senders are anonymous. This is by design and is there to apply tax to merchants and also combat fraud, etc.
You can learn how it works by reading their docs: https://docs.taler.net/
The FAQ is also a good thing to read: https://www.taler.net/en/faq.html
Is this similar to Wero as a back end or different parts of the process?
