I'm switching my phone from Android to Linux

I've come to the conclusion that I actually really like Android as an operating system, the internals seem remarkably well thought out and ideal for the mobile use case (so long as you're running a userdebug build with the ability to adb root in when needed), most of people's issues aren't really with Android (although Google reducing the AOSP release schedule isn't a good sign).

I think the real problem is Google Play Services. It's far, far too tightly integrated in a way that it just seems like Android was designed to be unusable without. It's installed as a location manager internally, which gives it a shitload of permissions by default that you never grant it. There's absolutely no reason everything (notifications, the app store, some location services) has to be packaged together into one thing instead of each having its own module that can be removed at will. Play integrity just plain shouldn't exist and as far as I'm concerned is purely there to ensure no one creates a real play services alternative or another mobile OS with Android compatibility.

The ideal outcome for me would be keeping Android but effectively dissolving Play Services and instead having the concept of a core services, where instead of apps choosing to use Firebase for notifications, they instead bind to the system notifications service, and as the user I choose which implementation I want, preferably with it not installed as a system app. I'm well aware that's not going to happen, but it seems like the most practical way to break up the Google/Apple monopoly to me, Android's great but Google's services aren't.

If only a few techies will be able to use Linux phone, banks will freely lock payment services access down to two platforms: ios and android. No way out, it's happening right now (in the name of "security", of course, but surprisingly it does not stop scam from happening).

Web will be locked down too, via secureboot stack browser integration (not -s, it's already actually monopolised to chrome only, as FF lives on full life support from Google).

Very sad how it was allowed to happen so easily.

I really want to love mobile Linux, and have given it multiple shots before. But I just don't see how it will catch up with iOS/Android in the same way it caught up with Windows/Mac:

- OEMs have poured an enormous amount of resources into the camera software, Linux cameras are years behind from what I understand. - Android/iOS have thoroughly optimized the UX in all sorts of subtle ways, the big one being their keyboards. I literally can't type a single correct sentence on any of the mobile linux keyboards that I've tried because there's so much proprietary magic needed under the hood to figure out what the user is trying to say (autocorrect mostly, but I recall something about how apple also virtually adjusted the sizes of the keys to make it easier to type) - GPS, banking, and now keys for your house and car all need to work.

Android basically ran a long bait and switch game. It came out as open source, achieved wide adoption, important online services like banking and government-related moved to it.

Now they are locking it all down.

This read like a lot of pain and suffering. I've tried this for kicks myself. There's a lot of sacrifices to be made. But I'm rooting for anything Linux on smartphones.

I bought Jolla Phone 2026. Was thinking about Pixel 10 and another round of GrapheneOS, but changed my mind.

Was using Sailfish OS on Sonys phone but drove me nuts for two reasons:

- had to reverse banking up to kick out the checks each time when new version came out and I became quite proficient at it (decompiled into git and each new version over it, then git diff, and fix the checks, committed the changes)

- worse part was that there was no bluetooth to android bridge and local bus company required it for contactless paying

There was nothing I missed from the phone, even reversing banking app was not really an issue, but bluetooth was just needed.

I defected to GrapheneOS after two years, now I am moving back, I hope for good. The fixed the bluetooth while for hardware I dont care.

I have solved the banking app issues by changing the bank and getting cheap old pixel just for banking app. It doesnt even have SIM, only wifi and used Automatize to turn on airplane mode on lock screen and turning it off for unlock.

I dont care about NFC payment or any other android junk, for photos I have EOS and phone just doesnt cut it, while camera is good enough for taking shots at everyday things like shopping list.

I really hope I wont need to see android ever again.

I've tried a few times over the years to make Ubuntu Touch work. God how bad I wanted it to work here in the US. The lack of apps and VoLTE support really soured me on it ever working here.

If you're outside of the US, the availability of useable mobile OS's outside of Android and iOS is pretty abundant compared to the situation here in the US.

Google Play Services ruins dream of this. I've noticed that automotive digital keys don't work with Graphine OS due to how Google Wallet works.

Is there such thing as a palm-sized mobile PC that can just run a desktop Linux distribution (or Windows for that matter) that supports mobile features (calling, SMS, and data)? Even if it has rough edges or compromises?

Smartphones(android, iphone) is just smart OTP now. Bootloader unlock unavailable(i hope this is just security concern for AI era), attestation is now a thing(regulations?). Most application(incl ChatGPT, X) says Android-available, but in fact it's Google-Android only.

As daily driving Linux desktop/laptops, I mostly find that android(at least samsung galaxy-flavored) is next gen of Microsoft Windows, in bad ways. At least you can "hack" the Windows to customize something by your own, android does not. Performance also questionable nowadays, not for gaming but browsing purpose for me, may drain more battery than expected. Also MS acknowledges the issues and made statements to fix while I haven't seen samsung's.

Anyway, My opinion is, If you are nerd like me, I would buy one phone that 1) can unlock the bootloader 2) can root 3) at least kernel source available, some companies do not disclose until legal? actions 4) optional, linux port-able (via community) 5) optional, officially supporting linux(not aosp)

and then buy second phone, that has great security support, e.g Apple iPhone or Google Pixel, and use it like a wallet(banking/cam/gps/... I would not like to support other vendors, what if they abandon security patches, and then phone being vulnerable). I believe more android application will be more restrictive than before in the future.

For linux, you own the hardware. Because it's open source, you can audit and harden the every aspects, e.g You might able to use proprietary bluetooth codecs, which vendor disables in android ROM. When AI era, you may able to investigate and mod stuffs which you don't fully understand. This take risks, and we have right to take the risks instead banning it.

Not to mention that your android/ios device is still shipping a bunch of bluetooth tokens for "track and trace" system. Cryptographically signed to you.

https://covid19.apple.com/contacttracing

Windows Phone was a great idea and worked so well. But it was killed by the fact that people didn't want to maintain apps for 3 platforms. Nowadays when most of the things runs on web/electron anyway, isn't this the time to rediscover that idea?

Make something novel? RTOS like response like blackberry, secure, fully opensource and such? With the era of LLM accelerated developement (don't crucify me), this wouldn't be such unreachable goal.

We would have to sacrifice bank apps but imho still worth it.

Speaking of Linux on mobile, I have about 300 of these things for sale with some associated hardware and software if anyone is interested (in Australia but can ship obviously) https://www.openstick.de/

I have thought about buying one of the Pinephone things, because I want to actually own the computer in my pocket, but I have always hesitated because the hardware is always kind of ancient for these things. The Pinephone doesn’t even have 5G, so I am not even sure that my phone service will let me activate it now.

What I would like is to take my existing iPhone 13 Pro and install a real Linux on it so I could guarantee decent hardware. You know, like we could do with pretty much any computer before smartphones.

I've been using Sailfish OS since the first Jolla phone came out in EU and Canada both. It has some hurdles but if you pay for the android subsystem it works fine. There are a lot of great native apps and you get the full linux experience.

I really want to leave the Google and Apple Ecosystems, but I still need "these" Banking Apps. Some Banks don't even offer a Web based experience anymore.

I switched to Sailfish OS. A lot of rough edges, but it can can be workable—tho largely due to Sailfish having an Android layer to run those apps. It’s getting better OS-wise, but the Sony devices that you can get access to internationally are much lower priority on their list. On top, if you try to pay, the lock you to Western countries… & I have no idea why.

I would love to do this. It's shocking how little Android offers for the hardware it uses. Recently I was thinking if I could install Windows 98 on my phone, even that would be better. At least I could have more than one app open without it burning all my work just because I dared to check info on a web page while filling a form.

> If I have an issue or something I want to tinker with I can just ssh over from my PC either wirelessly or via USB.

FWIW one can also do that on stock Android or its GrapheneOS variant pretty conveniently, including storage access, am, boot background processes, etc. It is not as complete as being root on Linux proper but still.

May as well just get an old school Nokia and skip the smartphone technology all together. Get yourself a nice flip phone and go back to the early 2000's. If you need to do something online, just bring your laptop with you - some are so small that they're easy to carry around in a backpack or side bag.

  > While the AOSP isn't exactly dead (yet), it kind of feels like it's just a question of time.

The writing's been in the wall since the renamed the Android Market to Google Play Store. Frog's been boiling all this time, and every update my croaks grow weaker.

Switching from Android style Linux HAL to FreeDesktop style Linux HAL… I honestly think we need more Linux HAL options than just those two, when one is threatening to self-destruct and the other is arguably the single worst interface design ever conceived, by all measurements.

>I've become more and more dissatisfied with the path Google has taken with the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). Be it the dependency and insane tracking of Google Play Services

AOSP does not include nor depend on Play Services.

>locking down of device trees to hinder custom ROM development

Most manufacturers do not distribute these either. The user doesn't even have a pixel so it is not relevant.

>all the AI stuff being put into the system

The AI stuff is not part of AOSP.

>or most recently (and perhaps worst), removing the ability of installing apps per your own wishing - it's become sort of like a "death by a thousand papercuts" situation.

Again that is not a feature of AOSP, but one bolted in on top of it.

I think the author would benefit much more by using a different distribution of AOSP.

Shoutout to Purism... if you got the loot.

https://puri.sm/products/liberty-phone/

I'd love to do this, but sadly I don't see it happening unless my lifestyle significantly changed to the point where I wasn't frequently traveling to new countries.

There are just too many very useful services that only work with Android/iOS. Take taxi apps for example. I've used over a dozen in the past few years, many of them local to a specific country or region that made getting around much much easier.

the right answer is to deliver a usable SECOND device which happens to be linux based, and which has serves a purpose. Then over time, apps get ported.

realistically, this device would need to tiny to justify the extra weight, device-to-keep-charged, etc.

one idea: make it wifi-only and tether from your primary mobile device. This skips all the carrier nonsense, to focus entirely on the core use case(s).

I'm all for using a Linux phone. The caveats thereof are mentioned in this thread.

I've a wish list of one, though: make the Web the primary GUI front end. Essentially, apps are a specialised browser window. That way, I can program (both the front- and back-end) in plain text, just using regular Linux tools and a text editor -- no bloatware and gargantuan IDEs mandated.

I've been using Linux as my daily driver on my main personal computers for years. You could say that I love Linux and it has treated me very well.

That being said, I consciously chose an iPhone b/c I want my phone to "just work". I had a Blackberry Storm for a year and it was buggy, had to be restarted everyday just for it operate etc etc.

The iPhone has always been great. It just does what I need it to do b/c clearly someone cared about making sure the end user experience was phenomenal. While Linux has gotten better over the years, it just doesn't feel the same.

In addition, I recently started using a MacBook and the fact that the phone sync WITH THE LAPTOP makes the iPhone an even bigger plus. For example, if I set keyboard shortcuts on my phone they also work on the laptop. Photo sharing is a breeze and even integrated iMessage "just works".

Now, I don't fault people for wanting Linux phones. It's just not right for me.`

I introduced myself to this space a couple of weeks ago with a PineTab2. I bought it for reading but some tinkering. I am running Plasma Mobile on it. It's rough, but OK (and can't expect much from the hardware.) I don't know what the user experience out-of-the-box though. While I can run some 'important' apps in Waydroid (e.g. bank app in Norway), smartphones are not that interesting. I never wanted one, but it's increasingly something you have to have anyway and I usually don't realize it became so integrated in life (funny this comes up - I had a dream forgetting my phone and not knowing what to do next)

I haven't used it myself but every now and then, I'm tempted to try a Furiphone. Just from what I've read, it looks like the easiest out-of-the-box Linux experience on a phone. Does anyone here have direct experience with it?

I'm pretty hyped about OpenHarmony.

I've been using HarmonyOS for almost a year now (not the AOSP fork, but the actual Hongmeng microkernel flavour)... and this idea of having a iOS-like system with an Android VM running at near native performance works pretty well. Unfortunately is really focused on the chinese market but it feels really polished and promising.

I wish nokia would have ultimately opted for their own android fork. That would have eventually lead to a more open linux kind of OS, like we saw with maemo.

Flop-Elon was the worst guy at the worst time in the worst position. It was 110% obvious windows mobile would flop. Everyone knew it, it was just a panic decision.

I'm not completely switching yet, but I'm also exploring SailfishOS and Ubuntu Touch to see how far they will allow me to go. We really need at least a third viable option; it is clear that only having Google's Android and Apple's iOS is not benefiting the individual user.

If they ever figure out how to get Linux onto a phone with a good camera, I'd pounce on it. I would be willing to put up with app issues and weird bugs and all the jankiness that comes with early adoption, but I simply can't give up being able to take really good photos with my phone.

Now that making apps is easy, and it's the apps and eco system etc that makes an OS take off and adopt, starting a new OS for phone like devices shouldn't be as big of a problem as it used to be.

Given fair phone exists, it should now be able to get all kind of apps anyone wants.

PureOS runs on Librem and is decent.

This is the future I want. I will keep fighting for it. But my braveheart pinephone is showing it's age. And I need it to be dependable for pagerduty etc, or else have some other alerts proxy capable of waking me up in the dead of night.

We are hooked to Google/Apple platforms by our banks and some government services.

It would be fun to plop Claude Code down on a phone and play with the baseband processor.

"I'm switching my phone from <free software> to <proprietary software>"

Why not just use an Android AOSP distribution? SailfishOS is proprietary. It will be a lot more "locked down" than LineageOS/GrapheneOS.