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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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.
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.
“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. :)
tap to pay, voice assistants, carplay…everything I hate about modern phones. Don’t threaten me with a good time, Linux.
But those features are not OS implementation issues. They are simply hardware driver issues.
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.
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.
google is forcing Gemini into everything and you can’t turn it off,
You can still shut off Gemini as of right now. I don’t know what it’ll be like in the future though.
Android is open source, or big part of it. If Android auto part is open source (I am not sure), someone could in theory muse 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
…they still have Linux phones?
Help a non-techy out. I’ve fully switched my computers to Linux (fedora workstation, silver blue, and ubuntu). Been Linux only for several years now. Silverblue is probably my favorite. I’m willing to make the switch for my phone, too. But there are a few things I’m pretty reliant on:
My banking apps, cash app, and, embarrassing as it may be to admit, Grindr.
Any chance of getting those?
Baking apps: pin the websites Grindr: use waydroid or switch to sniffies Cash App: oof, I don’t know if waydroid will be enough for this one.
Baking apps: pin the websites
Typically if you want to check your account status sure, that work. Maybe do an IBAN transfer, if somehow 2nd step auth via their app isn’t required, but typically mobile payment, even if it’s not really mobile (e.g. scanning a QRcode on a desktop) requires their app. So in theory yes, in practice for most of the things people use banking daily it’s closer to mobile payment IMHO, which is basically owned by iOS/Android AFAICT.
I’ve honestly never considered using my bank through a mobile browser. Yeah, it I can do that I’d be fine on that front.
Sniffies is completely dead here, and the dudes that are on it are gross. Grindr isn’t much better, but since everyone’s on it you can occasionally find people who are willing to use protection or hosting someone other than some bushes. I’ll try way droid and see if it works. If it doesn’t, I googled it and it says you can use Grindr from desktop if you pay… I may end up having to do that if I made the switch.
Which leaves cash app as the biggie. I’ll try waydroid, but if it doesn’t work I’ll probably end up needing to keep android or switching to iOS (I hate iPhones:( ), or maybe even getting a second phone I use exclusively for cash app. No sim, just my wifi hotspot (can you do a wifi hotspot with a Linux phone yet?). In order to prevent overdrafts and accidental charges, I never spend directly from my bank account. I transfer exactly what I’ll need for each purchase to cash app before the transaction and shop like that. Keeps me aware, and no accidental charges or surprises.
You can run Android apps on a Linux phone via Waydroid, but banking apps could be an issue if they force these Google intrgrity checks. Grindr probably does not?
Anyway, you should be able to fire up Waydroid on your Linux desktop and test this beforehand. I have never done this myself, so I might have misunderstood something.
Someone did do some work on reimplementing the Android Auto Client Server API.
Just needs time and interest.
God i wish I was smart enough to contribute to these things
Claude code can help
No it can’t. Why would someone maintaining a code base want to read and debug code submitted by someone else who didn’t even bother to write it, especially if I’m not already using Claude code or another vibe code generator.
It’s not too late, I have faith in you
Power consumption needs work also.
As for tap to pay, I’ve found I’ve used it a lot less after getting a mag safe wallet. It’s a good stopgap imo
Actually I don’t need any of those things you mention. It may be a mistake to assume that Linux phones should imitate Google/Apple phones.
Obviously this is subjective, but I use android auto all the time and something similar for a linux phone would be really nice for me. Don’t dismiss them just cause you wouldn’t use them
My thoughts exactly reading this list. I don’t use any of those as-is and have zero interest. I do agree Linux phones seem a bit behind at the moment, but as soon as they’re on par with say GrapheneOS, then we’re golden.
Same. Never use these things on Android.
It’s not that I want an imitation, but I do want certain functionalities to be available
Dunno. GPS and map apps seems pretty important for something more mobile than a laptop.
That’s about the connection to Car Play, not GPS
Doesn’t GPS work on Linux phones? As for map apps, OpenStreetMaps based apps are free and more acurate than google (atleast in my region), the only thing that might be lacking is realtime traffic information.
Is there an osmand app for Linux?
Not directly, here’s what we have:
https://linuxphoneapps.org/categories/maps-and-navigation/
Of these, at least PureMaps does turn-by-turn - as a no-car-person that last drove in meaningful way when paper maps where a thing, I am the wrong person to ask about car navigation stuff.
Additionally, there’s the OrganicMaps desktop flatpak (not a great experience, only good for seeing where you are) and zooming around. Fortunately, a work on a mobile-friendly Kirigami app for OrganicMaps has been funded by nlnet.
Also, runnning some web Maps in a browser (e.g., via https://linuxphoneapps.org/apps/dev.heppen.webapps/) is always an option (e.g., for browsing Google Maps for an open restaurant nearby).
Are those actually the only things you find lacking? If so that’s really good, practically the same as using LineageOS without any Google services.
I don’t use any of the stuff you mentioned and might have to consider Linux mobile as a daily driver if it’s that good. Especially if Google kills custom ROMs, it sounds like the people already running them would feel right at home switching to Linux mobile.
More importantly, how’s the app situation? Can people generally expect most of the desktop GTK or Qt apps they’re familiar with to be usable on a phone form factor? Is there a reliable way to run Android APKs on regular Linux now? At the very least F-droid apps?
Yes most native applications are responsive and adapt to mobile.
GTK has it built into it’s widgets. But some third party apps on GTK/QT may not adapt.
The capability is there though.
As someone who spent some time on the topic (result), it’s not that every new app is adaptive. Even if someone uses the nice new widgets of libadwaita (or previously libhandy (GTK3)), that app is not necessary running well on mobile if width-reqests demand a higher minimal width or content is just too wide.
The same is true for QtQuick Components or Kirigami, which are the equivalent for adaptive Qt apps.
That said, yes, many new apps developed with these technologies work fine OOTB without the developer even knowing; and if they are too wide or tall, fixing that is usually rather simple and not a full rewrite/redesign.
To answer your question about Android apps, there is an application called Waydroid that can run on Linux phones. This essentially emulates Android and you can install apps on there. Some Play Store apps require access to Google Play Services, and even though MicroG tries to emulate it without being as privacy invasive, it is not perfect and some apps won’t run well or even at all.
I only use it for a few things that do not have any way to access through a web browser.
Yes, you can even run android apps on Linux mobile using waydroid or something similar. So even if you need your stopgap android apps while waiting for Linux equivalents, waydroid has your back.
As for me, I plan on using PWAs as much as possible.
- Would require banks and such to cooperate. Good luck with that, Microsoft and Google will just pay banks to keep us out
#1 only happens if the EU gets it as a secondary part of whatever their plan is to de-americanize payment-processing
