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.
Yeah, this.
Last legit fairly open sauce was N900.
Exactly. It is infuriating that such hardware is so expensive and/or incapable
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. 🤞
Things are going in the right directions, somewhere.
- immutable Systems
- security optimized, permission models etc
- TPM encryption
- HEADS Bios with hardware key as storage
But its far from the security of a Google Pixel with GrapheneOS.
I like Graphene, I don’t like how expensive the Pixels are
If you want to save money on a pixel I’d recommend taking a look at swappa(dot)com Even if you don’t want a used one they do have people selling pixels new sealed in the box for usually pretty good deals. I think the cheapest new in box option is a pixel 6a. Or 6 pro.
You can also find new pixel 7, 7 pro, the 8 and the 8 pro.
I’ve been buying and selling devices there for years and never had a problem as a buyer or a seller.
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.
You can root GrapheneOS, no problem. Its just not as secure anymore and the bootloader cant be locked, banking apps will not work anymore, Android Attestation, Safetynet etc
You can root GrapheneOS, no problem. Its just not as secure anymore and the bootloader cant be locked, banking apps will not work anymore, Android Attestation, Safetynet etc
Quite unfortunate that we can’t escape the corporate grasp for our mobile operating systems
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
basicIntegritycheck 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.
Sms is not as secure as a 2FA app or the bank’s own app. SMS verfification also costs money, so it will raise your monthly fees quite much if you wish to receive a text on every transaction.
As I said, SMS is secure enough without being the nightmare of a proprietary spyware app. As for fees, you have an American perspective, in most of the world SMS has been free to send for decades, and was always free to receive. The ideal solution is indeed a 2FA app, but those never took off.
I have a European perspective and here you need to pay per text message. Receiving is free, but the bank is charged and they put their charge on me, so they bill me for the messages, unfortunately. In the US SMS is free in most plans as I know.
My bank disagrees that SMS tan is secure enough 2FA and doesn’t support it.
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
I’m waiting for devices to get the 5.10 kernel or the ones after it, so I can run supported KernelSU builds and take my life into my own hands.
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
The only phones that cost that much are either several years old (in which case you can include used Pixels) or are riddled with bloatware and spyware and the absolute cheapest of materials that won’t last long enough to make buying it even make any financial sense.
And the commenter is lamenting how greedy companies are getting and customers agreeing to get themselves bent for these corporations. Apple started the pricing model and Samsung followed suit, and now everyone just takes it as default pricing. This is a pathetic state of affairs
and now everyone just takes it as default pricing.
Who does that? There are several great phones you can buy for <$400. The phones of yore were trash.
Which ones in that range, released in 2023 have custom ROM support?
Nokia 7plus back then. Great hardware, nice materials. Still working great but nearly no software updates. An indian guy develops LineageOS for Nokia phones though
I hope so too. However, that doesn’t seem to be the case. The PinePhone Pro is still treated as a development device by PostmarketOS, for example
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.
You’ll try it and it’s going to end up in the drawer of unfinished projects.
Guilty as charged.
So I’ve heard. Quite unfortunate
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
Thank you. I completely agree. We can’t do stuff ourselves, my Pixel 4a is End of Life now and all the proprietary parts of the system won’t be updated anymore, which is a shame because the hardware is still perfectly fine.
And I hate the business decisions Google makes. Android is built upon Linux and the core is supposed to be free software. But then they move more and more stuff into their proprietary Google services packages. Like the proper keyboard with swipe typing, the better calendar app, text to speech, push notifications and all of the payment stuff. I personally replaced everything on the phone with a custom ROM, and did not install the google services. But I had to find alternatives to all of that and some things really don’t work as well. It’s a hassle and some things just don’t work at all. Like some stuff that requires in-app payment. I don’t care too much, because I get most of my Apps from F-Droid anyways and they’re open-source. But I can’t pay with my phone in the supermarket, can’t rent those silly electric scooters and a few other things.
I tend to use my credit card for most of my purchases, online or in-person. In doing so, I haven’t come across the problem of payments you describe, although I’m unaware if the apps I use utilise Google’s API in the back-end to do this (for example, does the Amazon app use some Android API to process my payment using a credit card?).
I think I’d be fine without most Google apps except for Maps, where OpenStreetMap has not served me well so fat (unfortunate, since I would like to use it but it is not as reliable in my experience). I can do my banking in the browser, and consume my video content (YouTube/Peertube/LBRY) in the browser anyway.
I’m going to revisit the Murena mobiles again, and I’ll reiterate how disappointed I am that the FP5 is not available in the US. At this point, I’ll pin my hopes on KernelSU for the next few years (hoping I don’t have to compile my own kernel, I’d like to get a cheap device running the 5.10 kernel or those after it), but consumer devices don’t have hardware killswitches or privacy features or replaceable parts either (and iFixit doesn’t cover every device).
This was a long comment, and I appreciate this discourse with you. Thanks again.
I’m always happy to talk to people ;-)
Yeah, paying with credit card also works for me. And I use the browser a lot for stuff like that. Just the added layers in the apps sometimes don’t work. Like when I tried riding one of those electric scooters. I was able to put in my credit card details and they got accepted, and I know my phone is capable of doing NFC, but somehow there is something else in that app that prevents me from doing the actual transaction and rent the scooter. Online-shopping and things like that work fine. I don’t need an App to use Amazon or PayPal… So I wouldn’t know either.
Thx. I’m going to look up the de-googled phones you mentioned. I think I will try to use my Pixel as long as it works, but in theory it isn’t supported anymore and I’m supposed to buy a new one now. At least that’s what Google and GrapheneOS tell me.
I’m holding out hope for KernelSU, in which case I won’t need to care about custom ROMs and things like safetyNET either. A root from kernel-space + a custom launcher and I won’t miss OEM android at all. The only thing I haven’t figured out is patch management, but I’ll leave that to people more intelligent than me
The problem is not Android. It is as open as any other Linux distribution. The problem is that manufacturers make the drivers for their hardware proprietary.
Yes
Would really love to but have yet to see basic phone functionality covered in a way that isn’t a painful compromise. Stock Android is a privacy nightmare, which is why I left it. I had some fun with Cyanogenmod back in the day, maybe there’s another de-googled Android distribution around today but since I last checked I couldn’t find one that runs on modern mainstream hardware without really jumping through some crazy hoops to establish root.
Cyanogenmod became LineageOS. It can be run fully de-googled or with Gapps.
GrapheneOS is also worth looking at.
Both run on modern hardware and are super simple to install.
I would have to dispute your claims on this one. The only really modern mobiles running Lineage OS (by modern I mean released in this year and the previous year) are perhaps some European Xiaomi/Realme devices, maybe a couple of Samsungs, the last-gen OnePlus and some Motorola devices, and the Pixels.
As I have been complaining for a long while now, the entire custom ROM market is moving towards the Pixels, which is a dreadful move in my opinion, but what I can do
It’s mostly up to which manufacturers allow boot loader unlocking.
The pixels are somewhat a continuation of the nexus line which were more developer centric.
Motorola edge 30 runs just fine and has done practically since it launched, typing this on it now
In Europe? AFAIK Motorola’s latest devices don’t have builds on the Lineage OS website (from 2023) but I might be wrong.
Yeah, my Motorola g73 isn’t supported.
Yeah
Australia
Lucky
Why?
Will definitely give these a look, thank you for the updates.
Can you speak to your experience with any of these? Would love to hear a first hand account!
I ran Lineage on my OnePlus 5 for a few years until I replaced it with a Pixel 8 last month. The first thing I did with it was install GrapheneOS. I have not had any issues so far.
I’m not that person but I’ve been using GrapheneOS for about 8 months now. Setting up an esim was probably the worst thing I had to do but it was still relatively easy. Lmk if you got any questions
Would really love to but have yet to see basic phone functionality covered in a way that isn’t a painful compromise. Stock Android is a privacy nightmare, which is why I left it.
I’ve been using GrapheneOS for about a year now and it’s a giant leap in privacy and security (much better than iOS), with very little compromise in functionality.
iOS being secure is a farce which the population has just gobbled up without reason
I have a Mobian community edition PinePhone with postmarketOS and it is my daily driver. It suits my humble needs, but these few years have been a mixed bag. Especially with Mobian I’ve had periods of it working great, punctuated by periods with annoying issues. I stopped using the phone for a while when it suddenly stopped taking calls but I didn’t notice since there was no indication of trouble. My family reported me missing when they couldn’t reach me after a few days. Luckily that was then sorted out, but it wasn’t great. This hasn’t happened since.
postmarketOS has been pretty solid and seems to perform better than Mobian.
After a few years I’m starting to think I need a new battery, but the official store has been out of stock for a while. I’m not sure if they will ever get more parts. Communication from Pine64 has also slowed down to a crawl, which is not great. At least their official monthly blog was last updated in august. At the moment I’m somewhat skeptical of their future. We’ll see.
Be warned though: the PinePhone can browse the web and banking probably works, but watching, say, youtube is not going to be a great experience. You’re probably better off using alternative solutions like Pipeline. The PinePhone is not a powerful machine and you will have tinker every now and then.
Having said all that, if you set your expectations correctly you can probably get along with a PinePhone as your daily driver. I’m not sure if I can recommend it because there are many caveats, but in the end you know your needs and what you’re comfortable with better than I do. I like my PinePhone and I surely wish more people get Linux phones and that the ecosystem evolves.
I could not find an official support branch of postmarketOS for the PPP.
Other than that, as you say, Pine64’s interaction has waned greatly and I wonder what is going on behind the scenes. This is no FP5, certainly, but availability of parts is a requirement for me
Been using a Librem 5 since May, and am typing this on it now. I love it.
I have a lot to say about the Pinephone, but in the interest of not re-iterating what has been said before, I’ll just say this:
Correctly inserting the SIM card was the most harrowing experience I’ve ever had with a phone.
Nope. I would like to but as long as android does an okay job I will stick with that.
Yeah Linux phone is a pipedream as long as Android works well at all.
The fact that you can use Termux kind of makes Linux phones moot, especially since you need a very specific set of hardware
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Show me a linux phone that isn’t an expensive paperweight after 2 years.
My problem is the lack of availability of custom ROMs on new devices like the newest OnePlus and ASUS. Not the fault of the maintainers but it is what it is. I don’t want to be locked to Pixel hardware because come what may I will never trust Google on a single thing
What inconveniences have you faced from the software?
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?
I used a pinephone for a week or so, but people got angry at me, because calling me was impossible. Apart from that it is a slow but very interesting device. Mine is broken now, because I somehow managed to fry the wifi chip. I used arch btw.
Thanks
Me, GrapheneOS!
No jokes, I found a Oneplus 3 with broken Display, will fix that and try some distros. But the choices all seem pretty bad tbh, I would like Fedora Silverblue but I guess that doesnt exist… yet.
Maybe I will try to create a custom Ublue image?
Why not try lineageo OS? I’ve been daily driving it for one year now and it’s reliably if you don’t throw magisk modules at it for fun.
I threw magisk modules at it for fun and it’s still reliable.
If you have bootlop saver you can throw whatever. I have like six of them
I don’t have it, thanks for telling me about it
No problems. It’ll automatically disable all scripts so youll have to manually enable them in case of bootfail.
Doesn’t safe mode do that as well?
As far as I know no. You probably could use adb to remove the scripts tho
Which recent devices other than the Pixels are supported?
A lot? They have a pretty big list and for all I know all are stable. https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/
So fucking dumb how we have to look for specific models just to get support for smartphones.
Can you image if Linux only ran on HP and dell laptops?
Unfortunately that’s moistly on maufacters. If they don’t release the kernel LOS can’t do anything. Also depending on the phone it might take a while till someone picks the phone and decides to support it. Laptops do have compatibility options. But I get what your saying, it is annoying but what did you expect from such organization?
It would be awesome if we could just install whatever like we can on pcs. On phones you still need a developer to make a specific rom for that device, we were close with Generic System Images (GSIs), but I don’t think they really went anywhere
I think you can but I’m not sure. There’s Ubuntu Touch that works on some phones but it’s really buggy
Hopefully when RISCv gets there it won’t be so bad.
Now that manufacturers are getting called out for it they tend to follow the support cycle upstream. Now, much of it falls on the chip makers, Qualcomm specifically supports chips for 5 years iirc (and 8 years for their industrial chips).
If the manufacturers can achieve vertical integration, like Apple has, with RISCv I think we’ll see a lot more mainlined support from them.
It’s just the shit design of Android: no bios and firmware must be bundled in the rom
I second the recommendation for lineage OS. I’ve been using it since 2011 with my Nexus S (when it was Cyanogen). Works, defaults to de-googled, but easy to install gapps at the same time (follow instructions because it needs to be done before first boot).
I’ll never run a stock ROM again if I can help it, and so far…
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No. To root you need to extract boot.img, patch it in the app then flash it while in bootloader.
I’d love to run a system without Google but it’s hard. I tried to run LineageOS with microg for a week or two but eventually had to install Google Play Services. Lots of hurdles with push notifications and unfortunately some apps really refused to work when they detected no play services installed. It really sadden me, to be honest. Really wanted to make it work.
Never gave Linux phones a chance, I rely too much on apps that wouldn’t be available.
I’m interested in the problems you faced. I have realised that I will need GMS/MicroG for maps, and am unclear if I can get a FOSS app to host my local mail inbox without GMS. Other than that, everything else can be done in the browser (technically even maps can be used in the browser but I digress).
Would like to know which services prevent you from leaving Google
My first attempt was to flash the stock LineageOS and then install the microg packages from the fdroid store. I didn’t manage to get that fully working, the microg self-check would have a lot of fails due to version mismatches. I never figured out why. A lot of applications complained about the lack of play services and warned me they wouldn’t work, microg was clearly not installed properly.
Then, I flashed the “LineageOS for MicroG” ROM, which is a LineageOS fork with microg already installed. I had to enable all microg services but the self-check was 100% successful out of the box. No warnings about the lack of play services, everything was mostly working. I installed all software from Fdroid when possible and Aurora Store when not possible.
Push notifications were a bit of a struggle at first but they did work. I still didn’t get notifications to work on Telegram, but “Telegram FOSS” fork seemed to work okay. For GPS/Maps I used Waze (which is technically owned by Google) and it worked flawlessly. I assume you can use other GPS application, I just didn’t do my research on this one. For email I am using Proton Mail, which worked as expected.
The problematic apps were banking/financial apps, which I guess most people can live without. I’m confident the apps would work with microg but simply refused to even start. In Portugal our interbank network developed an application called “MBWAY”, which is really ingrained in the portuguese population. Most people use it. It has a ton of cool functiontionality such as sending money to other people just by using the phone number (instantly and without fees), replacing your ATM/food cards for payments and generating virtual credit cards for online shopping.
I use MBWAY way too much (pun intended), and just decided I didn’t want to live without it. I ended up flashing stock LineageOS and their GAPPS package, which contains the play services and play store app. I still install most stuff from the Aurora and Fdroid store. The banking/financial apps are now working.
Never had such a problem with /e/ just with LineageOS, highly recommend!
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Yes, that is correct.
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I think the apps would work without Google Play services but they refuse to boot without it. Unfortunately since these are banking and finance apps the only alternative is not to use them.
I own a Poco F2 Pro, ROM support is somewhat limited. CalyxOS is insupported, it seems. When this phones starts dying I’ll probably give GrapheneOS a shot!
I use Kaios , Another embedded linux
Do you specifically use feature-phones?
Life is nice this way, No bzz, Everything supposed to be done by a phone is handled perfectly by this small thing and for rest (like office,game and code) I go with PC
How do you do instant messaging? Isn’t typing with that harder than average?
That’s also a thing but I use xmpp,matrix on pc (which I rarely do). BTW I forgot to mention I am full time student so…
Essentially, your usage of your mobile ends with calling?
Unfortunately, that won’t work for me since I need a browser to check my accounts and other needs on the move
I have actually tied everything to my email so all updates are in my inbox. Calling + email,music,text,calendar,notes,todo and we have a brower for basic ddg searches
Which phone?
Jiophone F220b
