Today 10 years ago I went to Poland to buy a Phone with pre installed #Firefox OS on. The Phone was a Alcatel One, so very shitty. Two years later I installed Firefox OS on my Nexus 5 instead.
It was a very good concept, but sadly rolled out on too shitty hardware so it never caught on.
If you are still interesting in Linux phone, consider looking at PinePhone Pro. I would recommend it only for experience users and the phone experience is far from Android, but software is catching up. Check @linuxphones
P.S. writing this comment from PPP :)
Or SailfishOS! Has Android layer where apps can run seamlessly (without some hardware stuff support, like fingerprint etc.).
Want to mention that on GNU/Linux we also have Waydroid that provides Android app support :)
I know about that, but from my experience nothing really compares to the ease of use of the SFOS AlienDalvik. Though something may have changed since I last checked (1.5 years ago).
I mostly wrote it for other readers.
Also used both, I would say they are similar. But Waydroid can't forward notifications to the main OS as in Sailfish. Sad that AlienDalvik is not FOSS :(
How is PinePhone Pro now? It's been over a year since its release and reading on reddit a few months ago it still seemed behind the original PinePhone. I would like to upgrade to the Pro version, but I'm worried it will be another year for it to be stable.
I think its on par with the original PP now. I also own PP and I would recommend to upgrade, performance is way better.
But if you do, I would recommend to use megi's u-boot fork to improve your battery life.
That's cool! So there aren't any issues with phone calls anymore? I think people complained about audio quality, but I guess my PinePhone also has some issues like that.
Doesn't everything use Tow-Boot now?
No call issues at all, I daily drive it.
Yes, but it's a distribution of U-Boot and it some releases behind. Megi recently implemented many cool features for U-Boot for PPP and it will take time until they appear in Tow-Boot. So I would recommend to use provided binaries from Megi for now, see his blog for more details: https://xnux.eu/log/091.html.
Didn't know about this, thanks!
bad link ?
Sorry, forgot that I need to use exclamation mark: [email protected]
:)
Nah. just not properly linked instance.
I know about the PinePhone Pro and I am quite experienced.
But even hardcore hairy dude like Drew Devault disavowed it (source).
It seems that the main complaint is calls and SMS. I use different distro (Arch, btw) with FOSS firmware for the modem and calls / SMS work fine for me.
Are there any foss options for non-tech people?
If you mean GNU/Linux - no. But you can buy a phone that supports Lineage OS. It's Android distribution, so you will have everything you used to have on your phone and the OS will be fully FOSS.
Thank you. This seems to be the best option at the moment. Right now I’m stuck on iPhone which I bought without realizing how restrictive their OS was. However I don’t have the budget or interest in buying a new device currently, so I’m just keeping an eye on my options.