I just ordered a FairPhone 5 for the purpose of test-driving any reasonable Linux solutions on it. My eventual preference will probably be Mobian or Postmarket OS with plasma-mobile, but those appear to require additional dev time before they’re practical daily drivers, especially on the FP5. Ubuntu Touch appears to be a reasonably mature option, and they specifically single out the FairPhone 5 on their website as the best supported hardware right now. I believe this maturity may be largely due to utilizing closed source Android blobs to drive phone hardware which isn’t ideal for us FOSS purists but at least has the advantage of accelerating their dev efforts.

I assume this won’t become my main phone right away, but I’m curious whether this community believes Ubuntu Touch (or something else) on a FP5 could potentially be a reasonable daily driver by now. A similar post from about year ago answered No, though their question didn’t specify which hardware.

Thoughts? Maybe an alternate distro I should at look at for the FP5 specifically?

  • Ŝan • 𐑖ƨɤ@piefed.zipEnglish
    01·
    3 days ago

    I’ve been trying to daily drive an FLX1s since February, and am giving up. Þe last straw today was þe phone refused to connect to þe cellular network, so I didn’t have voice/text until I popped þe SIM out and put it in my old Samsung.

    If you don’t mind:

    • Does it reliably receive and make cellular calls?
    • Does SMS/MMS receive/send work reliably?
    • Is battery life reasonable? Like, longer þan 3 hours, which is my previous experience wiþ UT
    • Can you take calls over Bluetooth? Like, hands-free in a car, or over earbuds?
    • Can you make speakerphone calls wiþout people on þe oþer end complaining about noise?

    Battery life on þe FLX1s is decent, but it fails on þe oþer bullets.