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Joined 4 years ago
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Cake day: July 28th, 2020

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  • Sony Xperia 1 II, 1III and AFAIK 1 V all do LinrageOS and are flagship phones albeit expensive out of pocket and up front.

    I have mixed feels about Sony but for the Interim it’s a worthy “for right now” solution with a good camera.

    PinePhone was interesting for its time but underpowered and quality could be improved on.

    Librem5 is pretty decent if you measure it by Phone and SMS capabilities, those apps are okayish and it has easily pullable battery and premium aluminum side casing. But don’t expect to use a web browser on it and unoptimized apps will be slow but the camera is decent. 2008-2012 much better than pinephone camera by a lot, not flagship or even 2nd grade. This is also due to the software just “not being there” yet across the board.

    At this point I am pretty much done with phones. Maybe I will use SXMO on Librem5 or something to do the basics.

    I don’t think we should have phones. We should have Communicators.

    Phone and SMS can be legacy and die off I just want a 5-8" device that can do Matrix and Video call and tie into StarLink Sattelite and Cell Tower and AFAIK StarLink is deploying 4G in the near future which opens up the possibility for reusing existing tech as the 4G waveband is miles whereas the 5G waveband is only optimally like 300 ft and can’t penetrate glass very well due to the wave.

    In any case I think there will be significant innovation in the Linux Phone space in the next year or so for Techie Pioneers to get on board.

    PostmarketOS is worth a watch too, lots of hard working people out there scratching a itch and breaking down barriers.




  • Yeah man, I think the article I initially read about PP Mobian situation was this one here just for reference if I am even remembering right – https://blog.mobian-project.org/posts/2023/09/30/paperweight-dilemma/

    I forgot about the toggles under the PP cover, I didn’t know they acted as hardware kill switches like L5? Interesting for sure

    Yes most SFF tech is still China, maybe someday we’ll have more diversification. It’ll have to do for now.

    x86 is a power suck but I still think it’s a interesting use case as it delivers on webpage rendering and demanding tasks. Ideally I would imagine RISCV would be the golden standard.

    I guess if I wanted to be puritan maybe starting with a Librem Mini with Secure boot might make a good frankenstein phone.

    I won’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good until we are in a position to be choosers, until then its pretty much a community effort to get the whole thing off the ground.

    BeepBerry was a really interesting concept but lacked the sophistication needed to take off.

    I could see a new iteration gaining ground

    https://beepy.sqfmi.com/


  • Opinion Disclaimer.

    PinePhone (at least v1) is no longer maintained in Mobian due to changes in tech. It was a great Dev device for it’s time. The camera was terrible and it was awfly slow which isn’t a surprise at its humble $200-400 price.

    The device is a SBC Single Board Computer meaning the modem is soldered on the same silicon as the CPU, RAM, Storage, etc…

    All Cellular modems are made by 2 international companies last I checked who all have blobs in their modems – this is bad because it means open source can’t have a fair shot at competing when you need their “blessing” to use the Cellular Internet.

    Librem 5 is better in some areas worse in others. The modem is a m.2. This allows the Mainboard to cut power to the modem as desired. The modem can’t be entirely turned off in other phones and as they are on the same SBC there is speculation secret commands could be used for data extraction or to activate spyware in cellphones as was recently discovered with Android and iOS. Separating the m.2 isolates the abilities of the modem module as a “firewall” being the closest comparison.

    Librem 5 is also slow. The camera is better than PP. It can do phone and SMS okay but loading a webpage on it is not fun. Both devices have hotswap batteries so to speak so the charge is a nominal issue for me.

    PPP is supposedly more battery intensive but manufactured in Hong Kong, which has been absorbed into China. For this reason the tech world is not as fond of their PPP as their initial PP before China absorbed them. Considering the last 4 years people are no longer “fond”.

    Something newer than PP or L5 is needed. Something that can do basic tasks without binary blobs wrecking The FOSS Dream.

    Framework is a little big but if you see what modders have done it is a good candidate.

    https://www.pcmag.com/news/handheld-gaming-pc-created-using-framework-laptop-components

    Having the ability to add mics with physical kill switches and cameras with kill switches or being omitted entirely in my opinion would be optimal.

    Not just having a " mute" button in the same way that when you press mute on zoom or “camera off” if the application has access to audio and video it can still capture all that audio and video when users think they are not being watched.

    MNT uses RISCV and ARM SBC IIRC and modularizes a small form factor SFF device and maybe someday will rise to the occasion, or what I mean is modders have a better shot with that kind of thing.

    Moving out of the Cellular space away from Phone numbers and to Element, or SIP or VOIP just makes sense for communications. It “cuts the cord” of the ATT / Bell monopoly that has plagued humans for decades.

    Eventually we will see “phones” move away from cellular to satellite. This may be the jump we need to break free of all this blob nonsense cock blocking Linux.

    There isn’t a optimal answer just yet, like do I build a phone out of a RPI5? when RPI5 and ARMs in general have blobs.

    I think major headway has been made in the software front thanks to KDE, Gnome, Purism, Mobian, PostmarketOS and others.

    I think the death grip is nearly over as more SFF production capabilities are commonplace now.

    A winner hasn’t really been declared, hell a Steam Deck could even be modded (x86 too) to run off the shelf Linux tech and the OS could be on MicroSD and the modem could theoretically be in the m.2 slot. Purism does sell the modems for $50 on their store.

    Anyways, there are more questions than answers, at least in the present tense – Who Will Deliver? Could this be the year of the Linux Phone? Maybe for some.


  • Someone make a Framework laptop phone ;P

    MNT Reform has some interesting innovations as well.

    But purely phone the problem is computing power typically.

    If you can get a small enough screen say 6-7" you could always do a m.2 modem or just forego traditional for VOIP, Chatty has SIP plumbed in.

    I think we should really just can the love affair with “phones”

    You now have a Star Trek “Communicator” thing in your pocket. That does many communication apps, video, audio, text.

    Seeing the small form factor handheld game consoles gives me hope a SFF Linux Phone Mod is close to come.

    Its probably already doable if any of them can have the controller wings removed.