As a small phone lover, here’s the thing: we don’t consume as many phones or as many services as (general) big phone people.
It’s not only about the size of the community. It’s that our phones are tools generally at our service and not the reverse.
Hopefully Linux phones are not so far away from usable in the next couple years.
Hopefully Linux phones are not so far away from usable in the next couple years.
I said the same thing in like 2013. :(
It seemed more likely back then than it does today. Ubuntu and Firefox were both developing mobile OSes around that time.
What’s the closest thing to a viable option nowadays?
I think a Pixel running Graphene is the closest viable option. Out of the pool of bespoke built to run GNU/Linux phones, it might just be the PinePhone Pro. It’s the one suffering the least from critical existence failure.
Plus it looked like Web Apps were gonna become huge.
I know the words “web app” send some on Lemmy into a frenzied rage, but they’d be amazing from a platform agnostic perspective.
Imagine if the biggest barrier to entry for new smartphone OSes (app support) was gone. It’d be huge.
But seeing it as a threat to their business models (don’t get that 30% cut if it’s not through the App/Play stores), Apple and Google have had pretty shitty support for them.
If a Linux phone was out today and had good hardware and software, it’d still fail just like Windows Phone and BlackBerry OS did. WebApps would give it a strong chance though.
It is indeed quite dire. My hope lies in that the recent attempts have been more upstream first oriented where lots of distros run on phones. They do not work well yet but that approach might just get us there eventually.
Another thing that gives me hope is that phones do not change much any more. Much easier to catch up to a stagnated market.
Linux is often used to refer to a family of operating systems including Ubuntu, Debian, fedora, red hat, ect., which all use the Linux kernel.
However, GNU/Linux may be a better name for this family of operating systems, since they all use GNU components and (to varying extents) embrace the philosophy of the free software foundation.
Android uses the Linux kernel, but not GNU components, and do not embrace the philosophy of the Free software foundation.
Stalman, the man who founded GNU and the free software foundation published his thoughts on this:
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/android-and-users-freedom.en.html
Yeah, but it’s not like a typical Linux installation on a PC would be. You can’t just install a Flatpak application or anything like that. It doesn’t use many of the GNU core utilities that most other Linux distros use, and doesn’t use a mainline kernel.
People that ask for Linux phones know Android is Linux.
It’s just a lot more concise to say than “I want a phone with an open bootloader and hardware fully compatible with a mainline Linux kernel. I want to have a phone that can run a Phosh/Gnome Mobile/Plasma Mobile UI and on the backend work in a similar way to how desktop Linux would.”
Linux is a kernel. In that sense Android is Linux.
However when people say Linux they usually mean the full OS with the GNU utilities and all the other things that make up a Linux distro.
In that sense, Android is not Linux as pretty much everything other than the kernel is built specifically for android.
Praying the Xperia 5 VI is a bit more compact that the previous iteration. That and Sony actually start supporting their services for at least 5 years -_-
Yeah, the lack of software support made me disregard the Xperia completely (well and its price), which is sad because it is otherwise a great phone with actual useful features that other manufacturers have removed.
I think he means normal sized phones, instead of the ‘phablets’ we are surrounded by now. I still think the ~6.1 inch screen is the perfect size.
6.1” is too big. I miss the 4.7-5.1” range that they had on the iPhone Mini for example.
For me, it’s about width, not screen size.
My current phone is 6.1", but it’s only 68mm wide, so it’s easy to hold one-handed and slips in & out of my pocket easily. (It’s a Sony Xperia 10 V).
I love everything about this phone except that there’s no NA version, so my phone is missing a couple of the cell bands from my service provider. In particular, the wide band, so I don’t get great reception in the middle of large buildings.
Other than that, it’s great. Lots of RAM so app swapping is quick, and the battery life is so good I have it set to only ever charge to 80% and I’ve only dipped down to 20% on very high usage days. My usual usage is 80-50% daily.
Thats a small phone and I agree they are good too. But 6 is a good size imo, plenty of real estate and cant still be used with one hand.
I can’t use a 6" screen one handed, I doubt most women (who are half the population) can either.
I find for me it is half about the usability of thw phone one handed and the other half being pocketability. I don’t want to have to carry a man-purse just to be able to have my phone with me at all times. Front pocket of jeans is where i keep my phone and the pockets are not deep enough to contain the phone without pressing into my hips when i sit. Keeping the phone in the back pocket is just inviting theft.
I just want another Sony Xperia XZ1 Compact with updated specifications.
MKBHD’s video titles are so click baity now
It’s annoying but I get it. If you want to make it or stay big on YT you gotta play the game, and the majority of people eat up click-baity titles and obnoxious thumbnails.
I don’t disagree but it’s still a shame to see a well established channel needing to go to such lows.
“We”
