There’s so much bullshit with smartphones now that make them a pain to use, I’m honestly considering at this point to just get a flipphone and buy separate devices for the things it can do. Get a camera, MP3 player, and portable DVD player and live life the way people did 20 years ago.
Oh, I totally agree, dude! I was thinking the same idea for a while too
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Camera problem – You have the best camera on your device, but sometimes people don’t even set the best settings lol. Plus, you’ve taken tons of photos with your phone camera that you never look at, so what’s the point? A small camera is a great idea or polaroid.
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Mp3 - I don’t have use Spotify or some streaming music platfrom. Because I listen to specific random songs that’s not alwasys available on Spotify etc. So I just download my songs with yt-dlp on mp3 files!
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Portable DVD player - I personally just download my videos (youtubers or movies) and then watch on my phone.
I’ve started to get more selective of my photos and even began printing them, sometimes gifting to friends. Now I actually end up looking at them more often.
Oh hey that’s cool! Do you print them like in those machine in shops or at home?
I do it via online shops that let me get them from a nearby physical store - it’s pretty neat that I can even select the paper size.
I tried printing once on photo paper on my mom’s printer, but colors were very off, despite configuring everything for maximum quality.
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holy crap this is so true. i miss twrp
Holy crap that dude aged like milk in 3 years time
There are phosh based phones and over time more people will hopefully switch to them, use them, and work on making them better. Phosh-based phones are currently are not as usable as something like GOS, but with Google challenging itself to become more and more enshitified in the interest in marginal tiny profit gains (even if it destroys their brand over the long term) nerds needs to band together prepare for an alternative. Part of this is going to be advocating for Apps that work in Linux mobile Phosh environments and just refusing to use containerized apks and part of it is going to be people doing what they can to support native linux phone apps that work well in Phosh.
I am in dire need of a true Linux Phone
Bring back the Nokia N900!
A nice sentiment but in reality the n900 and n9 were both too slow to use. That’s the first thing that would have to be fixed.
I did alright with mine. I figure a modern one would have modern hardware in it. People forget how dire the performance on the first couple of iPhone generations was, too. The N900’s contemporary was the iPhone 3GS, I think, which was an objectively terrible device in every metric except sales.
Oh, and the N900’s inbuilt phone dialer was also kind of ass. But I found its performance more than acceptable, and it could run full fat Firefox including the Flash plugin, which was still a big deal at the time, whereas its competitors could barely render a web page.
Hmm I didn’t use early (or later) iphones, so idk. In that era I had a Nokia N63 (sort of a Blackberry knockoff) which was really nice. I had an N900 but rarely used it. Later I got an N9 and used it mostly because my N63 crapped out. But the N9 was also near unusable. I finally broke down and got an Android phone in 2017 or so (Moto G4, cheap and obsolete even then) and it was lightning fast by comparison.
The 3GS was fine for me and much more response and useful than my previous phone, which happened to ba a Nokia N75.
I developed early web apps (and frontends for native apps) for iPhone and Android around the time the Nexus One launched. If you spent any time using both, the iPhone was a better phone even though the hardware specs didn’t suggest it, I used the 3GS until upgrading to the iPhone 5S. My wife was on an earlier schedule and went 3G, 4, 5C, and we still play old games on her 5C around Halloween with our kid now 12 years later.
I would eat my foot for this
I would eat their foot for this
I just like eating feet
Monoco would too! Owowowow
Look at this: https://liberux.net/
That does sound fucking based, but probably can’t run android apps as well right?
LiberuxOS contain jailed Android I think. Bit if not you can install Waydroid.
In any case, this is the other side of freedom. For some reason, people want corporations to provide them with convenient functions and applications for free and not take anything as a substitute. It doesn’t happen that way, communism hasn’t arrived. Either convenience under the wing of corporations, or freedom in all its wild splendor.
UPD: Freedom systems will never even become popular and convenient if everyone chooses the convenience of corporate systems.
Dude holy shit, modular emmc AND RAM, AND modem??! This looks sick as hell!!
Well, the market is really very small. There’s also the PinePhone Pro (which is discontinued) and Librem 5, Volla Phone, Mudita Kompakt. But, of couse, that whasn’t Ipone 16 pro max.
the oligarchy is already set, we won’t get a grassroots competitor to apple/google at this point without shenanigans. android is open but the entire ecosystem around it is closed.
all sorts of bureaucracy and interaction with corporations and governments are now requiring squeamish proprietary apps that will not work at the mere hint of something they arbitrarily (or maliciously?) dislike.
Really gotta get rid of those.
The phone running FuriOS seems neat.
I was really rooting for Ubuntu Mobile and Firefox OS. Sadly barely any manufacturers offered it stock, so classic henn and egg problem.
Don’t forget rock solid app gets an unexpected update 3 years later and now is jammed with ads and offers an ad free subscription at $14/week
Yeah app purchases sure went to shit, didn’t they? Sorry turns out buying an app one time for a small fee isn’t good enough, we need you to buy it again every month.
And the apps that do have lifetime licenses went from $5 to like $80
Dude fuck that noise.
I bought a lifetime copy of hex edit like 30 years ago. 20 years later I needed something and the dude answered and sent me a new code.
Fucking rock on hex edit brother!!!
I’m glad I heard of Discord’s plan to add ads to their Android app beforehand so I had the chance to disable updates. It’s annoying that Android keeps reminding me there’s an update available, but it’s less annoying than ads.
Blocking basically all ads on your phone is trivially easy.
- Find “Private DNS” (or something similar) in your settings
- Set it to dns.adguard-dns.com
And that’s really it. There are other ad-blocking dns providers out there, and they all use slightly different block lists. I like adguard because their blocklist is less aggressive than others I’ve tried, and I’d rather an ad or two get through than for something legitimate to stop working.
You can also set it up as your dns provider in your router to block ads on your entire network. People tend to like to self-host adguard or pihole for that, but as long as you don’t care about a dashboard or manual dns entries, using a free dns is as easy as it gets and is very effective. I self-host as a hobby and I still just use adguard’s public dns.
Also TrackerControl FOSS app that filters ads on your phone directly. Can enable/disable different stuff per-app. Must have no proxy/dns to work.
An in-app-purchase screen would have been a great fit.
CyanogenMod, how I loved thee
The golden age of custom ROMs was truly a technological Renaissance. Magical time.
Damn such good days. My phone is a trash can these days.
Is LineageOS not good? I thought that was forked from Cyanogen?
They had to throw out lots of customization options, because Google made a ton of changes to Android/AOSP and it wasn’t compatible anymore.
Like, LineageOS is still a more feature-rich and cleaner OS than what comes preinstalled on most phones. But yeah, even relatively simple stuff like setting a system font never got a real replacement.
No idea, if it is still easily possible to implement that. You can fake it by replacing the Roboto font file with a different font, but you get weird font issues in various apps then.
i cant wait for mobile Linux to be ready, I will switch in a heartbeat.
Pinephone exists now, you can buy it today. It runs Linux.
Calls/SMS do work although are not 100% so if you absolutely need these to be reliable you could get a brick phone for like £15 to cover that and then use the Pinephone as a pocket computer. I used it as my only phone for a couple of years and it was mostly fine, now it doesn’t have a SIM in it and its perfect as a pocket PC.
Follow pine64 news, they stopped producing new pinephones since they arent in demand enough
I thought that was just the pro?
the pro was discontinued but the base model is only going to be produced for another 2 years. Hopefully they release a next generation model but if they are toning down upper end models then I’m not convinced.
Mine has postmarketOS on it, probably should update sometime.
One thing I would like is decent offline maps with good performance, don’t even care of it supports GPS or not. Pinephone has no SIM in it these days and that sits in a CatB40.
Are they stopping development though? Stopping production when there is an abundance of stock to sell already is just normal business.
It wasn’t due to surplus, they said in the release that it was a didn’t sell enough units(the pro). And the current pinephone is only going to be produced another 2 or so years, they havent mentioned any plans that I saw of a model after that.
If calls/SMS are not 100% then it’s not a phone
That is where the dumb phone comes in which only deals with calls/SMS.
If you have to buy a dumb phone for your smartphone then you did not buy a smartphone, is my point
If you can’t even install software on it then its not an overly smartphone.
Pinephone battery usage (with postmarketOS) is atrocious. I bought one and it’s been collecting dust in a drawer ever since the first 3-4 times the battery drained from 100 to 0 within 24 hours on stand-by. :( My fastest wasted 700ish EUR ever.
How so much? Mine was about £200 after delivery and import taxes. Still my most expensive phone but the best computer I have ever put in my pocket.
Shame that calls/SMS are not perfect, but I have since for a dumb phone for that so the SIM sits in that instead.
it’s been 3 years or so but I may have bought a pinephone pro because the simple one was out of stock? Plus convergence package, plus shipping, plus outrageous money transfer fees - German banks are basically thieves when it comes to international transfers outside the EU.
Permanently connect it to a power bank?
- great use case for a mobile device /s
- lithium ion batteries are really nothing to feel comfortable around
- wasting energy is wasting energy
So - no, it’s now expensive electronic scrap, sadly. While my shiftphone easily lasts 24 hours with regular use and 3+ days on standby.
deleted by creator
wasn’t paying attention - my bad.
Sailfish exists: https://sailfishos.org/
Wasn’t Ubuntu phone a thing?
Ubuntu touch is a thing, But the only platform it’s running properly on is halium, which is basically an Android core and bootloader that virtualizes the OS.
It works, and it has pretty good battery life, but it’s not really Linux on the phone, they’re using Android drivers under the hood.
The real Linux distributions that exist that are running on metal don’t have all the drivers worked out yet for modem and VOLTE, But those are close, i’m not worried about that, But I am worried about is the average of 6 hours of battery life on a 3500 mah battery. Android has battery life down to a science. Those apps just become snapshots and disappear into the background and restore like nothing happened when you need them again.
I started diving into this one Android started showing their ass a couple of months ago. If you want to use hallium, You might be able to daily drive it if you don’t have high expectations, The guy I was following that tested it out so that helium / touch was so lockdown that he couldn’t even install unsanctioned apps from the terminal because the VM would brick itself.
I can deal with not running most phone apps, But I really don’t feel like moving from one lockdown OS to another just for the hell of it. If Google pulls this s*** I will get out at the first available stop.
I’ve been hearing about this for 10+ years now. I vaguely remember testing a prototype that could only load an os. That was it
Saw someone else mention sailfish! There is also PostmarketOS I’ve recently seen footage of it running on a OnePlus phone and it looks way more stable than I’d expected!!
Edit= apparently just 2 oneplus phones and sparse other phones are supported, and stability varies per device =/ you can check here to see if your phone’s supported!
I’ve been looking to switch as well… But it’s hard to find a supported device. Dammit, I want Mobian so bad…
It won’t happen due to voice over lte.
Why is this a problem?
Voice over l t e is not standardized and the carriers on the I p to connect to their system. So every carrier has an encrypted blob that only works with whatever version of phone they want to sell. If you have a major phone like an iPhone or a pixel, then apple and Google work to make sure that those seemlessly download.But if you’re any other brand you’re kind of screwed. Even Samsung has issues since I can’t use the Play Store to distribute it in their own app.Store doesn’t have good support from the carriers. The carriers really push that only the phones are purchased from them work. Spokennoise, they also pushed it unsecured.Devices need to be wiped, including them voiceover Lte data.
Look at the issues with australian service right now , they are even trying to stop iphones from other countries from using it. Apple has a whole system to make sure that all phones work with the same voice over lte stuff following the bands match and auto download the blobs.
AOSP
Android Open Source Project
look inside
not open source
mfw
You can still use AOSP to make your own phone, but you’ll just have to built your own apps too, since eventually, all of google play apps aren’t gonna work on degoogled Android.
Not a big deal, considering that FOSSIFY project offers all the basics you’d need for a degoogled phone: call app, messaging, contacts, calculator, calendar, gallery, etc. F-droid also has a good selection of apps, though most people, me included, will still need whatsapp one way or another. At least that thing doesn’t need any of Google’s “essential” apps.
you’ll just have to built your own apps too
We are well on our way.
I was confused before I made the switch. So many of the most useful kinds of apps weren’t maintained anymore by anyone on the Google Play store. I had this surreal feeling that the app ecosystem was getting worse every year.
And then I installed F-Droid and figured out where all of my favorite app developers went. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
they court the nerds with cool tech, then ditch them whenever their shit takes off and the nerds are an irrelevant minority.
Tale as old as time.
No. No it’s not that. The politics of silicon valley are turning fast, and not in good directions.
to be fair they havent been making cool tech for a while anymore either.
Oh its very cool. Have you seen palantir’s
Oh. You meant cool for you. No. Jo they have not
Pfft… We’re the ones who are just going to find the exploit in the new walled garden anyway. #GreenJailbreak
iOS jailbreaking used to be incredible too.
I guess it might still be for those who slipped into the “window” to do it, but I have no clue what Cydia looks like these days.
Cydia is practically dead, replaced by Sileo or Zebra, and most tweaks are paid now.
I miss when people did stuff for a hobby or for fun. Literally everything wants your money these days it seems.
It’s not like everything (or rather every dev) necessarily wants your money. We’re forced to monetize even our hobbies in an attempt to live a worthwhile life. It’s a cancerous system infecting everything and everyone.
To develop great FOSS software without the need of monetization is an enormous privilege.
No, you’re absolutely right.
I am more angry at the system than at the hobbyists. I apologize for coming off like that.
Doesn’t help that Apple wants €100/year + a supported Mac (average €100/year for the hw upgrade treadmill)
Oh that sucks. It’s par for iOS though.
Yeah, me too. So what if apps were simpler than they are now… that would be nice.
It truly was a great time when the scene was really bumping. Maybe one day we’ll pendulum swing back to something along that peak jailbreak scene.
Maybe…
I feel like iPhones had a sweet spot between the 4 and the… I dunno. A few generations after that? Where jailbreaking was rampant and incredible, and the phones are basically like the 16 now.
Then Android had a ‘sweet spot’ after that. Their quality and UI fluidity really caught up, to the point where my old Razer Phone 2 (SD845) still feels faster than an iPhone 16.
After that… well, I dunno where to go :(. Feels like both platforms are locking down.
You made me wonder if there could ever be an avenue for Apple to support this, especially with Google just getting worse and worse with android.
Apple makes a ton of money on just hardware sales. Imagine if the next iPhone had an option that would delete iOS, possibly blow some kind of security fuse in the CPU that voids your warranty (because they still have to be dicks), and reboot into an unlocked bootloader. They could boost sales and be even shittier to Google by rolling their own distro of Linux/Android/BSD for the phones with solid drivers for everything.
That veered off into fantasy land immediately, since that is not how Apple does things. And they do have services to sell too. But even if they only enabled open access on older models it could move a ton of units. Interesting to imagine.
Capitalism will never give you nice things. Sorry.
Oof, now that is some stinging truth right there.
At least I had my moment to dream about it yesterday.
I think world peace is more realistic than that
would be nice
Omay, but, and hear me out on this: what if we added microtransactions to your email app and keyboard app?
Ahem. My HTC 7 came with malware in the keyboard, baked in as an unremovable system app!
And if you oay, it’s not private.
I held onto jailbreaking till the end. I have a iPhone on iOS 17.0 and TrollStore for permanent sideloaded apps. It’s pretty awesome! There hasn’t been anything like a jailbreak or TrollStore since then. I wish I had bought an iPhone 15 on iOS 17.0 at launch so I could hold onto this as long as possible. Having a lower end iPhone I’ll probably need an upgrade in the next year or so.
You can get a similar experience to TrollStore by paying for an Apple developer account or a third-party signing service that abuses Apple developer accounts. It seems android users may have to do a similar thing in a few years.
everybody could use more money. gotta be turning more and more of your life into a hustle for capital’s insatiable maw.
so now we pay for mods.
Because the default commercial software is trash.
yup, mostly because of capitalism
It’s happening, I’m finally getting nostalgic from tech memes. The days on xda forums and IRC. Thankfully IRC is still alive. Xda seems to be dying to telegram and Google’s enshittification
Mmm yes incomplete ROMs with a ton of self-congratulatory posting
ROMS have (almost) always been incomplete works. They have always been sideprojects, by tech enthusiasts that wanted to learn. They just happen to share those projects to any who would be interested, with no warranty.
I remember this “don’t be evil” slogan. But what was it from?
It was Google’s.
wheeze
I am very happy on GrapheneOS. Even in terms of flashing it was much nicer experience than what you had to go through back in the days
I just hate that so much. The openness was one of the two reasons why I got an android phone. The other one being the price.
