Linux phones are still behind android and iPhone, but the gap shrank a surprising amount while I wasn’t looking. These are damn near usable day to day phones now! But there are still a few things that need done and I was wondering what everyone’s thoughts on these were:
1 - tap to pay. I don’t see how this can practically be done. Like, at all.
2 - android auto/apple CarPlay emulation. A Linux phones could theoretically emulate one of these protocols and display a separate session on the head unit of a car. But I dont see any kind of project out there that already does this in an open-source kind of way. The closest I can find are some shady dongles on amazon that give wireless CarPlay to head units that normally require USB cables. It can be done, but I don’t see it being done in our community.
3 - voice assistants. wether done on device or phoning into our home servers and having requests processed there, this should be doable and integrated with convenient shortcuts. Home assistant has some things like this, and there’s good-old Mycroft blowing around out there still. Siri is used every day by plenty of people and she sucks. If that’s the benchmark I think our community can easily meet that.
I started looking at Linux phones again because I loathe what apple is doing to this UI now and android has some interesting foldables but now that google is forcing Gemini into everything and you can’t turn it off, killing third party ROMS, and getting somehow even MORE invasive, that whole ecosystem seems like it’s about to march right off a cliff so its not an option anymore for me.
Do you own a bank account? A credit card? A car?
Your requests aren’t interoperable with the daily life in 2025. Your incredibly niche requirements instead ensures that the general public cannot have access to a usable reasonably private OS outside the hands of corporations.
If you want these requirements you can rip the code out yourself and load it as a custom ROM, stop being anti progress for things as frivolous and solvable as this.
Not that I own all these, but what do they have to do with my phone? I don’t see any connection to those except where I wanted to create it.
I’m not stopping you from wanting your apple/Linux phone. Or anyone from making it. I’m just saying that I believe that my interests are similar to a lot of people who care about open source, and therefore:
-The people who care about open source will not support that enough to be successfull (currently, as more people keep saying stuff like “I just can’t live without this convenience” it might change).
-The people who care about those conveniences that much don’t care about open source, privacy or freedom, and they won’t support it either. They will only support it if it’s even more convenient and lazy, and for that the apple/Linux phone would have to be even more evil than the current options.
So in my mind it’s a dead end, and I personally I don’t support it. But go for it! And I do believe that over times those conveniences will be seen more and more as needs and soon we might have a Linux phone I wouldn’t want to use. But good for those who want it.
BUT just to be clear, I desperately want a Linux phone, yes! But my concerns are stuff like: does the hardware work well? does the camera work well? Does the GPS work well? What about signal with the telecoms? Battery lifre? You know, mostly hardware related with the software.
Tap to pay, car play, siri, all those things can be on the list, but way down on the bottom.
I feel like you’re conflating some things here. Tap to pay is more private and secure than a bank card, and is more private than most cryptocurrencies. Cash is obviously better, but it is increasingly looking like it might be phased out of some places eventually (I really hope not, but is a legitimate concern). However, you are right that it’s not open source and relies on trusting big companies that don’t like user freedom.
So I would say that some of the people using tap to pay don’t necessarily not care about privacy more than convenience. Some of them just want to be able to use money in places where cash is dying out.
I don’t use tap to pay personally.
I’ll be honest that I don’t know how it works because I never cared. What I know is that it doesn’t work with root or most roms, it removes my freedom because my phone can’t be “trusted”, so any other issue it has is not important. Even if it was more private than cash. It needs Google to “trust” my phone and I really, seriously trust a thief more than Google.
Cards are another massive issue but it’s a problem so widespread that there’s nothing I can do about it anymore. I use cash whenever I can but I know humanity and it will die soon because people don’t care.
And later tap to pay will be mandatory and if you don’t have spyware (Google play, apple) on your phone you can’t buy anything anymore.
The present is bad, the future is horrible.
Fortunately cash is still a common option in Australia (and I’m here), and likely will remain so for a long time. However, I’m increasingly hearing that other countries are increasingly refusing to accept cash.
It’s probably best to get something working on Linux phones before it’s too late, but as you said Google is worse than a thief, so whatever is made should not use it. Best to maximise the freedom for people in a horrible future, lest Android or iOS ever become the only viable options. Problem being I don’t know how that would work, especially since banks would probably hate freedom respecting systems.
I agree basic functionality is higher priority, but I fear tap to pay will reach basic functionality status in some other countries when their banks phase out any alternative. (I don’t think cryptocurrencies will ever become common). It may not directly impact me that other countries phase them out, but it will gradually kill the Linux phone ecosystem.
Yeah, that’s the thing, I don’t think it’s possible without becoming as evil as the alternative. If it is, I’m all for it. But my freedom comes first.
Australia will lose cash over time. All first world countries will. You can’t stop “progress”. It’s just a matter of how long, and then how long until you are not a citizen without Google play on your phone. Or considered disabled, which is already happening.