I want to switch from android phone to linux and i want to know which phone is closest to daily driver. I only need call sms and bluetooth to work and battery should last 1 day. also working map camera and web browser app would be great. for os i have thinked to use ubuntu touch or postmarket os. Phones what i have most interested Volla phone Pixel 3a Fairphone 4 Pinephone or pinephone pro Any thoughts or ideas
The original PinePhone is still maintained. I don’t know for how long, though.
I’m not sure what you mean, since PinePhone’s and Librem 5’s modem is not integrated into the SoC. It’s a separate chip connected through USB.
PinePhone also has a killswitch to power off the modem. I think the only difference between them is that Librem 5’s modem is removable and PinePhone’s modem is soldered onto the board.
Android phones have some modem isolation too, but I don’t know much about it.
I haven’t heard of that, but I’m pretty sure Librem 5 is manufactured in China too, just like most phones.
Binary blobs are fine as long as they are not present in the operating system or executed by the main CPU. At least that’s the Free Software Foundation’s opinion until we can do something about it. This is where Librem 5 does better than PinePhone.
It has a x86 CPU, so it probably requires proprietary BIOS. I assume you will also need to install proprietary firmware in your OS to get working WiFi. So I don’t know if it’s an improvement over GNU/Linux phones. It’s probably not very energy efficient either.
PinePhone and Librem 5 have killswitches for the cameras and the microphone.
Phone calls are not end-to-end encrypted, so they suck. But to use Matrix you will need to use the internet. So you still need a modem probably. If not, you can just disable it with a killswitch.
I think the main problem is lack of SoCs that have good mainline Linux kernel support. Removing the modem won’t solve it and you will still need proprietary firmware for WiFi and Bluetooth, which sucks.
Yeah, it has the same problem.
Oh, that’s interesting. It probably still has blobs, though. And if you want to use WiFi, it probably requires proprietary firmware installed in your OS.
Librem 5 is probably the best in terms of software freedom. I think it doesn’t require any proprietary firmware in the operating system, because it was moved to separate chips. But I think binary blobs are still executed during boot, which is why they didn’t manage to get the RYF certificate from the FSF.
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/
Yeah, they have the same purpose. They are just a little less convenient to use.
I think the power efficiency of x86 is getting better lately, but still not good enough.
It would probably be pretty big and power hungry. It seems that it uses Coreboot, which contains proprietary blobs. Most x86 devices need those.
I hope some next phone will get a RYF certificate from the Free Software Foundation. That’s already a pretty high standard.
I haven’t heard of it before, but I doubt that Raspberry PI can be the solution. Does it even run a mainline Linux kernel?
Someone stepped up (see https://blog.mobian.org/posts/2024/01/08/highlights-of-2023/ and afaik a-wai also mentioned this at fosdem (https://fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event/fosdem-2024-3290-towards-a-bright-future-with-mobian-/), also long standing issues like the out-of-tree-WiFi/BT driver are being worked on currently.
Great news, thank you for the links
Regarding Beepy: I really tried, but … compared to that, PinePhone was easy to get to a somewhat works state in mid 2020. See https://linmob.net/enter-beepy-esc/#flaws