Eh https://hackerfall.com/story/the-truth-about-purism-why-libr... http://www.pcworld.com/article/2960524/laptop-computers/why-...

Wow. On the one hand, this is really cool. On the other hand, it's 600 USD for a phone that might be delivered in a year and a half and will not be able to run Signal.

It will run debian though, which is way cooler!

Plus, you might just be able to use anbox to run signal anyways. https://anbox.io/

Not running Signal seems like a security feature to me. The official Signal servers, and their stance on requiring a phone number and forbidding 3rd party clients is absurd.

What's the alternative? iOS has a poor story for jabber support, and the network effects for jabber are poor; the gradual network onboarding of signal made it easy to capture new users, but made it federation hostile.

At the moment, I think Matrix is a solid contender. It's easy enough to use a public servers like matrix.org, or riot.im, or run your own.

It's far from a perfect solution, but I feel like it comes closer to the mark than Signal.

The GPD Pocket is shipping for 500 USD, https://liliputing.com/2017/06/gpd-pocket-7-inch-windows-lap...

https://www.reddit.com/r/GPDPocket/comments/6idnia/linux_on_...

As far as I can tell, that doesn't have a SIM card slot, so it's not quite comparable to a mobile phone. I don't care that much about making calls, but mobile Internet access does matter in discussions about smartphones.

I have one. You're correct; it does not have a sim slot.

> 600 USD

Oh, nevermind, they take Bitcoin, which means other people paid for my new phone :-)