Secondly, there are a lot of things that one can do in an ordinary desktop-Linux environment that are much more complicated in the Android world. On my old Nokia N900, I frequently wrote Python scripts that interacted with the system D-bus to automate things, and I did not have to install a big development environment or download someone else’s solution.
I know I can theoretically compile my own ROM or something to customize the desktop environment, but... bleh. It's time-consuming for me to build things on Linux, but it is more time consuming for me to build things on Android. Android development is just a pain all around.
This on the other hand, isn't just a >$600 phone. It's a >$600 grimoire[0]. Expensive, and cumbersome, but nearly all magic is. There's an almost subconscious brand (for lack of a better word) that devices of this nature fit into. They're trading user-experience for dev-experience, which is not something LineageOS or Android is optimized for.
As to the rest of your criticism, all of your other points seem completely fair. I'm not sure what I would put the odds at of the device succeeding (note, succeeding means finding a stable niche, not beating any other device). And while I can forgive a lot of flaws in software, for the price they're asking the hardware/drivers need to work well.
I'm very much in the "wait and see" camp. But I do see a lot of potential.
I don't disagree that there are some suboptimal things about Android but to bootstrap a new mobile OS platform from almost nothing, and being on-par not even matching Android especially with regards to security (sandboxing, a proper permission model) seems like it would require a dedicated team several years of development time, which Purism doesn't have.
[0]: https://anbox.io/
I just don’t see that happening because I think the demos sort of show this for themselves. It may be fun to develop for but it doesn’t look enjoyable or practical to use. Wait and see we shall!
I agree; I think it will be successful.
> it doesn’t look enjoyable or practical to use
You can say that about any phone (an iPhone, flagship Samsung, etc) that is not in a case. I bet it will be enjoyable and practical once they put it in a case.
You say it doesn't look enjoyable or practical to use, I'm saying 'Duh, it's a prototype not in a case, sitting flat on a table.'
When you said "I agree" then followed up with a statement opposite to what he said, that also felt like a non-sequitur.
This phone is months from shipping and we haven’t even been shown multi touch have we? Is that even a feature being promised?
Ultimately the difference between this and the Raspberry Pin is tangible - $614 to be exact. I know that Purism isn’t out to sell a mainstream phone, but my doubts are seriously strong that they’ll sell enough of these to justify the effort.
I can build anything that’s missing in Linux as long as someone invents the fountain of youth so that I can spent a few thousand engineering years on implementation.