It is very unfortunate that so much of the Android ecosystem relies on a very proprietary and cloud-connected piece of software. Without it, most apps simply refuse to work. MicroG has done amazing things here, but unfortunately a lot of things still break when using it, to no fault of the MicroG developers.
The truth is that service and app developers only care about one thing: audience size, which translates to actual money. And it takes a long time to build that audience, even more so in the mobile world where all metrics are orders of magnitude bigger than on the desktop. Until Linux phones can show they have sizeable audiences, developers will ignore them. Tens of thousands is nothing, we’ll need millions. Realistically, this is not going to change in 12 months or even 2 years.
But, something can be done in the meantime: making all popular app-development frameworks run on mobile Linux, and then putting pressure on developers to produce app builds. When portability comes essentially for free, it becomes easy to support an additional platform just for the brownie points.
Modern bank apps require not just Google Play Services, they also require the phone to pass Safety Net. Play Services substitutes like MicroG aren’t capable of that.
download the apk from https://www.whatsapp.com/android/, start anbox (this takes a while), install android-tools, adb install WhatsApp.apk, done. It also works with stuff like Duo Mobile, which is the 2FA my organization uses (which is interesting because it doesn't agree with my rooted lineageOS phone).
Anbox comes by default on current versions of Manjaro
The web is already almost as closed (for apps) as phones are - you can choose Chrome, Safari if you're on Mac, or Firefox. Everything else is just repackaged Chrome. Edit: forgot Opera Mini, for what it's worth.
Firefox is dying out, and Google is pushing for less and less user freedom in Chrome, while Apple is extremely reluctant to implement new features that make Safari a better app platform.
What? Nobody needs permission to publish a webpage, while every week we hear about google or apple blocking or unpublishing apps with flimsy justifications.
Web Bluetooth
Web MIDI API
Magnetometer API
Web NFC API
Device Memory API
Network Information API
Battery Status API
Ambient Light Sensor
HDCP Policy Check extension for EME
Proximity Sensor
WebHID
Serial API
Web USB
Geolocation Sensor (background geolocation)
User Idle Detection
(Likely wrong terminology but you hopefully get the idea)
In a perfect world I'd have a phone that is analogous. As iPhone is to Apple, and android is to windows, my phone would be to whatever linux I use. Well, that's a tall order.
And because it's a tall order, the most efficient way to go through features is to start off with easy highly requested features and very slowly move toward the less important features that are harder to implement.
Phones with linux hits both sides of this equation. On one hand it turns out EVEN THOSE things are hard. On the other hand, people don't WANT to work on those things as much because free developers rarely want to work on other people's problems. I mean, some will, and those people are simply better people IMO, but rarely do they WANT to.
Replicant? https://replicant.us/
LineageOS? https://lineageos.org/
LineageOS is what I'm currently using on my daily driver, as a compromise. I would very much prefer a Linux phone, but in the current state it can't even fulfill half my needs in a smartphone.
If that's a problem, are you aware of microG? https://microg.org/
The problem is not with the Linux phones that are out there, it is that no apps are and likely never will be compatible with (non-Android) Linux phones. Until that is solved, most people (like me) could not switch out their phone for a Linux phone as a daily driver, however much they would like.
Having Linux as an alternative for Windows is a lot easier than having Linux as an alternative for Android/iOS. A lot of the Windows applications we use can be replaced by opensource applications on Linux. And browser based applications already work on both.
However, apps on Android/iOS are mostly tied to cloud services. Unfortunately services that most people need in this age. Messaging systems like WhatsApp and Signal are usually tied to your phone, and going without them would result in social isolation for a lot of people. But also for banking and sometimes government services, you likely need to use their apps. And there will never be opensource alternatives for such apps.