Unfortunately for that idea, I would like my phone to actually just function normally, and have support for programs that Android uses. You are making perfect the enemy of good here.

I'm using Pinephone as a daily driver (and waiting for Librem 5 to replace it) and avoid all proprietary Android apps. But you in principle can install them with Waydroid or Anbox.

See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32396685.

WayDroid is more usable than a lot of people would expect. Here's a demo from 10 months ago:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dyOgI8PRt9w

> I'm using Pinephone as a daily driver

Just in case you're not aware, because you seemingly are trying to convince other people: That fact alone indicates that what you're willing to trade off exceeds by an order of magnitude what the average user requires their main phone to do. And that even extends to the average tech-oriented user.

I am speaking to the HN audience here and expect that most people have more technical knowledge than ordinary people. Also, I acknowledged that today AOS might be superior, but it's important to support alternatives, because it will have problems long term, because it's controlled bu Google and heavily relies on proprietary code.

You can wait for the Librem 5 for a very long time, they haven't shipped any significant software update for a long time for mine and its in the state that if you turn on auto-suspend (i.e. don't always go at full 100% CPU) it freezes and needs a hard reboot.

Linux on phone is still very much in the enthusiasts-only phase. Not for me, not for most. And I'm saying that as someone that is a KDE/Linux geek!

Maybe that will change, but for now the e.foundation OS has most definitely a large potential audience that those phones are not going to be able to fill just yet.

I am well aware of the state of Librem 5 shipping. Every time they get the CPUs, they ship another banch of the phones: https://forums.puri.sm/t/estimate-your-librem-5-shipping/112....

Last I checked the forums, Librem 5 works for 10-12 hours on one charge, without suspend. This is mostly fine with me: it should survive a working day and one can buy a spare battery for emergencies. The work on suspend did not stop. Yes, I am undoubtedly an enthusiast.

> I'm using Pinephone as a daily driver

What OS? Does MMS work out of the box for you?

Mobian. I'm not using MMS; according to [0], it's in beta state.

[0] https://wiki.mobian-project.org/doku.php?id=pinephone

Can you share the current state with regards to basic functions (phone calls, SMS, mobile data)? Does it work reliably?

Phone calls and SMS work fine (but I don't use them much), mobile data also (and I do use it a lot). Rarely, typically during the use of mobile data, the modem disappears. Reboot always helps. Telegram and Firefox are somewhat slow but generally work reliably. Even calls on Telegram work (with the sound coming from the speaker). Noscript helps a lot. Calendar is not very usable. Heavy usage with high brightness can drain full battery in a couple of hours, but suspend lasts more than 24 hours.

I have a pinephone pro sitting idly until I find the time to install an OS to try on it.

I'm keen to try sailfish, I had a jolla in the past and really liked it.

At the same time, I'm weird enough that I want to use the terminal on it wherever possible! For calendar I was thinking of using calcurse.

Pinephone users don't tend to mention that the phone is about as powerful as a Galaxy S3. So keep that in mind.

The Galaxy S3 could do everything back in the day, it was and still is plenty powerful. Banking apps, messaging apps, social networks, web browsing, etc. Of course it won't do fancy real-tike Snapchat filters and AI image recognition, but if Android 4.4.x was indefinitely maintained I would have zero problems using one today.

If you're using "function normally" as a euphemism for "be android," then you're misusing "perfect as the enemy of good," because if you wouldn't be satisfied with a non-Android phone, you certainly don't consider it perfect.

Check out sailfishOS. Not a fork of android but you can get andorid app support on it. You can even get microg on it and use the banking apps (worked for me). The problem is that, officially, they support only a small number of sony models.

there's irony in having "degoogled" Phones built upon a platform that is at the technical discretion of Google, but you'd discount a lot of mindshare that grew around Android to say GNU/Linux is the only way long term. I don't know if the community could sustain a AOSP hardfork (or if it's necessary), but combining a mainline kernel with open firmware is a possibility for Android handhelds too.

The software is not a problem, the hardware is. You should be able to run AOSP on Pinephone and Librem 5 just fine. They do not depend on the proprietary drivers and can run mainline Linux.

the road to nowhere is proprietary firmware for hardware, not if it's running an aosp customrom or gnu/linux. I wanted to make this distinction as your parent comment read as if the gnu/linux part is a precondition. I agree on the downside of having less or no say in android product direction, but it's up to the firmware (and carriers frankly as they control the mobile towers) when obsolescence for a device happens.