Edit: Isn't there some kind of wake-on-lan on arm chips that the Baseband OS could use?
Especially since both Pinephone and Librem devs are essentially dumpster diving for their hardware. Even Dell with all its resources couldn't get fast suspend on Ubuntu working (or whatever it's called). And that was just x86_64. But even I know how to power an RPI on/off! (I can even run the systemd thingy that reports startup times for various processes, which already puts us years ahead of the competition.)
If we work smart I honestly believe we can have a Linux device with the feature set and battery life of my LG VX5200 by the year 2030.
Edit: here's a sheet on that wonderful little indestructable device:
https://www.lg.com/us/mobile-phones/pdf/VX5200_Datasheet.pdf
Notice the support for "Mobile Web 2.0!" I don't believe that included SVG-- so already we're even closer to our goal!!!
Not advocating for this, I do not own one, but I'm pretty sure this substantially covers all goals listed minus #8 (plus an unlisted one - Signal integration).
I investigated and considered this option carefully. Ultimately ended up doing a Pixel running GrapheneOS (no microG) as a stop-gap until I buy either a Pinephone or Librem, once those are a little more usable.
Something else that platforms like that, and for everyone else, is a standardized means of communicating with banks. That way it is not up to the bank to build and maintain apps for seperate platforms. That one devices like Punkt could build alternative apps to do these kinds of functions.
Great in theory, a nightmare in practice. It would open up the means of fake apps to steal details. Also as the XKCD comics said - You have 15 standards, lets make a new better one, there are now 16 standards.
Side note on Punkt. They have one of the best monthly emails and I would highly recommend. Usually only a 2-3 minute read, lot of promoting their alarm clock (whatever) has a decent book recommendation and occasionally a link to a short article.
Aren't they all fully functional from their website? Pretty sure it's even still possible to obtain standalone hardware tokens with at least a few banks, if not all. Using a smartphone app is just an option.
Maybe we should back up before smartphones.
Even back up before desktops.
Could 2023 be the year of the Linux alarm clock?
Also, is it free software? I know I only said "Linux phone" but we are in the realm of FOSS on this thread...
Where's the Librem 5 antenna? Can you link to reports of reception issues stemming from this?
Any newcomer, Linux or not, would immediately face the most obvious problem, which is a complete lack of a well-stocked store.
[0] I sometimes take my smartphone abroad for a combination of offline Google Maps and WiFi hopping.
For Linux devices, if you have a powerful enough phone (Pine64, can we please have a really beefy PinePhone?), you could bundle Waydroid + Aurora/F-Droid.
From the original list, I really don't care at all about 1/2/3 (phone calls) and only care vaguely about SMS.
My requirements are for an excellent browser and an app store with support for messaging platforms (telegram/signal/skype/slack/teams/etc) and email support, everything else is either "extra" or an outright distraction I'd probably be better off without (twitter, reddit, etc).
I recognize that's true for you, but it's definitely not true for me, and I expect many others, too. I'd honestly be fine if my "phone" dropped the "phone" part entirely. The only purpose of that feature is for spammers to make my phone vibrate a couple times per week. In the very rare (less than once per month) instances I need to actually talk to a human on the device, I'm sure someone could invent an app that allows for that.
1. Yes, has a dialpad. Works as you would expect
2, 3, 4. Yes, works well on my carrier
5. The antenna is along the side of the phone I believe and the reception seems good, I haven't had issues with this
6. I would say SMS only works about 95% percent of the time. The phone does randomly disconnect from the celluar network maybe once every day or two
7. Works well on my carrier, no issues here. I have a data plan and it works fine
8. It takes maybe a minute or two to boot, but to be fair my Samsung A52 Android takes longer to boot, maybe 2 minutes
9. Yes, there is a contact app, don't know about snake :)
Other:
10. The phone is slow, firefox works and all the websites I visit (including google maps, uber, etc.) render and work correctly, but slowly. I wouldn't say too slow to browse, but 100% it is slow
11. Be CAREFUL inserting the SIM card, it is extremely easy to break the SIM pins and brick the phone if the SIM card is not inserted correctly (I learnt this the hard way)
12. Surprisingly a large amount of apps available via flatpak/flathub, including both foss apps for things like email and 3rd party clients for things like spotify and whatsapp (text only, no video or audio calls). All the core linux stuff and lots of the foss apps via apk
13. However not all apps on flathub are compatible with the PinePhone since PinePhones uses aarch64 architecture, not x86_64
14. Very poor battery life out of the box, about 4 hours tops. However, after installing tlp and irqbalance (via apk) and setting auto-suspend to 1 minute, the battery life is about 8 to 12 hours of "normal" usage, so quite usuable
15. Camera is very basic
I should probably try postmarketOS on it and use it as a burner travel phone.
· I can program the phone to block numbers and send http requests over the net.
· Tethering, even if I need a USB cable for that.
· I can record calls. Both sides.
If I can't program it, I'd just buy a dumbphone. If I can tether, I can do without anything else, just carrying a tablet or small laptop.
For me, all this is obvious, but it doesn't seem the same for others.
number 7 points at why this won't really work. providers can just say it's a security vulnerability and shut this kind of cellphone down.
8. would be awesome, it's even a good idea for typical locked down smartphones because the battery life!
Personally, I have no interest in making phone calls. 99% of the time when my phone rings it’s a spam call. The other 1% of the time it’s one of my uncles or aunts, all of whom are in their 80’s or thereabouts. After they pass on, I will have no reason at all to make a phone call, except perhaps to book a doctor’s appointment with some doctor who hasn’t switched over to online booking.
You say that now, but wait until you need to dial 911.
I know my experience is anecdotal and not universal, but neither is the "cops won't show up" one.
It may well be the last phone call one makes in their life, but the ability to do it at all is predicated on the integrity of a piece of glass. It's insane.
The issue is that you don’t want the button to be easy enough to press that 911 gets flooded with butt dials.
Before switching to a smartphone in late 2020 various multi-message SMS texts dropped the middle message for some unknown reason.
> After they pass on, I will have no reason at all to make a phone call
You may think so, but things pop up. Moving states required calling my insurance company. I've made a couple of emergency calls.
This is actually one of the major problems linux phone operating system hackers have been trying to solve — idle power consumption is really really important for a cell phone, but most hardware open enough to run custom operating systems on don’t have easy ways to suspend to a reliable low-power state.
I think that to be practical, you're going to outsource the cellular comms to a prebuilt module that's got the carrier certification already sorted out.
I have one, played snake on it, liked it (hurray for real buttons). Haven't bothered set it up as my daily driver because 90% of my phone usage is Signal and so far as I know that's not yet working.
1. you can dial phone numbers somehow
2. you can talk on the phone
3. you can hear the person on the other line
4. the cell reception on the phone is decent quality
5. antenna is properly placed for very good reception
6. basic SMS works, all the time
7. has been extensively tested to work with a single carrier, any other carrier is no warranty
8. boot time and shutdown time are so small that it opportunistically shuts down instead of suspend
9. bonus goal: contacts, can maybe play snake
Librem 5 fails #5 and #8 (and can't really succeed at #8 unless you just drop into a command line, but then you wouldn't be able to input phone numbers). I've read some reports that #1, #2, and #3 have improved enough to be usable. On #7, they offer a bundle with a simcard for a carrier that was tested with the phone. (Doubt it was extensively tested, though.)
Of the little I've read about Pinephone and Pinephone Pro, they've had problems with #3, #6, and #7, and #8.
Overall, however, both appear as a smartphone complete with messaging and browsers. But Librem 5 can't do hardware acceleration for Firefox ESR (because the etnaviv driver doesn't have recent enough OpenGL features for webrender to work).
Pinephone is too slow to browse.
I'm not sure about Pinephone Pro (though I'd be quite surprised if it passes the Firefox webrender tests).
I'd much prefer a much more basic device that gets all the basics right, and then be pleasantly surprised that I can play mp3s on it, too.