An open Android is perfectly viable, it can even be hardforked if people are that unhappy with what Google did with it over the years.

I think mobile Linux has functional advantages that can make it a lot more desirable, but there is no reason a truly open Android cannot exist.

What game is that?

I try to degoogle the best I can. When I was shopping for a new phone I went with Xiaomi because those phones used to be famous for their community support, but it seems like those days have passed. Once I discovered that I looked for alternatives that are available where I live and saw they weren’t any better, so I went with Xiaomi anyway.

Until I manage to move to EU and buy a Fairphone using a private, open source smartphone OS won’t be possible.

I don’t see what would be the value in that anymore. I didn’t use a phone with a physical keyboard in a while but I think a virtual 3x3 keyboard would be more comfortable.

Why not both? Android is open source, an organization can hardfork it if there is demand for it.

I think this is an exaggeration. Smartphones are one of the greatest inventions in human history, the problem is corporate control, the actual device is amazing.

I have a smartphone, just like there is no more need for a dedicated music player and a portable game console, I can play games and music on this as much as I want. A question popped into my head? I can look it up immediately. Love reading books? You now have effectively infinite space for them and don’t need to carry them around, trying to make sure they don’t get damaged. Want to watch a movie or a series? You got it. You even used to be able use it as a VR viewer! How cool is that?

If you suffered from social media addiction and just can’t use the device without risking a relapse I can sympathize with that. But that’s big tech’s fault, nothing necessitates smartphones being that way apart from corporate desire for infinite wealth.

Most of the world will not have access to phones that put freedom first, but if you have access to them they can remind you how amazing these things actually are.

If you can’t access an open Android phone, at this point there is no reason to consider anything other than an iPhone. It’s very expensive, yes, but it will be supported for years to come.

Switching to a feature phone depends on whether you can leave some smartphone usecases behind in favor of a feature phone’s benefits. I use my phone to read books and study my lessons with a stylus. I can let gaming go, it would suck but I can buy a portable console in the worst case scenerio. But those two are important. Banking is another one, even if I showed to the bank in person they direct you to use the app anyway. Which is cool, you get stuff done quickly but it sucks for cases like this.

Also a device availability and money issue.

Xiaomi Poco X7 Pro, Hyper OS 2.

I hope Raptor Computing sticks around. If I manage to get a well paying job I’d love to move on to the POWER ISA on desktop and a Fairphone with Ubuntu Touch.

I know it’s exteremely expensive (I mean the POWER desktop) but with the recent Android news I believe the time for compromise has passed. Those of us who are fortunate enough to be able to do so should adopt fully open hardware whenever possible.

I don’t think this is it, a lot of people were ok with that. The problem is drivers, they seemingly never matured enough to get the device to a usable state. Why?

Except it absolutely did. Sure, it got hardware in the hands of developers, but that effort didn’t amount to anything. Pinebook paved the way for Pinebook Pro, which made good on company’s promise of an open, affordable, low power laptop for Linux enthusiasts.

This never materialized with Pinephone, it didn’t even mature enough to satisfy most of the early adopters, who for the most part only wanted reliable calling and texting.

Holy shit, I didn’t even know about that. Damn…

It absolutely failed. Pinebook succeeded, they wanted to build a cheap Chromebook alternative for Linux enthusiasts and they did it. Pinebook Pro was a functional product and it was well received.

Pinephone failed, it made some progress but it never reached a point where a Linux user with basic needs could daily drive it. It seems like Linux phone space moved on to Halium at this point.

They should consider adopting Anubis.

Indeed, what would you even get out of DDoSing Fedora? It can only be done out of malice.

Epic might be most extreme example of the three, it has at least four periods that might as well be completely different companies.

I agree the name super sucks. Still really cool there was enough interest in this form factor to get a project like this going.

A lot of people miss physical keyboards actually F(x)Tec Pro¹ X has a physical keyboard. There is a modern clone of Blackberry Passport. There is the Clicks keyboard case for iPhones.

I think I’m one of very few enthusiasts who likes software keyboards better at this point lol.

As shitty as it is, at this point if you want to use a custom rom you basically have to buy a phone that was made with them in mind.