I was going through Pine64’s page again after I found the latest KFE announcement. With that said, I seem to see a lot of issues with firmware on the Pine, whilst the Librem is just plain out of budget for me. Was interested in how many people here run a Linux mobile as a daily driver, and how has your experience been?

I’m considering purchasing the Pine but I’d like a better screen, more RAM and a better CPU. Don’t know if I should wait for a new model to be released (are they even planning to do that? Is the company active?). I will only really use it to browse the Web, and might even look to desolder a couple of parts that I know I won’t use.

Thanks.

Edit: I am willing to watch content and use banking apps from the browser. Do you think it’ll be fit for me?

Edit 2: overall, I am much saddened about the state of affairs regarding private computing on the go. I desperately hope that Linux on mobile takes off, even though its incubation looks disheartening at the moment. Thank you everyone for your comments.

  • MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.worldOP
    5·
    11 months ago

    I hope so too. I wouldn’t be as mad if Android was open and we could put it on different devices, but we can’t. Manufacturers lock their devices in so many ways.

    Thanks for your great reply

    • rufus@discuss.tchncs.de
      3·
      11 months ago

      Thank you. I completely agree. We can’t do stuff ourselves, my Pixel 4a is End of Life now and all the proprietary parts of the system won’t be updated anymore, which is a shame because the hardware is still perfectly fine.

      And I hate the business decisions Google makes. Android is built upon Linux and the core is supposed to be free software. But then they move more and more stuff into their proprietary Google services packages. Like the proper keyboard with swipe typing, the better calendar app, text to speech, push notifications and all of the payment stuff. I personally replaced everything on the phone with a custom ROM, and did not install the google services. But I had to find alternatives to all of that and some things really don’t work as well. It’s a hassle and some things just don’t work at all. Like some stuff that requires in-app payment. I don’t care too much, because I get most of my Apps from F-Droid anyways and they’re open-source. But I can’t pay with my phone in the supermarket, can’t rent those silly electric scooters and a few other things.

      • MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.worldOP
        1·
        11 months ago

        I tend to use my credit card for most of my purchases, online or in-person. In doing so, I haven’t come across the problem of payments you describe, although I’m unaware if the apps I use utilise Google’s API in the back-end to do this (for example, does the Amazon app use some Android API to process my payment using a credit card?).

        I think I’d be fine without most Google apps except for Maps, where OpenStreetMap has not served me well so fat (unfortunate, since I would like to use it but it is not as reliable in my experience). I can do my banking in the browser, and consume my video content (YouTube/Peertube/LBRY) in the browser anyway.

        I’m going to revisit the Murena mobiles again, and I’ll reiterate how disappointed I am that the FP5 is not available in the US. At this point, I’ll pin my hopes on KernelSU for the next few years (hoping I don’t have to compile my own kernel, I’d like to get a cheap device running the 5.10 kernel or those after it), but consumer devices don’t have hardware killswitches or privacy features or replaceable parts either (and iFixit doesn’t cover every device).

        This was a long comment, and I appreciate this discourse with you. Thanks again.