Best of luck to the devs, very exiting! Here is the link to pmOS wiki to follow the progress.
Caleb is working on it apparently, one of the main people we have to thank for sdm845 (like Oneplus 6) mainlining effort
Wait, alternative to the fair phone in terms of software and reliability? Better performance than the Pine phones? Matching up to the Librems in quality?
Don't forget it's the Android-first phone with Android-first SoC. Linux support is a additional porting effort. It even is the exact same SoC as Fairphone 5.
Shift is even less popular that Fairphone and not as repairable (still they care about repairability), but at least they actively do something towards mainlining Linux unlike Fairphone that just don't interrupt.
Okay, what's the catch? Doesn't work on North American networks? Touch screen doesn't work so you have to carry around a keyboard, mouse and USB hub? Doesn't send or receive calls?
Yeaaah... This has to have some catch because if not, this might finally be the phone I've been waiting for.
"Unfortunately, WiFi isn't yet functional due to a firmware issue."
Well, there's one right there I guess, hopefully they can figure out the firmware.
With 12GB of ram, that's absolutely more than enough to have waydroid running in the background with all the android apps I would need until the Linux app ecosystem catches up, and with mainline support, hopefully the battery life and hardware support won't be absolutely abysmal.
I've never heard of this company or their previous phone, so I'm a little suspicious that their "13 exchangeable modules for the phone" are gonna have some showstopper catch in there. What are the modules for? Are we talking internal modules like soc and WiFi? Or external modules like what Motorola tried to do with an external camera modules and such?
Calls and texts are not listed as supported. I wouldn’t be surprised if they do not work. Just have a look a PostmarketOS support. Most phones cannot make phone calls.
I hate the telephone as much as the next guy my age, but it's still quasi-mandatory to have a functioning telephone to exist in this world. Like...why'd they bother mentioning it in public in this state?
PostmarketOS has come a long way. In opposition to proprietary stuff they depend on people contributing which most people dont bother doing (translations, documentation, code).
That said, if you look here the majority of community supported devices lists calls as working.
To give this more perspective, I‘m working on a OnePlus6 with PostmarketOS at the moment and trying to make it userfriendly. Its a lot of work and in my case far too advanced for a regular user but contributing in general isnt ans the phones are developing.
The important part about postmarketOS is that you can finally own your device, unlike with android and ios and even after support ends unlike grapheneOS afaik. Obviously you still have proprietary blobs for modems and such but YOU can be the person that changes this.
Thanks so much for your efforts. I own a phone solely for testing PM, so not a hater at all. More disappointed in hardware manufacturers showing so little support.
Great to hear it. Imo, they have no incentive of doing so. If a country decided that sale of open source hard and software was tax free or at least reduced, we would be seeing it multiply like rabbits.
SHIFTphone 8 is the upcoming modular and easy-to-repair smartphone from Germany's SHIFT GmbH.
This is the first major SHIFTphone update in four years and there are pending patches providing mainline Linux kernel support for this forthcoming Qualcomm Snapdragon powered modular/upgradeable smartphone.
The SHIFTphone 8 continues with being modular and upgrade friendly while being the first model having IP-certified waterproof protection.
There are hardware kill switches, 13 exchangeable modules for the phone, recycle-friendly, tempered glass screen, and other improvements over prior smartphones from this Germany company.
These patches from Linaro prepare SHIFTphone 8 kernel support for this device using the Qualcomm QCM6490 with 12GB of RAM, 512GB UFS storage, 1080p display, and hardware kill switches.
The initial Linux kernel support is enough for a frame-buffer display, integrated storage, battery monitoring, Bluetooth, and thermals.
The original article contains 208 words, the summary contains 132 words. Saved 37%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
@Beaver
I don't think we need to entice them. The only reason bank apps are necessary is because they don't use standard 2FA.
What we need is to get legislators like the @EU_Commission to force them to follow standards (so we can use our own 2FA apps or keys, that have been working just fine for decades and are way more secure than some of their "2FA" implementations) and make their websites usable on a mobile browser.
Tell you what, I misread two letters in the title, and was 100% sure I clicked on an article about Dolly Parton driving a blood bank van. That's all. Carry on.
I'm glad you are doing this. Pinephone and Librem 5 days are surely numbered, the hardware is just too outdated. My Librem 5 is also starting to fail, some times i can't even get it to power on without restarting several times. I will never use Android or iOS, they are just too exploitative and untrustworthy, so it's a relief everyone isn't completely abandoning the idea of a free libre phone.
Adding to that, I'm not sure if it's just me, but Android, even with root, feels so restrictive compared to a Linux distro. A good example is that I tried to remove a system file the other day (notification sounds, I hated them and wanted them gone for good) but even when I found what the file was, I couldn't delete it using conventional methods aka file managers. I even tried using Zarchiver with root privileges, and it failed. The same happened when I had to deal with recent Android versions making the Android/obb dir read-only. The only way I could access these is via Termux and that is just kinda disappointing for a system that claims to be supposedly open.
Now, I'm not expecting this to be possible on mobile Linux, but the expectations there are different.
Anyways, rant aside, what I'm really saying is I'm excited for Mobile Linux, specifically Plasma Mobile (as I already tried Phosh and it was pretty good, but I haven't got a device Plasma Mobile). I hope that I can daily drive it one day, just using Waydroid for some apps like WhatsApp, Banking Apps, and other essential proprietary apps.
I mean, not being able to delete some files because they're read-only and what not doesn't mean it's less open. You can't do that on an immutable distribution either but I definitely still consider them "open".
At postmarketOS we're planning to also offer an immutable option in the future. We'll always keep a mutable option around for people that want it but by default we'll ship the immutable variant to our users because we can guarantee stability and safe updates way more. Then you won't be able to just delete system files either.
Yeah, but actual Linux, even immutable, still feels more open. I don't like the default look and feel of the system? There's only so much I can do on Android, while on mobile Linux, I can even install SXMO, which is a mobile tiling window manager.
It's not a good value to buy and you need a good GNU/Linux knowledge to use it.
But it's quite an interesting device, especially with the keyboard addon.
@wittypier@Shatur it's not usable as a daily driver phone but if you are interested in developing apps, drivers etc it's ok. There are much better options like the one plus 6.
Bharatiyas don't communicate. They send signals. And all the good signals are linked to the worst possible signals by content creating companies. So, the divide and rule of these companies is perfect!
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