Linux phones are still behind android and iPhone, but the gap shrank a surprising amount while I wasn’t looking. These are damn near usable day to day phones now! But there are still a few things that need done and I was wondering what everyone’s thoughts on these were:
1 - tap to pay. I don’t see how this can practically be done. Like, at all.
2 - android auto/apple CarPlay emulation. A Linux phones could theoretically emulate one of these protocols and display a separate session on the head unit of a car. But I dont see any kind of project out there that already does this in an open-source kind of way. The closest I can find are some shady dongles on amazon that give wireless CarPlay to head units that normally require USB cables. It can be done, but I don’t see it being done in our community.
3 - voice assistants. wether done on device or phoning into our home servers and having requests processed there, this should be doable and integrated with convenient shortcuts. Home assistant has some things like this, and there’s good-old Mycroft blowing around out there still. Siri is used every day by plenty of people and she sucks. If that’s the benchmark I think our community can easily meet that.
I started looking at Linux phones again because I loathe what apple is doing to this UI now and android has some interesting foldables but now that google is forcing Gemini into everything and you can’t turn it off, killing third party ROMS, and getting somehow even MORE invasive, that whole ecosystem seems like it’s about to march right off a cliff so its not an option anymore for me.
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Missing those things would be a feature for me.
I’m much more worried about having a usable battery life and having basic phone functions like WiFi calling and MMS work.
I see vo-LTE generally doesn’t work at all either.
I agree that missing these things are features IMO.
Typing this reply from SailfishOS with working VoLTE, MMS and all the things. Occasionally I have to restart a service but overall its pretty good
Tap-to-pay and car assistance are must-have in today’s world. 10-15 years ago, no. Today, yes. Bank apps is the other thing that can’t be done either (because bank apps want a “certified” system to run on). Here in Greece, it’s required you have a bank app on your phone to go with your daily life.
Yes, we all want a simpler life, like it was in the past, so we can envision an OS system that “it’s good enough”. But reality is not on our side. Linux as an open source community phone OS, made by non-commercial/non-corporate entities, can’t be an OS for the masses. It just won’t tick any boxes for them in today’s world. The current Linux phone OSes could be contenders 15 years ago, but not today.
I’ve never used tap to pay. I don’t want any banking info on my phone. In the US, we don’t need any payment apps. Cash and cards work just fine and never run out of battery power.
There’s no way I would ever connect my phone to a modern car with anything other than an aux cable or a bluetooth adapter that plugs into the headphone jack. They gather up all the data they can an do who knows what with it.
The US is not the world though. That’s something Americans need to learn. And having a solution for a single country does not work in the long run for that project. Not in the domain of OSes and phones. Either it’s universal, or it’s doomed to be a niche thing.
The only people that don’t use tap to pay in my area are grannies. And you do seem very old school since the last time I saw an aux cable was 10 years ago.
Are they must haves? I don’t use tap to pay, pretty useless feature for me.
Cars? I don’t want or need android auto. Bluetooth is the only thing I care about.
Navigation on the device is good enough for me, it doesnt need to use the screen.
I have no interest in mobile banking, but that could be an issue if people are used to sending money to each other instantly via a bank app.
Absolutely must haves for me personally, I use each probably daily. I don’t carry any cards with me and exclusively use tap to pay.
Tap to pay is a choice, with a viable alternative.
You could choose to NOT use tap to pay, carry a bank card, and it would have basically no impact on your ability to conduct your life.
But I agree the banking app itself is a big problem, and something that cannot be lived without.
It is a choice, but one that I find important to adopting an alternate. I keep my wallet slim on purpose. Telling people their choices are wrong because you don’t agree with them is not going to get widespread adoption which is important for the long term health and success of such a ambitious project.
Not to berate you but this is a bit of a Linux-pilled response.
Tap to pay and Android auto are conveniences that are of importance to a lot of people. Not everyone chooses to use it, but losing those features will mean Linux phones will exclude a significant proportion of the population that would otherwise be open to using them.
Cards are inconvenient
You can also choose NOT to have a phone at all… Or a bank account.
Just because you personally don’t find something needed doesn’t mean it’s true for others.
If you actually see what needs each country has for phones (by law), and also what needs normal users have, you would change your mind. It’s not just about one user here, one user there that doesn’t need these features, but the whole. I have an e/OS Murena phone (very private foss android fork) for example that I can’t use here in Greece because it doesn’t do banking (the bank app doesn’t work). Additionally, here in Greece we need gov apps (e.g. to get prescriptions, and to not have our ID with us all the time). These don’t run on “foss” versions of android (let alone clear linux OSs).
Yeah that would make me pretty damn angry. What about people who don’t have phones at all, what are they supposed to do?
No country should require the technology of 2 monopolies by law.
Navigating on a 6" screen is pretty annoying after getting used to the larger one.
“must-have” is subjective.
Yes these things are required to achieve wide spread adoption but I personally could do without them.
widespread adoption means you can get things like contributors who will then work on optimising battery life and other fundamentals.
Sure, but I feel like most people in this thread are evaluating what devices are viable for their own personal use right now.
Widespread adoption would be great, but I’m not evaluating whether a device is presently viable for widespread adoption.
I think problem number 1 might be solvable if GNU Taler succeeds in europe as the digital euro backend. https://taler.net/
Of course this would only apply to people in the EU, but who knows, others might follow.
Never heard of it. I’m not from Switzerland, but what is this exatly and how can I support it?
Switzerland has GNU Taler. They launched it there a few months ago, lucky for you. Check its website: https://taler-ops.ch/de/
You just kind of need to wait for merchants to use it. Could become mainstream somewhere around 2028.
From wikipedia:
GNU Taler is a free software-based microtransaction and electronic payment system. Unlike most other decentralized payment systems, GNU Taler does not use a blockchain. A blind signature is used to protect the privacy of users as it prevents the exchange from knowing which coin it signed for which customer.
The wallet is like cryptocurrency wallets in that when you lose it (lose your cryptographic keys or phone), you lose all the money inside of it. So you must keep it safe like your own physical wallet. It works with NFC, so it can replace Google Pay or Apple Pay or whatever.
It also works offline, which is awesome. Though you do need to be online sometimes to refresh your digital money or they expire and become unspendable. The expiry is set by the GNU Taler operator.
Do keep in mind that receivers are NOT anonymous. Only senders are anonymous. This is by design and is there to apply tax to merchants and also combat fraud, etc.
You can learn how it works by reading their docs: https://docs.taler.net/
The FAQ is also a good thing to read: https://www.taler.net/en/faq.html
Is this similar to Wero as a back end or different parts of the process?
Don’t want or need any of those things you mention. I want a phone, I want to be able to send messages, I want GPS and a camera. Good battery life, wifi and enough memory and storage… And then privacy…
Same. Has that been solved yet?
Vollaphone with Ubuntu touch can do that.
I thought Ububtu Touch was abandoned?
XL device
Ugh, nope. I want something small
It didn’t die but interest really died down. It’s still based on 20.04 if that’s any indicator and was on 16.04 before that.
It’s an interesting discussion to witness in these posts: convenience vs privacy and control.
The convenience and integration you get with commercial products like IOS or Android comes at a price. Everything that matters to you on a daily basis bundled together in one convenient package means that all things which define you as a person are conveniently interconnected for corporations to sell out your data for everyone who wants it.
GPS: your current whereabouts at any moment in time and a complete history of where you have been in the past
Payment functions: what you are buying and where you have bought it
Communication (Messengers, Phone): Who you communicate with and what you are talking about
Photos and Videos: Real life evidence from all the stuff mentioned above.
Web Browsing: Interests and Needs which will be used against you in a totalitarian surveillance state, at a glance
If you in 2025 still think this convenience is there to please you as a consumer I have bad news for you.
Convenience and interconnection of services look nice and useful but at the same time they’re a privacy nightmare that makes Orwell’s 1984 look like a bedtime story for children.
What this all comes down to: Strictly airgapping the boundaries between the different services is the only way to have a modicum of privacy. Photos do not belong in a cloud controlled by someone you don’t know and should be taken from a separate device. Navigation belongs on a separate device with no internet connection, payment should not be done with a personal identifier at all (if avoidable) etc. Living your life this way might seem terribly inconvenient, but as someone who was alive at a time where all this convenience didn’t exist I can tell you it has its advantages too. You’ll rediscover what really matters.
That’s a bit extreme. Some of those are not linked.
Yes you can not have cloud pictures without having to trust the server. But you can have an open source, inspected system that uses gps without any related data being shared. Gps doesn’t send data, it’s the system choice to create a way to send it to someone. You can have a Linux phone that doesn’t chose to do that.
You can have convenience with privacy, but the companies offering those services don’t want that, nor do the consumers care.
And those consumers would not care about a Linux phone.
i, too, was alive at a time when all this convenience didn’t exist but a large part of the world has moved on with forcing privacy nightmares.
some of these “conveniences” are requirements for people. i keep a lot of my personal digital activities isolated (offline gps, minimal invasive app usage on my phone, custom ROM, blah blah) but when i have to travel for work, i am required by the company to use ride sharing (relies on gps), commercial messengers, and other invasive commercial apps (that rely on phone based payment systems). typically i pick up a stock android phone and a pay as you go plan for this to use as a “burner”, using false information where possible.
sure i guess i could quit my job and go hang potatoes in somebody’s garage for $0.13 USD per year but i’ve made my bargain with the devil.
the lines between privacy and convenience are fuzzy and ever moving. it’s best to approach this with a bit of threat modeling first. figure out what you’re actually worried about and what you can tolerate, then decide how much convenience you’re willing to suffer.
I think some of this data is stuff im fine to share with some caveats. I think we can have a world of convenience and a world where people have a decent level of privacy. Of course there will always be tradeoffs but we can find a sane middle ground because at the moment its 0 privacy.
GPS data can be shared while im using a map to navigate and They must not “know who I am”. I am ok to be a datapoint but I dont like when they build a personal profile with this information.
Payments are fine if its my bank and they never sell that info.
Communication must be encrypted and I do not want them knowing who I am talking to.
Photo and video thats private should be encrypted but anything posted public is public. I would use cloud storage but it needs to be encrypted.
Web browsing I dont mind if the site tracks what I do on the site but it must only be stuff I do on site and not build a profile using my off site data.
I switched to GrapheneOS like 4 years ago and at first I was bummed that I could no longer tap my phone to pay. But it’s fine. I still go out with my wallet in my pocket, so it’s no problem to just tap my bank card really… I’ll take privacy over convenience thanks
I havent taken my wallet with me in years. I prefer tap to pay as it is more secure than a physical card which can get lost or stolen.
Hahahahahaha. No.
This is the most unhelpful kind of comment where you basically shame someone for having preferences. Why people feel the need to make their callousness public instead of just shutting up, I never know.
Security can be measured objectively. It’s important to call out misinformation.
How is a disposable token locked behind passwords and/or biometrics, remotely erasable, unique between each vendor a transaction takes place in inferior to……a string of unchanging digits in a physical card?
You didn’t “call out misinformation.” You laughed at a differing opinion. That’s not an argument. That’s a noise.
Seriously, the Linux community has tons of helpful, super smart people, but mixed in with them are these obnoxious snobs like you that just embarrass the rest of us.
Because phone passwords are usually short and biometrics are public knowledge (usernames, not passwords)
You have a trade off between security and convenience. Phones are devices made for convenience. They are insecure, by design.
So better to have NO passwords or biometrics at all then? Your argument doesn’t make sense.
Security is fundamentally subjective because whatever objective calculus you use will always depend on the threat model at hand, and everyone’s threat model is different, i.e. subjective. I’ve personally lost a physical credit card but never had my card details stolen in 10+ years of using payment apps.
Eh, both are about the same level of security, as long as you take the correct actions.
Lose a card? Freeze/Deactivate it and call your bank.
Lose your phone? Use Google/Apple/FindMyDevice (Degoogled) to either find it, or nuke whatever data you had on your phone (hopefully you made backups).
1 - tap to pay
I still don’t see why phone-based tap-to-pay is even a good thing. What, I should hand over all my financial credentials to Google or Apple or Microsoft in addition to my bank? I think not. I’ll just keep using a physical card, thank you. (Which, by the way, can often still use tap-to-pay as most modern cards have RFID chips embedded. No different than with your phone, except it’s not tied to one of the big oligarchs, even less so if you use a credit union as opposed to a bank.)
2 - android auto/apple CarPlay emulation
Bog-standard bluetooth is more than enough for me.
3 - voice assistants
Why would I need a voice assistant? I can find out information almost as easily just using a search engine. And if I’m driving, I’m not so busy as to be unable to pull over to the side of the road if I absolutely need to check something. Or, you know, get everything ready before I go. At the further risk of yelling at clouds despite my relatively young age (I’m in my early 30s), I think voice assistants and IoT things are largely just fluff that over-complicate things in a world that is already over-complicated.
1 - you arent. You dont need to. They have it other ways. Tap to pay is done on device with a revokable token. If the device is stolen, the token can’t be easily accessed and can be remotely wiped at any time, unlike a stolen card which you have to call in to disable and even that doesn’t always go over well. 2 - Bluetooth doesn’t give me maps or a UI to access my music, podcasts, etc. 3 - feature parity wins people over. You aren’t going to bring people in to the ecosystem by selling on having less. You can sell on mandating less, but opening with “here are the things a Linux phones CANT do” will never get this off the ground.
That’s the problem. The things you think “people” need is what they already have and it can’t be different. “I want to trust everything on a company online but I want my data to be private and safe.” You have to choose. For those people who think they “need” what you say, they already have apple and Google.
Just like Linux was never meant to replicate windows “features” like cortana and others, and it didn’t, and it works for those who don’t want those things which is why they want Linux.
The requirements for Linux to have your “needs” would make me not want it, and then it would just be a poor version of apple without the trillions of dollars that come with it. It wouldn’t please either side.
The things open source people care will always be a minority. It’s sad but it’s the reality.
The requirements for Linux to have your “needs” would make me not want it,
This is a ridiculous thing to say about something as frivolous and nonmandatory as NFC tap to pay & being able to use a Maps app in your cars dash.
It’s not the existence of the option. It’s the requirements it brings.
Which companies will this phone need to shake hands for that to work? What price will they have to pay? What risks does it bring to my privacy on that phone? What requirements will they have? Banks, car companies, credit card companies etc are not the kind of company I want to see involved in my system.
If magically you can have those agreements without any risk for me, then I’m happy with it. But it’s impossible. You want a different product than mine with those needs.
I need freedom and trust in my system and I would like convenience. You need convenience and would like freedom and trust. It’s a matter of how much you have to sacrifice of one to get the other. It’s a personal choice.
For example, even before Android shitified itself, tap to pay wouldn’t work if you have root or most custom roms. Is it the price I have to pay for your option? Limit how I can use my phone so that Banks can trust it? Imagine if I couldn’t use sudo on Linux because someone wants to bend over to a bank?
I would look for a different system.
Do you own a bank account? A credit card? A car?
Your requests aren’t interoperable with the daily life in 2025. Your incredibly niche requirements instead ensures that the general public cannot have access to a usable reasonably private OS outside the hands of corporations.
If you want these requirements you can rip the code out yourself and load it as a custom ROM, stop being anti progress for things as frivolous and solvable as this.
Not that I own all these, but what do they have to do with my phone? I don’t see any connection to those except where I wanted to create it.
I’m not stopping you from wanting your apple/Linux phone. Or anyone from making it. I’m just saying that I believe that my interests are similar to a lot of people who care about open source, and therefore:
-The people who care about open source will not support that enough to be successfull (currently, as more people keep saying stuff like “I just can’t live without this convenience” it might change).
-The people who care about those conveniences that much don’t care about open source, privacy or freedom, and they won’t support it either. They will only support it if it’s even more convenient and lazy, and for that the apple/Linux phone would have to be even more evil than the current options.
So in my mind it’s a dead end, and I personally I don’t support it. But go for it! And I do believe that over times those conveniences will be seen more and more as needs and soon we might have a Linux phone I wouldn’t want to use. But good for those who want it.
BUT just to be clear, I desperately want a Linux phone, yes! But my concerns are stuff like: does the hardware work well? does the camera work well? Does the GPS work well? What about signal with the telecoms? Battery lifre? You know, mostly hardware related with the software.
Tap to pay, car play, siri, all those things can be on the list, but way down on the bottom.
I feel like you’re conflating some things here. Tap to pay is more private and secure than a bank card, and is more private than most cryptocurrencies. Cash is obviously better, but it is increasingly looking like it might be phased out of some places eventually (I really hope not, but is a legitimate concern). However, you are right that it’s not open source and relies on trusting big companies that don’t like user freedom.
So I would say that some of the people using tap to pay don’t necessarily not care about privacy more than convenience. Some of them just want to be able to use money in places where cash is dying out.
I don’t use tap to pay personally.
Bluetooth works fine (or should work fine) with music, podcasts etc. I do it now with a phone, it’s a standard I don’t see why a mobile device running Linux would be any different.
As for maps, the voice goes over Bluetooth so I don’t see an issue there either.
You can’t choose a specific playlist or album over Bluetooth via the head unit is what they were saying. And with the maps some people don’t like to have the voice on and prefer to actually be able to glance at a map when needed, on the head unit.
True, but then again I dont want to mess with any screen while I am driving. I line up a couple of podcasts or episodes and that is several hours right there. Or stream from my server, and just line up what i want. I can still skip fast forward change tracks, and I don’t see why, on a linux phone, I couldnt make the blue tooth inputs do more if I mapped them that way.
It’s just good in those moments where things have fucked up for some reason and you can either quickly stop at the side and easily deal with it on the head unit or if there’s no traffic around you can slow down and touch the buttons you need to bit by bit while keeping an eye on the road. Or, even better, if you have a co-driver they can sort it for you on a screen that both you and them are able to deal with.
Its funny, because that is my experience with carplay, but not my devices.
Car play fucks up. One of the reasons I don’t want it.
I just want a touchscreen cast. Is that too much to ask?
Touch screen cast would be awesome too. I’d love for there to either be that or an open android auto/car play standard. The former would probably be easier and I imagine some aftermarket head units have that functionality already.
I’ve actually wanted to DIY a head unit at some point and getting a good satnav experience on it would be key to it being a daily DRIVER.
vocal map instructions suck and always will
I noticed that googles is horrendously bad. The open source stuff is ok.
the open source options (that I found) lack hours and public transit maps
Not for nothing, tapping to pay with phone is not the same as using the physical card to tap to pay. In the former case, your actual card info is not transmitted.
Tap to pay with the phone is also much smoother because it emits the NFC signal vs the card which is just inlayed in the card via the chip.
Much smoother process.
The former you said? So phones tap to pay are more private in principle?
Arguably, yes. When you pay with one of the phone wallet options, you transmit a unique set of info, like a verification token or 2FA token for example, which your banking service confirms is valid for your card and the transaction goes through. But the vendor never receives your real card info.
And since a card cannot transmit a unique token every time (because it’s static), it has to include real card info? (Although theoretically it could suffice with limited info as well, I’d imagine. As long as the info gets confirmed by banking service as valid)
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I already don’t have any of those things on my de-googled android. I’m used to it. Sure, they would be nice, but it’s not a dealbreaker that I have to tap a card instead of my phone, or use Bluetooth instead of carplay, or type on my phone instead of talking to it.
The only thing I was missing without Google was push notifications. And that works out of the box on my /e/ OS FP5. It provides the same API as GSF, but with a different, anonymous push service. I doubt that there will ever be a workaround for Google Pay, because you need the intersection of a well-known company and low level device integration for that to work. And as you say, it’s not a big deal. The Graphene OS guys were pretty smug for a long while about how superior their sandboxed-GSF approach is, but look how that worked out for them. MicroG was always the right idea and if it can’t be done with MicroG it isn’t worth doing (on Android).
Seeing where desktop Linux was just less than 10 years ago and where it is now gives me optimism for mobile Linux. But I suspect the overlap between developers and users of those 3 features is pretty small, so they might be a ways out.
I was about to suggest getting a head unit that isn’t tied down to CarPlay or Android Auto, but then I realized I drive a really old car from the days you’d easily take out the faceplate or the whole unit to deter theft.
Yea, modern vehicles tie a lot of things into the head unit and they just aren’t possible by going third party. But using the CarPlay/AA feature could be a way to bring similar choice to a system that is otherwise locked-in
As a long-time Linux user I can’t say I’ve noticed big changes in the last 10 years… Maybe I’m forgetting, but when I first used Linux on a desktop I had to compile drivers from source to have working graphics acceleration and WiFi. Things have come a long way since then, but by 2015 I feel like those big things were all sorted. There are still many small things but I think most of those are unchanged, too.
Actually I don’t need any of those things you mention. It may be a mistake to assume that Linux phones should imitate Google/Apple phones.
Obviously this is subjective, but I use android auto all the time and something similar for a linux phone would be really nice for me. Don’t dismiss them just cause you wouldn’t use them
My thoughts exactly reading this list. I don’t use any of those as-is and have zero interest. I do agree Linux phones seem a bit behind at the moment, but as soon as they’re on par with say GrapheneOS, then we’re golden.
It’s not that I want an imitation, but I do want certain functionalities to be available
Dunno. GPS and map apps seems pretty important for something more mobile than a laptop.
Doesn’t GPS work on Linux phones? As for map apps, OpenStreetMaps based apps are free and more acurate than google (atleast in my region), the only thing that might be lacking is realtime traffic information.
Is there an osmand app for Linux?
Not directly, here’s what we have:
https://linuxphoneapps.org/categories/maps-and-navigation/
Of these, at least PureMaps does turn-by-turn - as a no-car-person that last drove in meaningful way when paper maps where a thing, I am the wrong person to ask about car navigation stuff.
Additionally, there’s the OrganicMaps desktop flatpak (not a great experience, only good for seeing where you are) and zooming around. Fortunately, a work on a mobile-friendly Kirigami app for OrganicMaps has been funded by nlnet.
Also, runnning some web Maps in a browser (e.g., via https://linuxphoneapps.org/apps/dev.heppen.webapps/) is always an option (e.g., for browsing Google Maps for an open restaurant nearby).
One of the most useful things about OSMAnd to me is the Brouter integration for bike routes, so it would be great to see this as an option for Linux
@sudoer777 @1peter10 , but they can’t seem to keep the bots off it.
That’s about the connection to Car Play, not GPS
Same. Never use these things on Android.
Whatever you personally think about these features, you’ll never convince the general public to do without them. We need widespread linux phone adoption as table stakes to affect our mobile world.
Awwww man, why would you rebuke my argument before I even make it?
Are the echos in the chamber that predictable?
Everyone here just saying “oh I don’t use that therefore no one needs it and should just lose it and switch to a Linux distro” is not helping anyone. This person told us their requirements to switch. How hard is that to understand for anyone. They also told us the requirements of most of the population. This concept should not be so hard to understand. Everyone has features they need in certain products. Some people don’t care how headphones sound they just care that they make sound others are really picky audiophles. It’s all preference
Who said that? There is a lot of comments saying “I dont use those features maybe i should switch” but I dont see a single comment telling others to switch.
huh? which linux phone got useful since you’d stop looking? I run pmOS edge on competent hardware with lotsa RAM and fast storage and that thing isn’t even close to being usable in everyday life.
just basic stuff, like turn it on and it works. the keyboard works. an intuitive UI that you use while walking and dodging other pedestrians. a rock-solid base that doesn’t freeze and stutter with the menial-est of tasks.
the three things you mention couldn’t be farther from my mind if I wanted to.
Fairphone, FLX1, and jolla phones are supposed to be acceptable. They aren’t flagships but they are fine.
My experience too with Linux on phones so far. Really, really want freedom of choice and to be free from Android. It isn’t a real choice if I want a social life and a phone that isn’t a brick.
Someone did do some work on reimplementing the Android Auto Client Server API.
Just needs time and interest.
God i wish I was smart enough to contribute to these things
It’s not too late, I have faith in you
Claude code can help
No it can’t. Why would someone maintaining a code base want to read and debug code submitted by someone else who didn’t even bother to write it, especially if I’m not already using Claude code or another vibe code generator.
By tap to pay, you mean things like Apple pay and Google pay? We don’t have that on degoogled androids, let alone on Linux phones…
But they are still incredibly useful. I do and will put up with a fully-googled phone just for that convenience.
do they come with a surcharge on every payment?
I’ve never seen a surcharge for tap to pay in the US. I’m not sure about elsewhere, but whether I’m tapping my car, my phone, or my watch I have never seen any surcharge from the retailer, my banks, or from Google.
ok that makes things better. Here its like a 1-3% surcharge at some shops while larger shops eat the cost.
We do occasionally see a small surcharge in the US when using a card, but that’s regardless of method (swipe, insert, or tap). Very small businesses will often charge 1-5% for any debit or credit purchase, and cash price is the listed price. But again, that’s not tap specific
Are those actually the only things you find lacking? If so that’s really good, practically the same as using LineageOS without any Google services.
I don’t use any of the stuff you mentioned and might have to consider Linux mobile as a daily driver if it’s that good. Especially if Google kills custom ROMs, it sounds like the people already running them would feel right at home switching to Linux mobile.
More importantly, how’s the app situation? Can people generally expect most of the desktop GTK or Qt apps they’re familiar with to be usable on a phone form factor? Is there a reliable way to run Android APKs on regular Linux now? At the very least F-droid apps?
Yes most native applications are responsive and adapt to mobile.
GTK has it built into it’s widgets. But some third party apps on GTK/QT may not adapt.
The capability is there though.
As someone who spent some time on the topic (result), it’s not that every new app is adaptive. Even if someone uses the nice new widgets of libadwaita (or previously libhandy (GTK3)), that app is not necessary running well on mobile if width-reqests demand a higher minimal width or content is just too wide.
The same is true for QtQuick Components or Kirigami, which are the equivalent for adaptive Qt apps.
That said, yes, many new apps developed with these technologies work fine OOTB without the developer even knowing; and if they are too wide or tall, fixing that is usually rather simple and not a full rewrite/redesign.
To answer your question about Android apps, there is an application called Waydroid that can run on Linux phones. This essentially emulates Android and you can install apps on there. Some Play Store apps require access to Google Play Services, and even though MicroG tries to emulate it without being as privacy invasive, it is not perfect and some apps won’t run well or even at all.
I only use it for a few things that do not have any way to access through a web browser.
Yes, you can even run android apps on Linux mobile using waydroid or something similar. So even if you need your stopgap android apps while waiting for Linux equivalents, waydroid has your back.
As for me, I plan on using PWAs as much as possible.
