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.

  • bobbyfiend@lemmy.ml
    4·
    7 hours ago

    This is awesome because I don’t want or need any of those things. If this is all that’s missing, I think I’m ready for a Linux phone when my android dies.

  • danhab99@programming.dev
    2·
    6 hours ago

    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.

    Of all the things that my phone is supposed to be able to do this is the one thing I never touch. It has never worked better for me than just doing it with my own two thumbs.

    Does anyone actually use their voice to control their phone (not voice typing)?

  • sudoer777@lemmy.mlEnglish
    3·
    7 hours ago

    I was wondering what everyone’s thoughts on these were:

    1. It doesn’t work on GrapheneOS either, so I got separate devices I carry with me that do the tap-to-pay instead, and they’ve been a godsend. They’re super compact as well and came for free when I opened the accounts.

    2. I don’t own a car, on ebike I use my screen.

    3. Normally I use my fingers. If they’re not available I yell cuss words at my phone until they’re available again.

  • pineapple@lemmy.mlEnglish
    1·
    6 hours ago

    This is pretty cool, the fact that you can run android apps on Waydroid is awesome. I might try POST-marketos on an old s9 I have lying around.

  • bent@feddit.dk
    3·
    12 hours ago

    Which phone did you find where these are the only problem you encountered? I don’t care about any of these things and haven’t been finding any usable Linux phones.

  • SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.caEnglish
    131·
    16 hours ago

    tap to pay, voice assistants, carplay…everything I hate about modern phones. Don’t threaten me with a good time, Linux.

    • witness_me@lemmy.ml
      2·
      14 hours ago

      You may not like tap to pay or CarPlay but I and a lot of others do.

      It’s a deal breaker for me to not have these two features in a product I’d like to spend hard earned money on.

    • altphoto@lemmy.today
      1·
      13 hours ago

      But those features are not OS implementation issues. They are simply hardware driver issues.

  • irotsoma@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    4·
    13 hours ago

    RCS text messaging is another to consider, at least in the US. The carriers implanted it in a proprietary way, so only Apple and Google apps have it. It’s a poor substitute for an IM/chat app and not private and secure like it was promised due to poor implementations, but it’s still far better than plain SMS. I still have people I can’t get to use Signal or another secure IM app.

    The Android Auto is the only one I’d be sad about. I love not having to use my phone’s screen for navigation and the navigation built into most cars is crap and expensive to keep maps and data updated. I like being able to use any navigation app, though Google Maps/Waze is still the only one I’ve found that has both live traffic info, which is extremely important with my city, and reading the street names rather than just “turn left” it says “turn left on some street” so I don’t have to look at the screen as much.

    I use GrapheneOS and that’s what I won’t be able to replace once I finish my Immich and Home Assistant self host setups to replace Google Photos and Google Home/Nest, but st least they are sandboxed a bit.

    Though Google has been moving to make it even more difficult to use their apps on these alternate OSes. Like I just found that Google Photos latest version pops up a not closeable error screen if it doesn’t have full “photos and video” access. Doesn’t work with the limited access or storage scopes that come with GrapheneOS, at least for now. I have photos I don’t want google to scan and index even if they are not being uploaded, which they do now. It’s obviously a ploy to get access to your data since it used to work fine. Now, I just use the mobile website instead until I have time to get Immich totally working and get people to switch if they want to see my stuff or share with me.

    • sudoer777@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1·
      7 hours ago

      I think JMP.chat supports RCS, and it lets you text through Cheogram or another XMPP client. I believe it also upgrades the connection if both users are using Cheogram similar to Signal when it supported SMS

  • utopiah@lemmy.ml
    3·
    12 hours ago

    I fallback to a deGoogled phone precisely because Linux phone isn’t up to my expectation in terms of convenience for now.

    You can check my post history but just during the last few days :

    … so yes, not there yet

    PS: on “assistant” (I really think the naming is over-blowing capabilities) I have been using HomeAssistant daily for years now. I have a Nabu Casu on my shelf… and didn’t even set it up because it was either 3rd party service dependencies (not why I rely on HA) or a very complex setup. So… I would recommend not looking there, at least few months ago when I received mine, sadly.

  • buddascrayon@lemmy.world
    31·
    14 hours ago

    google is forcing Gemini into everything and you can’t turn it off,

    You can still shut off Gemini as of right now. I don’t know what it’ll be like in the future though.

  • bitjunkie@lemmy.world
    21·
    12 hours ago

    “Damn near usable day to day” - what I’ve been hearing about Linux since the beginning of time

    • procapra@lemmy.ml
      2·
      9 hours ago

      Maybe not true for phones, but the linux desktop IS usable day to day, and I’d say this has been true for atleast the last 5 years. KDE and GNOME are both fully fledged desktops, and with the popularity of snaps and flatpaks there isn’t really alot getting in the way of software installation either. Even wine/proton has come so far I don’t see the “linux bad for gaming” as an actual excuse anymore.

      I started using linux exclusively on desktop in 2021 and I’m not any kind of programmer or anything, just a regular user. :)

  • DarkSideOfTheMoon@lemmy.world
    1·
    16 hours ago

    Android is open source, or big part of it. If Android auto part is open source (I am not sure), someone could in theory muse this to have car mirroring. I think it’s a very useful feature that no one is forced to use. I don’t see why some people are against it in the comments

  • Dharma Curious@startrek.website
    9·
    1 day ago

    Help a non-techy out. I’ve fully switched my computers to Linux (fedora workstation, silver blue, and ubuntu). Been Linux only for several years now. Silverblue is probably my favorite. I’m willing to make the switch for my phone, too. But there are a few things I’m pretty reliant on:

    My banking apps, cash app, and, embarrassing as it may be to admit, Grindr.

    Any chance of getting those?

    • muusemuuse@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
      4·
      20 hours ago

      Baking apps: pin the websites Grindr: use waydroid or switch to sniffies Cash App: oof, I don’t know if waydroid will be enough for this one.

      • utopiah@lemmy.ml
        1·
        12 hours ago

        Baking apps: pin the websites

        Typically if you want to check your account status sure, that work. Maybe do an IBAN transfer, if somehow 2nd step auth via their app isn’t required, but typically mobile payment, even if it’s not really mobile (e.g. scanning a QRcode on a desktop) requires their app. So in theory yes, in practice for most of the things people use banking daily it’s closer to mobile payment IMHO, which is basically owned by iOS/Android AFAICT.

      • Dharma Curious@startrek.website
        2·
        15 hours ago

        I’ve honestly never considered using my bank through a mobile browser. Yeah, it I can do that I’d be fine on that front.

        Sniffies is completely dead here, and the dudes that are on it are gross. Grindr isn’t much better, but since everyone’s on it you can occasionally find people who are willing to use protection or hosting someone other than some bushes. I’ll try way droid and see if it works. If it doesn’t, I googled it and it says you can use Grindr from desktop if you pay… I may end up having to do that if I made the switch.

        Which leaves cash app as the biggie. I’ll try waydroid, but if it doesn’t work I’ll probably end up needing to keep android or switching to iOS (I hate iPhones:( ), or maybe even getting a second phone I use exclusively for cash app. No sim, just my wifi hotspot (can you do a wifi hotspot with a Linux phone yet?). In order to prevent overdrafts and accidental charges, I never spend directly from my bank account. I transfer exactly what I’ll need for each purchase to cash app before the transaction and shop like that. Keeps me aware, and no accidental charges or surprises.

    • cyberwolfie@lemmy.ml
      7·
      1 day ago

      You can run Android apps on a Linux phone via Waydroid, but banking apps could be an issue if they force these Google intrgrity checks. Grindr probably does not?

      Anyway, you should be able to fire up Waydroid on your Linux desktop and test this beforehand. I have never done this myself, so I might have misunderstood something.

      • sudoer777@lemmy.mlEnglish
        2·
        7 hours ago

        Grindr doesn’t even work on GrapheneOS, it’s security checks are insane. I tried the modded Grindr app and they instantly banned my account, so I decided the app isn’t worth my time.