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submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works to c/linux@lemmy.ml

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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[-] irotsoma@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 1 month 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.

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[-] thevoidzero@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

The android auto equivalent for cars would be something I'd be interested in, that's the only reason I had to reenable google on my phone. I don't see any open source software that do it.

[-] mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 month ago

True, but getting a dash-mounted phone holder isn't that different

[-] quick_snail@feddit.nl 4 points 1 month ago

I need none of that. Can I run OsmAnd?

[-] bent@feddit.dk 4 points 1 month 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.

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[-] umbrella@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 month ago

the other two can be worked on. but point 1 is the entire reason we can't use degoogled android, which is imo almost as good as gnu/linux on a phone.

to expand on point 1: many governments and companies are now locking their services away inside squeamish proprietary apps that won't run at the tiniest sign of something they don't like. i used to have health insurance that didn't let me use their app if i had even the "developer options" enabled.

[-] buddascrayon@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month 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.

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this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2025
301 points (98.1% liked)

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