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Ask Slashdot: Are There Any Alternatives To Android Or iOS?
An anonymous Slashdot reader is asking whether or not there are any alternatives to Android or iOS smartphones: Like most of us, I've owned a few smartphones over time, ranging from a Nokia E71 to a Samsung Android phone and now, an Apple iPhone. It is close to phone upgrade time, and I've been reviewing the features that I use on my phone. When I think honestly about it, the only features I really need are:
1. Phone calls (loads of conference calls, for which I use a wired headset with a microphone)
2. SMS Messaging (unlimited on my plan)
3. Navigation (very important, and is probably the most-used app on my phone)
4. Occasional internet browsing
All of this could be done by the Nokia E71, when Nokia Maps was a thing. If I want to move away from Apple, Google and the like, do I have any options now? Are there any trustable (and by trustable, I mean avoiding unknown Chinese manufacturers) phones in the market today that could do all four and (ideally) have better battery life than one day?
1. Phone calls (loads of conference calls, for which I use a wired headset with a microphone)
2. SMS Messaging (unlimited on my plan)
3. Navigation (very important, and is probably the most-used app on my phone)
4. Occasional internet browsing
All of this could be done by the Nokia E71, when Nokia Maps was a thing. If I want to move away from Apple, Google and the like, do I have any options now? Are there any trustable (and by trustable, I mean avoiding unknown Chinese manufacturers) phones in the market today that could do all four and (ideally) have better battery life than one day?
No, there are no good alternatives.
Have you read my blog lately?
Back in the day people had personal servants. No IOS or Android were needed.
You could probably snag a Nokia Lumia from target or amazon or something and save several hundred dollars; provided those are actual needs.
Windows phone... ho you asked for a good alternative !
Well, if youâ(TM)re doing the navigation while in driving, then you can have your phone charging.
If youâ(TM)re really on the move for long hours, then your best bet is carrying a power bank with you.
On a different note, I have to ask: so to you social networking, online messaging and games carry little importance on a smartphone?
coma much ?
Tizen. Samsung Z2/Z3 you can get one on Amazon. They don't have a large amount of apps, but they have all of the things you really need.
Happy owner of a WinPhone here. Dated, sure. Fewer apps, sure. But compared to the iOS and Android phones I'm helping other people with on a daily basis, I find it easier to use. But I may be biased... by my better phone.
Blackberries still work. And during the SONY hack, Blackberries were the fallback!
OSMAnd on Android allows offline navigation, GPS track recording, waypoint management, etc. It's a little quirky, but for a free app, it's damn useful. It's the only reason to have a mobile "device" (sorry, we're not allowed to consider them to be "computers")
As for the OS, try your hand and building a custom version of Android on a phone that allows such a thing.
Ubuntu Touch/Mobile failed, Microsoft is closing shop on Windows 10 Mobile.
Honestly your best bet would be a phone that you can root, and put a stripped-down custom Android ROM on it. You don't need to connect to any Google Play services to get all the basics. At least that way you get to pick your configuration and keep it minimal.
First, ask yourself why you really need to go to a phone that will be less supported, less well-debugged, less secure. Do you really need that special use case that rarely if ever comes up? Do you have the energy / time to maintain a phone like that to the same standards (and if not, are you just implicitly deciding not to)?
Sometimes, don't you just want a phone that may not do absolutely everything, but otherwise generally just works? Aren't you old enough to not need to put up with half-assed shit any more?
... a book.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
I think it officially died in April (http://www.techradar.com/news/canonicals-dream-for-an-ubuntu-phone-is-dead) but it was an option.
Sailfish by Jolla, on either the Sony Xperia or any of a number of other phones as aftermarket.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
I've never been that impressed with the experience provided by these multibillion dollar corporations.
Despite all is their resources, they mostly deliver lipstick on a pig. With a custom ROM, at least it's mostly MY pig.
All we have left are shitty android and crappy iOS. They are both complete garbage and created by retards.
I may get a flip phone next or just cancel my phone plan completely.
The whole mobile situation is a sad joke.
Any cheapo windows phone will do all that just fine. The built-in map app is great for navigation, even without internet.
Provided you load up The Garmin APP, and get the maps from OpenStreetMaps, and OperaMini
More seriously though, the market has spoken, and there are only three platforms:
iOS 18% Installed base.
Google's Android with PlayStore/Services 55%
AOSP (Android Open Source Ports) 27%
the rest of the platforms (WindowsPhone10, BlackBerry's BB10, WebOS, Bada) are pretty much roundng errors.
WP10 will be supported (including security patches) until 2020. BB10 will be "zombie supported" (no mention of security patches) until 2020 as well. The other two, I do not know.
So, pick your poison wisely; for there is pretty much no escape.
But, if you are hellbent on not being on neither iOS, nor any flavour of Android, then, for your specific use case, I'd bet either on Bada (Samsung has big pockets to keep the platform going for a while), or a "Smarther than a featurephone, but dumber thn a smartphone" asha-type phone from HMD (the owners of the Nokia brand).
PS: My last four phones were a Nokia E71 like you (which I still keep around as my Garmin), then a Nokia N9, then a Blackberry Q10, then a Blackberry keyONE (android, current one), but I had a mobile phone in some capacity since 1996 (Motorola AMPS, then ericsson AMPS, then Sony AMPS, then nokia 6119, then nokia 7110, then Ericsson-Symbian-but-I-forget-cause-I-was-mugged, then Nokia 7250i, then some no-name huawei). So I kinda speak from experience.
*** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
Get a dumb phone and a map.
Today, we either get the malware infested chaos of Android, or the closed garden of Apple. We used to have choices...
Before I picked up my current phone, I looked at a (slightly used) Nokia 808 Pureview. I wanted decent sized screen, a phone, messaging, and a great camera with flash, and with the ability to get info from/to my computer. A decent browser would be nice to use in place of some apps (in the case of the 808). That was pretty much it.
In the end, even the Carl Zeiss lens with a 41 megapixel camera could not get me to leave the current hardware.
I might not have the perfect phone for me, but it works, can be fixed, is up to date for security and can get info to/from my computer. Just because the phone has additional functionality, doesn't mean I have to use it.
Procrastination; I'll think of a sig tomorrow.
Comparison of mobile operating systems
If you can wait a little bit, there will be Librem 5
ubports and Sailfish are probably your best bets if you want to flash a custom firmware to a small base of supported handsets.
Windows Phone is dead (arguable whether it is a good alternative). Samsung was working on a clean-sheet mobile OS, but hasn't launched anything with it as far as I know.
Mobile devices have become virtually indistinguishable from each other within the phone and tablet categories other than OS and screen size. I gave up on getting a new smartphone because nothing has a hardware keyboard anymore... everything is a super-thin slab of touchscreen-only monotony packed with inevitably over-spec'd hardware driving a new upgrade-go-round... no one needs 4K display or 25MP camera on these things.
I know this is technically Android, but I think the spirit of the question is about moving away from Google- or Apple-controlled software.
Have you ever thought of getting, say, a Google-made phone and installing some kind of open-source ROM such as this one? (Only one that comes to mind right now.) You can install the software you need, and have a phone that is completely decoupled from Google services. Even the browser (chromium) uses duckduckgo by default.
I'm in the same boat as the OP, trying to milk a bit more life out of a phone that is pretty much falling apart (Galaxy S II). I want to get away from Android, and refuse to be a walled-gardener with Apple.
Most promising lead I've found is Purism's Librem 5 phone, which is still a yearish out. Runs their flavor of Linux by default, but promises to be able to run pretty much any distro you want. Hardware kill switches for privacy concern things like webcam, WiFi, etc.
I don't own any Purism stuff currently, but it seems like they are doing things right. I'm hoping that the phone doesn't end up vaporware, but it seems like that it unlikely; they've got a range of several Linux-focused laptops released.
From there, I guess the question becomes what GPS navigation software options are available from Linux, since that was another primary listed requirement.
From what you're telling us, you have very modest requirements, albeit not quite modest enough to use a plain old candy bar phone.
Now as a non-tech geek, which is what this profile is screaming, why would you not want to go mainstream? iOS and Android is mainstream. They are readily available. There are tons of resources on how to use them. They have apps available should the need arise. Going out of mainstream is for early adopters, for tech geeks, for people with non-mainstream needs. There's a reason why Android and iOS dominate. THEY WORK FOR MOST PEOPLE.
You're a rare breed, using your smartphone primarily as a phone (!!!) and secondarily for other things.
[quote]1. Phone calls (loads of conference calls, for which I use a wired headset with a microphone)
2. SMS Messaging (unlimited on my plan)
3. Navigation (very important, and is probably the most-used app on my phone)
4. Occasional internet browsing[/quote]
GIven you're not using Signal, #1 and #2 can be handled by any cheap handset.
Navigation is a function of whose data you want to use. The most accurate data is provided by the companies that have spent the money to build the data and now want you in their ecosystem consuming it. That's Goole, Apple, and Microsoft. As an avid supporter of open source I would also bring up OpenStreetMap, but alas, it cannot compete with big money and complete datasets.
Internet browsing can be done on cheap handsets as well.
You say you work in the car with a wired headset. Use your car's nav system and get a cheap (aka Nokia) handset. It will remind you of how you used to do things back in the 1960s, and you won't be disappointed with all the modern features that scare you about IOS and Android.
Ehud
yeah yeah i know, laugh away. blackberry 10 is probably one of the best mobile OS i've come across. It's smooth, logical, and made for production. It all falls down on the app side. There are some, but not everything. You could probably get a leap for $100. Personally the passport while laughably shaped is a fantastic phone. If you truly use your phone for those 4 things (which is really what i also use it for) try a BB10 phone. I bet you'll be happy with it
1. Phone calls (loads of conference calls, for which I use a wired headset with a microphone)
2. SMS Messaging (unlimited on my plan)
Something like a better Nokia 3310 that can support calls, tethering.
3. Navigation (very important, and is probably the most-used app on my phone)
A portable GPS unit with free new map support.
4. Occasional internet browsing
A quality laptop using any OS you like.
No android or apple OS needed.
Buy real devices that support what is needed as part of their design.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
The internet is a cesspool, the big tech corps are vampires, and no, there is no anything that you can trust. The internet is over. Net neutrality is over. Sorry, but there it is.
... slashdotters will make up some shit that doesnâ(TM)t exist. Because it doesnâ(TM)t exist.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
Probably the most viable phone OS is Legacy OS, which is just an open source version of Android. You can install it, and provided you don't instal gapps, it is pretty secure. It also gives you complete control over your phone. Legacy OS + Fdroid gives you a FOSS solution that protects your privacy about as well as any OS for a tracking device can.
There is also the openmoko stack from a few years ago. If you can get your hands on a Neo FreeRunner, they are an acceptable phone. You'll be on your own for software though, as that project is effectively dead.
No matter what you do, you can't really trust a phone completely. The nature of the cell network means that any cellphone is a defacto tracking device. Your whereabouts are logged, and because you have shared them with a third party you have no expectation of privacy. They don't even require a warrant for law enforcement. Also, private citizens can simply purchase the location data from most providers. So keep that in mind. I carry a phone, but I am ready to stick it in a microwave and run from it at a moment's notice.
I am the penguin that codes in the night.
This person has given up the will to live. Someone call 911.
Librem 5 from purism is a linux phone in development. [1]
Sure, it's not shipping for another year, but the company has shipped plenty of (well-regarded) linux laptops, and even gone so far as to figure out how to shut off intel's AMT in their newer machines. [2]
[1] https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/
[2] https://puri.sm/learn/avoiding...
I really wished Microsoft would have pursued a phone that ran full, native Windows10. Unfortunately you're really confined to Android with it's daily vulnerabilities and stability issues or IOS with locked down handcuffs and proprietary formats.
Cable and DSL modems are a kind of "location" device, and are perfect for any MiTM attacks/surveillance.
There are a few options: UBports (Ubuntu for phones), Legacy OS (Android with a more open approach), second hand BlackBerry with their custom OS. Wait one more year and get the Libre phone and run a Linux distro on it.
is a Free/Net/OpenBSD-based mobile OS not tied to any of the current fiefdoms. This is possible, but unlikely due to the current mobile phone fiefdom alignment model. One buys a mobile phone, one aligns themselves to the walled-in garden of either Apple or Google duopoly. This has to change. There has to be a better paradigm.
CAPTCHA: expands
1) iOS/Android both have roboblockers. If you really value calls so much don't you want to avoid false ones?
1) If you do conference calls a lot, you WILL want the full range of possible conferencing apps - I have to do audio calls along with three (sometimes four) different types of video conference through a week.
1) Just get a real phone.
I left all the numbers the same as they all relate to calling.
2) Why not also be able to use any other messaging option that may become popular, like WhatsApp?
2) Get a real phone.
3) Why would you not want a ridiculous array of navigation apps, many with offline support?
3) Maybe you want different types of navigation, like hiking or biking support?
3) Again I point you to real phones for incredible versatility for all the things you say you want to do.
4) What happens when the only browser on your non-standard device is not working well on some particular site? Or maybe you want password management or autofill or some other feature?
4) You know what goes here.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Not yet, but there will be in 2019.
The Librem phone hits all of my requirements, and will be my next phone in 2019. It's not cheap, but its feature set is awesome. Some highlights (in no particular order):
1) Runs pure Linux, which allows for installing many standard Linux distributions.
2) Has hardware kill switches for the radio and microphone.
3) Encrypted calls between Librem phones.
4) No tracking.
There are other great features, too. It's the phone I've been waiting for since I first discovered smartphones.
Windows Phone 10 works great. I got one of the $200 Alcatel somethings from a Microsoft Store and it's really awesome. Great UI. I like that you can use it without a Windows ID at all. Mail is much better than the other two. Calendaring is good. Maps and GPS aren't bad, but I don't use them much. It has all of the basic "apps" you might need (Lyft and Uber for me).
I don't respond to AC's.
If you are looking for something modern, with latest specs, short answer - nope.
If it can be an older device, for known chinese manufacturers (because all phones are manufactured in China to a degree), your only bet is probably a Windows Phone... which has been discontinued and is currently in a limbo.
Other than that, Ubuntu Touch is dead, there are some few privacy minded mobile distros still out there, but most options will require you to: install the OS yourself, pre-order something that is still not out, have a hard time actually buying a phone, and/or perhaps trust a company that will probably be making their phone with an unknown chinese manufacturer anyways.
It's also worth noting that lots of companies tried to come up with either a hardened Android version for privacy, or a Linux distro that would run on a mobile device. It didn't work out too well, either because of technical limitations and speed smartphones are evolving, or for lack of costumers and support.
I wouldn't recommend going for any small company alternatives right now because long term support is definitely not guaranteed.
Since you have so little requirements, might as well delegate navigation and browsing to another device, and just buy a dumbphone.
In particular, I find your explicit description of your needs and implicit philosophy are highly simpatico. Alas, I think the answer is no, for religious reasons, as just proven by the tax "reform" legislation we [Americans] are in the process of receiving.
In a capitalist economy, there would be a number of competing options and we would have meaningful choice and freedom. The side effect of that competition might even drive meaningful improvements rather than the current insane defense of profit maximization. However, that should give you some hint as to what's wrong.
We don't have capitalism, which is even deader than communism. What we have now is corporate cancerism.
There is no gawd but Profit, and Apple is Profit's #1 prophet. Rounding out the top ten (according to Forbes for 2016) we have Gilead, the google, Exxon, and some huge gamblers. The gamblers are various kinds of too-big-to-fail financial institutions that gamble with OUR [the peasants'] money, pocketing the profits while relying on their captive governments to save them when they phuck up again. (Yeah, the Russians have it even worse.)
As it applies to your concrete question, you should count yourself lucky you still have too choices to "freely" pick from. One of these two cancers [Apple or the google] will ultimately swallow the other. My prediction is that Apple is more likely to make a fatal mistake, or perhaps just slump for a product or three and go down that way.
Or to reword it in long tweet form:
Trains on time? NO!
Planes on time? NO!
Make Rome great again? NO!
But #PresidentTweety got lots of "help" from #BolshevikRepublicans!
So they gave themselves a YUGE raise paid from the national DEBT!
There is no gawd but profit and Trump is NO prophet.
#TrumpStinks #PutinWins
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
A: Default: go with Apple
Q: Why?
A: Security, privacy. And you are not the product.
Q: But but but Apple locks down their phones so I can't spy on my girlfriend. And I don't know about Apple's open source software but I'll claim that they are evil and mumble open source mumble.
A: Too bad, iPhone is not made for people who want to spy on others.
Q: What about Android?
A: If you insist on an Android device, Google ones tend to be kept more up to date than others, so they can spy on you better. Good luck with that.
Q: I still want a different phone with more bugs, less support, and no numbers I'll ever use. I don't have any contacts whose phone numbers contain the number '3' so I insist on a phone that has no '3' on the keypad. I really don't want to be bogged down with extra stuff.
A: OK, whatever, man. Can't help you.
3000mah battery, big screen, only $120 at b&h photo right now.
Cheap phones, modern browser, simple interface, and low hardware requirements so itâ(TM)s fast. Ok store, ok security update pace and support and mostly open source. Itâ(TM)s the hyundai of phones. Mediocre but likable!
The best was and continues to be the blackberry z30. 5 years+ straight of continuous use and it never failed me, although every other smart phone as a backup has always fallen short.
There are a number of android based phones where you can replace the majority of code. The biggest problem is the baseband processor in each of these phones have a great deal of freedom in what it does and almost all of them have firmware which has not been audited/documented publically. Even if the company writing the baseband code has no intention of doing anything under-handed, they may still unintentionally produce code which allow for zero day exploits.
The last truly trustworthy phone was the OpenMoko with the OsmocomBB project code for the baseband. After 2012, I am not aware of any project to full document 100% of what the code on a phone does in a way that is easily available to the public to review.
a) being able to tell everyone who doesn't care that you're sticking it to the corporations by not having an Android or iOS device
b) having the best tool for the job.
You can do everything you ask on other devices sure, but it won't be as good.
Specifically mapping and navigation which you list as your most important requirement, you simply can not beat google maps for that, and you won't get that on some random non-android and non-ios device. Sure there are various other mapping options, but for most up to date, most accurate, and including real time traffic, accident reporting, road closures, etc? Not likely if you don't have Android or iOS.
Beyond that though, invariably you'll have to explain to someone at some point why you can't just do some simple thing that everyone else can do because your device doesn't support the app needed for it. Sure you'll think you're cool while saying it, but everyone around you will be rolling their eyes.
Phones these days are all about the apps, and if it's not Android, and it's not iOS, it simply doesn't have the app support. This is what makes building a new smartphone OS so difficult, your platform can be better in every single way, but it will never take off unless you can sway millions of individual app developers and convince them to develop for your platform, something they have no reason to do as you don't have any market share until after you've got the app developers.
Good comment, though I think you deserve funny mods for your closing joke more than insightful for stating the obvious. To really show insight, you needed to say more about why Microsoft can't do small.
My theory is that the fundamental problem is that Microsoft had their head wrapped around the BIG OS model, and never recovered. Small is not their thing, but for phones smaller is just better and the ridiculously over-capable OS was a bad thought pattern.
However, in accord with my other comment, I would also argue that corporate cancerism tends to do that. We actually had other players in the smartphone market, with other choices to freely choose from. I think Nokia was an especially sad story, but there were others. The only way the two current cancers (Apple and the google) can avoid swallowing each other is if they can keep their predatory financial models separate--but it's obvious that they are converging.
Ultimately there will be one smartphone to rule them all. Our only choice will be the winner or nothing. Not a real choice. (However, we may not get that if they figure out how to bribe the politicians to require each person to have THE smartphone.)
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
1. Build your own. Check out RePhone from seeed. https://www.seeedstudio.com/Re...
2. Use a portable WiFi hotspot with Google Voice and an iPod Touch. I have a data plan with a Straight Talk device and use Google Voice for texts. I don't get many calls, and that's the way, uh huh uh huh, I like it.
One of those little ones for smuggling into prison, and stick it UP YO ASS
Then get a Garamin GPS and stick THAT UP YO ASS
What is Ubuntu Touch? Ubuntu Touch is in general a new Ubuntu distribution with a different UI that is adapted specifically to mobile devices with a touchscreen like phones and tablets. Modern mobile devices are already very powerful and therefore Linux which exists for nearly all modern hardware architectures and can easily run on these devices. However, an existing user interface was not yet available to run Linux on these devices. Ubuntu Touch will be able to fill this gap. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touch/...
You only had 4 requirements in the list (please people, read the damn post before you reply).
BlackBerry is still "supporting" their OS's until 2020, but even then, it will still do what you want it to do.
You can easily find new/refurb/used units on eBay, Staples or whatever.
Passport or Z30 will easily go the distance in terms of battery life. I travelled with a Passport and got nearly 5 days out of it before I had to go to the wall, in the same usage scenario as you are describing (even did vid video calls).
An older BlackBerry Q10 will go nearly 2 days in the same situation.
Whether it is trustable is up to you to decide. At least it doesn't have the boatloads of ads that are on my Android phones.
Removable battery.
Removable SD card.
Easily bootloader-unlocked.
The G4 Play and G5 rock socks, and are some of the best phones for the price -- $100-200 -- out there.
Would love to see a Linux phone running normal Linux + Wayland rather than Android yet without all the Google spyware (Google Play Services) Android by itself is really not that bad. It is for the most part just Linux. You can cross compile whatever you want without much trouble.
Currently best bet is to find a phone supported by Lineage OS (formerly Cyanogenmod) where you don't have to go through hoops to crack locked boot loaders and extraneous BS. Google play is not included by default with Lineage OS and you get to have "root" if you want.
There are completely offline mapping solutions with voice directions, reroute and fancy map views that don't require any Internet connection at all. ALK offers a fairly decent solution for not much $$$ and it can be legitimately side loaded easily without Google play.
Jolla no longer sells hardware, so you will have to acquire a Sony Xperia X1, and install SailfishOS yourself.
The OS itself still has some problems. For some strange reason, you can not bulk delete entries from the phone log. You can not block callers. These are old feature requests which the Sailfish team has ignored for years.
GPS is supported, but you can only use HERE maps via the optional (free) Android adaption layer, and occasionally that breaks. There is no viable native mapping solution.
If you're into messaging via Whatsapp and Signal, support is broken. There was a whatsapp clone for Sailfish some years ago, but it was remotely disabled by Facebook.
Signal support is present but for text messaging only.
It's usable if you have the patience and time to workaround these problems.
and install replicant.
just don't install the google spyware you get double the battery life, bunch of apps on f-droid all audited...
After all android is just Google flavored Linux. so if you still have an old android phone. someone on the xda site might be able to point you to a location where you could download a mod of the Ubunu os or the firefox os for phones.
Then there are all the great mods that developers have posted on this site, look around, maybe search for one that matches op with your phone, and see what happens.
have fun.
I tackle the problem by making it a two step process:
1) Look for some phone hardware that is as open, flexible and as standard possible.
Note that this immediately excludes Apple HW - no openness, no choices there.
2) Select the OS that best satisfies your needs on that hardware.
For (1) I've chosen a Fairphone 2 (5", Qualcomm Snapdragon, 2GB + 32 GB, 2 SIMs + MicroSD, USB-OTG, Headphone Jack, replacable battery), 10/10 on ifixit, built to last.
For (2) you have the choice between Android/OASP 6.1 maintained by the company, regular updates; community supported Ubuntu and Sailfish ports; Lineage 14.1 (aka OASP 7.1) with incremental updates (that's what I'm currently using, but I've test-driven/used them all).
Not cutting hardware & software, but well usable & I expect to get at least another 2-3 years of usage out of this combo.
Find a phone that has battery requirements you like and run VPN software on it. Doesn't solve the security requirement though.
I'm using Sailfish OS on a Jolla phone now, and I'm very happy with it. Partly because the switch from Android is made smooth by supporting Android apps. It has all the requirements OP asked for, including a navigation solution (which can optionally fall back on online Google Maps data). Having said that, I do have a love / hate relationship with the company in charge though. They've consistently disregarded their fanbase while writing glamorous "We've listened" posts for every release, and they seem to be making terrible business decisions lately.
We’ll have to see what Google has up their sleeve.
Being a good OS is not enough.
“What is BeOS?”
The problem is there isn’t any white box phones. Like the white box PC where there are a bunch of standardized components that we can put together. To make our own custom phones.
If we had this, I expect we would have a couple Linux ports and a Net BSD port by now.
Heck Microsoft may get back in the mobile market again.
However at the moment the build tolerance of these phones are very difficult for the small business or the individual to make and sell a practical phone that they can say is theirs.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Get one of those. Their setup does look like the prime choose a choice for someone who wants to avoid the big two.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
buy a phone that is supported by lineageOS and install it.
do not install the google apps, everything you need is already provided out of the box without any google interference.
install fdroid to get additional, all open source, android apps. it has navigation apps available.
you'll have a phone that is as much open source as possible, the only thing that remains are binairy kernel blobs for various hardware bits of your phone.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
I am surprised that no one mentioned Blackberry
Ruggedized flip phone that checks all your boxes + PTT.
https://www.kyoceramobile.com/...
Sailfish OS rocks, with Alien Dalvik for Android app support.
https://jolla.com/sailfishx/
You can probably still get a phone with FirefoxOS (now B2GOS) off eBay. It works for nearly everything I need, and is a great conversation starter.
wp sucked because it was ridiculously limited from the get go and microsoft put a lot of money into a marketing effort to developers - but the guys they put into executing said effort just parroted stuff like "you don't need to do that" when asked when would they have api support for something critical. some people inside MS knew that yeah, you couldn't port your app to it but they had budget to dine you anyways. free phones and free dinners all around!
windows phone 7 would not have been classified as a smartphone os in 2004 - it would have fallen under "feature phone" spec.
using zune, literally, as a base for wp7 was stupid. everyone knows that if you just explain it like that, and thats what they did. MS phone that didn't work out of the box with MS operating systems was a total poochie failure. if they wanted to hide that they based it off zune, then they sure fucked up right there when they forced every developer and user who wanted to load music to install the zune suite.
the os design language was designed to be simple because thats all they had time for. it's not brilliant. it sucks - doing two things like chatting and browsing is a chore. its worse for power using than e71. its worse as a power user smartphone than a ngage. having no actual choice in browsers doesn't help.
if you want a decent phone, buy an android and root it so you can install os level adblocks and firewall(you can do that on samsung if you sign up for the key for the api's without rooting..).
I have a 1020 I got for free, which is arguably one of the best windows phones - I cannot find someone who wants to use it in a country with average income of 300 bucks per month! they will rather use hand me down android phones.
whoever designed windows phone was so fucking out of touch of smartphone world that it is an abomination, sure, it did fill some of the checkboxes but the HOW it filled them was so bad that people who bought another windows phone were very very far and between - and why would they have, it's not like the new phone would have done anything more or better.
it is a very good market right now to be truthful! you can get a very decent android phone that you can mod or not - also you can buy phones without google branding. you're a lot less locked in than you were in 2007 - do you know the bullshit you had to go through to access some of the apis in your own phone with the later nokia symbian phones? yeah, with android you can sidestep most of that. it's as much of a "pc" phone as a phone gets.
windows phone had a little lift for a very short time from the nokia deal. it was amazing to see the amount of self deceiving that some people in finland did in their minds to justify buying them... and well, I would be mean to remind them that I told them so - their reasoning was that "it's not so bad" "ms has put a lot of money into designing the ui" "they're committed to it" - well dude, how about you ask those zune buyers how committed they were.. ms had to do the nokia shenigans because they thought it was a good idea to waste a few billion dollars AND OTHERWISE NOBODY WOULD HAVE MADE WINDOWS PHONES ANYMORE.
Tizen
No. Its over. Get over it.
But I'm not going to tell you cause everyone will spoil it.
You know all those "free" applications you installed? If you aren't the customer you are the product. Companies that make these apps collect data to sell to marketers. Try sending an email about a certain model of car. You will probably start seeing ads for that car. Go to a few bars and you will start to see ads for bars. I remember installing a flashlight app. I can understand it needing access to the camera in order to turn on the flash but why did it need to access my location, phone, messages, bluetooth, wifi, be able to install or remove aps etc. They want to take over my phone just so I can open an app to turn on my flash.
I don't know how good it may become, but PureOS is trying to become another phone OS.
Plan9/Inferno based phone os:
https://github.com/doublec/inferno/tree/hellaphone
There was the Ubuntu Phone, but that project got scrapped after lacking direction
LineageOS provides an optional root package. If you apply it, and you also apply a GAPPS package, Google's Skynet/(Safetynet) will mark you forever tainted and forbid you from using Android Pay or Netflix. I don't care about either of these features, so that's what I'm doing for now.
Option B: You can also skip GAPPS and run without Google. If you load F-Droid, you can use the Yalp app to pull non-GMS (Google Mobile Services) based apps out of Google Play for use on a non-Google version of LineageOS.
LineageOS updates will successfully apply either way.
I am carefully considering Option B for my upgrade to Oreo.
Newer than the Blackphone is the Copperhead hardened Android.
There is a free download for the Nexus 5x and 6p (but these phones have a terrible habit of frying their CPUs).
They also sell Pixels preloaded with Copperhead, but these are quite expensive.
Umm...Blackberry? They're still the best "work" phone, imo. I've had an iPhone for about 3 years now and while I make use of a lot of apps that are not available on Blackberry, I do miss the Blackberry a lot. For one, I hate the on-screen keyboard of typical Apple/Android phones and the autocorrect is absolutely horrendous and must be turned off. The BB keyboard and autocorrect are both perfection. You also can't beat BB for stability and security, that's literally their thing.
I have a FireFox OS phone. I unfortunately can only use ATT sim because the US Cellular is incompatible. but the wifi is great and the integrated Firefox browser is very good (HTML 5.0) , and the screen is small but clear. The user experience is better than android, but it is older and the camera is not up to 2017 standards. There is a whole app store world of stuff that is not related to Google, because the phone was not rolled out in USA but in Europe and Asia markets. You can find them around on ebay and other after-market sites. OS updates are slow to non-existent. I pay like $25/month for prepaid, because I have a landline at home and get less than a call a day.
My Samsung Galaxy S3 does this. It is android. Just buy a battery that provides the usage requirement. The default battery lasts about 3 hours. I replaced it with a real battery that lasts about 4 days.
the same binary works for everybody's PC.
Not necessarily. Different GPUs, sound cards, NICs, etc. need different drivers. In order to work on everybody's PC, an operating system has to bundle drivers for every chipset ever produced.
A quality laptop using any OS you like.
That'd be fine if companies still made 10.1" laptops designed to run desktop operating systems.
I have an Asus Transformer T100 that I bought well after December 2012.
As of the latest update to the Debian project's compatibility page for the T100TA, suspend and Bluetooth are "Error (Couldn't get it working)", screen backlight is "Unsupported(No Driver)", and WLAN and audio are "Only works with a non-free driver and or firmware".
Or does "any OS you like" mean "any OS you like so long as it is Windows" in the same way that the Ford Model T came in "any color that he wants so long as it is black"? Does "systems" refer to both Windows 8.1 and Windows 10?
Here's one you can buy for $300. [ASUS Transformer Book T101HA-C4-GR]
Is Linux more compatible with the T101HA than with the T100TA? In this forum post, a user complains about "missing sound."
...16k RAM 10MB hard disk 640k RAM for this computer to type a letter an e-mail terminal and so on. Trying to find a phone that's specialized to only a few functions is fruitless; the addition of apps to a smart device (or even the addition of smarts) is not an economic drain, so don't THINK about it so much. Think, rather, of whether those apps are useful, and ignore the ones that aren't. And, if the phone is open to new apps, it does't become a paperweight in three months when the next 'need' pops up from nowhere.
Buy a feature phone and get a TomTom. Job done. Plus you can load custom voices on a TomTom, or even record your own - they are just .ogg files, after all.
The E55 was the best phone I've ever had. Maps, Gmail... that was the main things I actually needed... and it did it all in a lot less space than any one now.
How does carrying 2 phones into the mix effect decisions?
- one rooted / free / whatever
- the other locked down. Might as well choose Apple
Some advantages of this:
- might not need to carry a battery pack
- no need for a dual sim phone if that's useful to you
- one for the wife and another for
A blog I run for the wealth
....and fit in my pocket. It runs Linux, always gets updated, has thousands of apps available, free and open.