Goodbye Android & Apple - Pinephone Review - th-cam.com/video/lFELJ3E_-G4/w-d-xo.html Desktop Firefox and Minecraft Server on Pinephone - th-cam.com/video/i9bQFzBsj1A/w-d-xo.html ---- What do you think the future of mobile phones looks like?
Been working on making Ubuntu Touch, my Daily driver on a Pinephone, problem is when I move from one location to another it loses the cellular signal all have to restart the phone to reconnect
i think that linux phones has the potentiate to shake the market up for phones. but it's a sad thing that in many countries you can't buy it do to custom taxing is to high, while they should be exempted from it, do to the lessened environmental footprint that some linux phones has, not all but that might help.
Switching to a pinephone as a daily. Going to take a month or so to make the transition. Tired of the over reaching unbearable monitoring. I want my privacy back! Picking one up in 2 days.
Let me know how it works. I really want a librem 5 more but I can get 4 pinephone s for the family for one librem5 so it's hard to get the librem5 at current pricing and my budget
@@jupiterapollo4985 No, Google does still have some Google software so deep in the OS, that that doesn't work and even in the Android open source project that Huawei uses there is still Google software, but there is an open source Android custom ROM, that removes all that, /e/.
My experience with Sailfish is that it put form over function. It feels great to use for a few minutes, but when you're actually trying to get stuff done the low contrast, non intuitive UI starts to get to you. Lots of light text on light backgrounds which *will* cause eye strain. Maybe it has been improved since I tried it out a few months back.
Please keep in mind that the Volla Phone does not have mainline Linux support (yet), so it's not in the same category of device as Librem 5 and PinePhone are. The upside of this is that Ubuntu Touch runs way better on it than it currently does on the mainline phones.
Or buy a phone with /e/os on it. In Europe available pre-installed. Also Sailfish has pre-installed, all you need is a licence. I use Sailfish OS on xperia x now, works very well. But next phone will be Fairphone 3+ with /e/os pre installed. No ios or Android for me.. Spying basterds 😁
Linux / Open Source phones really have my attention because I'm sick of having a powerful pocket computer that I really could do anything with, but it's crippled by the OS. I can't just install another OS because of so much proprietary junk in the SoC. On too of that my perfectly fine 2 yr old phone will never receive a new Android version from the OEM and also the miriad of privacy issues with apps and the OS itself.
Good video overall but a few comments and clarifications. - Sailfish OS isn't fully proprietary. It's mostly open source other than the UI parts. - To go back and forward in Sailfish, you swipe left or right within the app or tap the glowing dot at the upper edges. What you showed in the video is going back to the homescreen or app switcher :) - Ubuntu Touch was originally developed by Canonical until 2017. It was picked up by the UBports foundation and still going strong :) - This may decrease your enthusiasm with Ubuntu Touch but installing Firefox, Chrome and such isn't easy and if they do work, they're really slow. UT's rootfs is read-only because it uses system image updates. For installing via apt, LIbertine is used which is basically a container and this isn't fully working yet on the Pinephone. UT has been using mir but uses wayland on the pinephone which is still very early in the development. So maybe once wayland is working well on UT, Firefox, Chrome and other "Linux" apps will work well on UT.
20.04 seems will have been the trickiest and most dev-intensive release in the roadmap. It's about to come out (Soon™), but most of the work apparently was just porting most of the stuff to upstream packages. That's the hardest task but it was imperative as Canonical left a huge mess in that department and it became imposible to further develop and maintain with the little resources the devs had. The release will also port Mir to Wayland. I don't know if that's gonna fix Libertine apps though. At this point though making Clicks seems to be the way forward.
@@nodezsh I don't think 20.04 will also bring the transition to Wayland. Also, UT will still use Mir. It's just that Mir is now a wayland compositor. In fact, it's already possible to use wayland on some devices. Best example of this is Waydroid. The full system still run on mirclient though.
@@AninoNiKugi I don't know where [if] I read that. My mind played one on me. Yeah. Maybe graphic Libertine apps will work better on 20.04, maybe Miroil will eventually be deployed on it, I don't really know. But graphic Libertine is still gonna be unusable on 16.04, that's for sure…
@@nodezsh Once we have Libertine container based on 20.04 and libertine apps use wayland/xwayland then sure, GUI apps will become "usable". Of course, they won't be magically become mobile-friendly :)
@@AninoNiKugi We already have desktop apps that are mobile friendly. Otherwise Phosh would be useless! The real question here is whether we'll ever get to run Plasma Mobile apps on Ubuntu Touch (and well… Clicks on other distros and UIs I guess would be fun as well. We really ought to do something about the fragmentation)
apart from security and privacy, I use Linux becaudr it's tons of fun. and Linux on Mobile, use it as a desktop too and all the possibilities ... oh man! that's a lot of fun
I have been using my pine phone as my primary mobile phone since around April maybe Im a bit of a masochist but it got the job done for me and its been cool to watch the development along the way
Most of us started on Linux spending hours to figure out how to use it properly and/ or fixing it. The rest of the world laughed at us. Look at where Linux is today. The current projects are paving the way for a remarkable phone OS. We'll get there.
You got the in-app navigation in SailfishOS slightly wrong there, you used the peek gesture (that starts at the edge of the screen), which is for putting an app to the background and go to home screen, while saying sth. like "this is to navigate back in the app with the top title bar". The top bar is actually pulled down and contains the pulley menu. for going back (and forward, actually) to previous (or next) screen inside the app, a normal left-to-right swipe gesture is used - starting somewhere _on_ the screen, not at the edge this time. Also definitely worth a mention: Sailfish on phones officially supporte by Jolla (not the Pinephone) runs Android apps - at least the ones that don't require Google Play services.
Ubuntu had their own phone around 2014 and it didn't work out. Would love to see a Linux phone as a major player but I don't think it is going to happen soon.
I'm right there with you man... I have samsung note 10, thought I would use DEX as my computer... Nah, bro... But with Linux the hope is real. Thanks for all the great content.
Sailfish OS on my Xperia X was the most fun I've had with a smart phone. It's a shame that Jolla only provide official support on a bunch of outdated, mid-range Sony phones that are increasingly hard to find. Having Sailfish OS with Android support feels like a nice compromise between having a Linuxy phone and plenty of apps.
Just as a bit of extra notes, Sailfish has been my daily driver for over a year, and while I have more serious complaints that exist as a long-term user, many of the things you mention regarding Ubuntu Touch carry over to Sailfish. You can import contacts from Google, vcard, or a DAV if you're using one of those. It can hook into your email and calenders easily, you can add accounts for Twitter, Facebook, VK, likely more thanks to the abundant software community, you can also just as well SSH and VNC into and out of a Sailfish device and run software from a command line if need be. The most proprietary part of it is really just the UX, which is all built on Qt anyway. Flatpak support is well underway from the community, and while you could buy Sailfish X for compatible devices and get Android apps, there's also a project to implement Anbox as a free alternative. This hasty approach with "distro" hopping (when we're talking ROMs) seems like it hurts you more overall. I sensed some real bias toward Ubuntu Touch, and while I understand the argument of Linux phones being super-scalable if you want that desktop option, Sailfish is a great option. You don't *need* to sign up for the Jolla store, since there's an open storefront thanks to OpenRepos you can install. It's well worth diving into, you should give both of them a chance.
Chris I'm pretty sure that Webos pre-dates HP. They actually bought out Palm who developed the system and used it on their Palm Pre range of phones. I've used a few of these systems albeit some years ago in their early days. I tried Sailfish, Ubuntu Touch, LuneOS and as said Webos. When I tried them they were all quite clunky and would often lock up/freeze. So I only ever played around with them. The last time I looked at Sailfish it was pay to download but all the others were free.
HDMI does work actually. If you have a Braveheart or UBPorts model, you need to solder something on the board because Pine64 messed up some vconn switch or something, but the Linux kernel got HDMI implemented in software months ago. Edit: also, the first Arch image you're supposed to SSH into over USB with a computer (a tablet with USB type-A could techincally control the PinePhone without a keyboard or mouse. You probably didn't want to make the video too long and I understand that, but the inaccuracies in this video bugged me) and the second one should have Phosh on it. I've been using the Arch Phosh images since the summer and I've absolutely loved them.
I'd like a de-googled phone with an intuitive desktop mode, even just for using a browsers in a way thats doesn't suck. Linux is great, but just by seing this fragmentation, my hopes of using it instead of Android are also fragmented at the moment.
Im trying to do my research to decide whether I want to get a google Pixel or Pinephone and use Ubuntu Touch, or go for a Librem 5 Evergreen. Still have my first smartphone, a samsung from 2015 that barely works and the bootloader can't be unlocked. It's time for something new
Can you do one on a degoogled android phone with Windows phone homescreen and other apps like the windows 10 phone dialer, caller, messenger, groove-like. Music and so on and so forth?
I would personally go with a Fairphone, but well, they don't deliver outside of Europe, so you can't have one (except if I would order it for you and then send it to you, but there could be a problem with modem incompatibility (this can as it seems generally be a problem)). While their boot loader is locked by default, they provide a manual for unlocking it and are ok with installing alternative OSs.
Gonna get pinephone by the end of the year not gonna run it as a daily driver but as a secondary device and i am also probably going to run either ubuntu touch or sailfish it is going to be fun
btw if you have two apps open in ubuntu touch you can do a short swipe from the right to switch between the two apps you can also do a short swipe from left to get the launcher and long swipe to get the drawer finally if you partially swipe down from the top you can move between settings by moving your finger as well xD
The Google/Apple Monopoly is getting ridiculous. Yes, it functions and most people could care less, but.... Wouldn't it be nice to see some FOSS competition to even-out things and for INNOVATION to start again? Thanks for reviewing these alternatives! (I think you should also do a video on a step-by-step guide on how to de-Google an Android phone with a good ROM.)
I want what I’ve wanted for a few years now, and the closest anyone has gotten is the new Mac m1s, and that’s taking the phone tech out of the phone form factor (which is really more of just a skeuomorphic design) and put it into a laptop. A laptop where you can text/mms, make calls, have data everywhere, and access apps and full desktop programs.
I wonder if Linux distros in general got official support for Android apps like Windows 11 is getting would make it easier to make more smartphone based Linux distros.
Chris, I don't know if it is possible to install on this phone the Nokia N9 Harmattan OS which in my opinion was the best linux operating system. It was based on Debian. If someone can install on Pine phone it is you... Please try it...
I have been fully dailying my Pinephone with arch for 4 months and great in-spite of the updates braking core utility and causing a reflash on occasion I use this as a computer first with phone functionality second Libre office openarena FPS minetest works too
All I want in a phone: Not to be spied on. Removable/Replace battery. Messaging. Able to make and receive calls with a contacts list. A camera that works. Calculator, Map and weather apps all open source. Enough hardware not to be a snail and hardware switches are a great bonus. Just ordered the 3gb model and going to try it as a daily driver with Ubuntu touch. Here's hoping it can pull it off using the T-mobile network.
Personally, I'm most excited about Ubuntu Touch. It will open the door to a "Multi Device Ecosystem" for Linux. Which could bring in some more newbies. Which means more interest and maybe more reasons for the outside world to bring games, drivers and software to Linux. All of which excites me greatly.
18:35 You pinpoint an issue that many videos I've recently seen have also raised: Why have we endured being brainwashed into thinking that smartphones are no real computers? I would so much wish for a paradigm change. The pandemic in my country and the situation at schools where digital lessons are not possible because school children don't have a computer would be obsolete, because 95% of school children in Year > 5 have a smartphone, and they could easily make use of a computer that has a webcam and could use free and open source software to do essential school tasks.
I have a Volla Phone Already, I cant get it to work with my carrier but it does work with Verizon and T-Mobile based on discussions I've had with other devs. Volla uses Halium 9, and there is a quirk with the ofono stack that sometimes you wont recieve a call or messages, there is always a chance that could get resolved before you start using it, but just wanted make you aware of it. I have also tried VollaOS which is a interesting idea, Ive tried Sailfish on it, as well as e, I myself like Ubuntu Touch out of all of them though
I should point out as well developed as Sailfish OS and Ubuntu Touch are they don't yet work very well at all on the PinePhone, for these operating systems I'd recommend a Nexus 5 or similar
I hate to say it, but I don't see Android being significantly challenged by other mobile operating systems unless a big company gets behind something else. Google integrates their services really well with Android and is one of 2 operating systems developers have invested in including iOS and I don't see that changing anytime soon.
I think I will most likely try PureOS or Arch running phosh. Does libhandy and Gtk work properly on Ubuntu Touch though? Because I don't want to use a second Android when it comes to app development...
i had the nokia N900 and i had realVNC installed in it, i was logging in to a windows server (needed windows for the app it was built for) to control it from a distance, do you know what it felt at the time? REVOLUTIONARY, everybody was like WOW
Canonical droped the project but it was picked up by volunteers who founded UBports Foundation (a German non-profit, they currently have some paid staff to work on the project). And yes, Canonical abandoned Unity, but UBports keeps developing it for Ubuntu Touch, now it's called Lomiri.
My personal concerns re phones are repairability, privacy and limiting e-waste. I have a variety of old PC's and Macs running Linux, which every so often I'll give away to friends just needing a basic word processor/browser type computer. A fifteen year old macbook cannot play modern games but it can help a kid do schoolwork during a pandemic. What I want is an OS that does the same kind of job for old phones and hopefully newer phones too. I suspect our grandchildren are going to look at us in much the same way we look back at the shocking state of civil rights in our grandparent's time, except they're going to be shocked by the colossal wastefulness inherent in current technology and its impact globally. I have no idea of the technical challenges involved, which may be insurmountable.
I have the Pine phone running Manjaro. It has issues, the biggest being a bad package which does not allow me to update. The next is short battery life. I guess what I want is as simple a phone as can be while having multiple choices on apps. In the end I would only use one or maybe two browsers. I would also like the phone to be robust. I want no eco whatever. No apple id, no Google store, no android play, OK, so maybe F-droid or the AUR. I do not use many apps that other people use. I like a great navigation app. I like a message app. No games, no frills, no fat. The terminal is great. I only wish I knew more bash.
What I'm really lusting after is a 10" Linux tablet. So Ubuntu touch and ... what hardware? Samsung Galaxy Tab? Lenovo ? I would also like to do the same with a phone. How would Ubuntu touch work on a Moto G6? Why? To get away from Google's spying. But I think that Linux may be able to better support office and document management apps. I'd love to have a longer conversation with you about this topic.
I love the look of Lune OS. It reminds me of HTC Sense. I would love my phone to run that software. I would also like the phone to have dedicated hardware for running its own basic software for the basic phone functions like dialing, calling, and texting.
I have tested just about all the operating systems for the Pine phone and the end results is it is not ready for prime time. Mechanically it is but the closest I got to a viable operating and application system was Ubuntu Touch, yet they still have a ways to go so my Pine 64 phone now sits in it's box waiting for the next upgrade to Ubuntu Touch because if anybody is going to make this work it's the team behind Ubuntu Touch they do have the edge thanks to Canonical 5 year effort.
good stuff bud. which is est for performance? currently I have Galaxy A11. can they install apk's or use Google Play Store? What installing an app from banking and proprietary commercial business like when they have a website to install app from Play store or Apple apps store?
I hope this wouldn't just be another fail project like so much Mobile OS before.. but for now it's still hard to get out from google, especially Maps & youtube.. there's alternatif but not good enough
I use my smartphone everyday for personal business. No social chat, no internet or youtube crazies or gossip period. TH-cam is fantastic. I have learn a lot of technical and DIY fixes that I would have never learned. I have been emboldened by quality youtubers like you. Home automation is overhyped and worthless. I like buttons I can press. A porch cam is useful in these days of porch pirates and wandering loonies. OEM phone manufacturers encrypt the bootloader making it difficult to repurpose old phones.
I don't need a Linux phone. I need to be able to easily install OS of my choice on any phone and this includes Linux. Also - display out needs to be supported in every segment, not only in 500$+ devices. I'll happily use my 100$ phone as a desktop replacement, as it definitely has enough horsepower to deal with browsing the web, simple office work and multimedia (if Raspbberry Pi can do that, my phone certainly could do that as well). Not being able to do so, even though HW is fully capable is one of the reasons of crazy pricing of IT components during the pandemic. People buy lots of stuff that their phone could fill in for, if only Google/manufacturers allowed it to become a desktop replacement. Why isn't Chrome OS a part of Android yet? You should be able to dock your device in any USB-C docking station and use it as a dekstop. What's so difficult about it?
Hi Chris, I think this is a really interesting video. I am wondering though if it is possible to install other OSses on older Phones. See, I still have an older Microsoft Lumia 950XL and SONY Xperia XA2 Ultra phone which are out of Support. They are not broken or damaged in any way, but I would still like to use them. That is why I was wondering if it is possible to install other OSses on these Phones. Either by hacking or Unlocking the hardware on it. Thanks, Argai74
Yeah, the specs on the Pinephone are a bit lacking which can cause some of it too. It is why I grabbed the new phone for next month. Hopefully it will solve the sluggishness.
Once I remember how I was fascinated by Samsung Dex and I wanted to have one. But it turned out to be tagged with a heavy price. Also, doing stuff like coding wasn't even possible on that (from what I heard from friends). Linux OS does open up the possibility of that however, the only thing that makes Linux, not as Phone's choice is because of the apps I am used to. I think I need to diverse more away from Google apps. It is tough but not impossible I know.
If any of these is gonna have any chance it must be able to run Android apps. And IMO it should handle processes like Android and not like Linux desktop i.e. just minimizing everything and putting it in the background or freezing them and when ram fills up it should just kill the last app in the background list. I don't wanna close explicitly apps on my phone.
I am in the market for a new phone. But would like to apply the security settings of these phones. I am no techy person. I email, do some social on web browser, a couple apps, gps app, etc. Nothing high tech, any recommendations? I am needing a phone soon due to mine not allowing me to send or receive calls. I can't figure out why this has happened lately. But I can text message to and from and access the internet. Just no calls. Help is greatly appreciated!
Dual boot Ub.touch. & Sailfish or /e/Os would be super choice for me .if somebody develop a tool to make this process easy (porting is a little bit difficult), well good bye google
I've installed your debloat script on my pc using windows 10 pro build 21277rs but it is now slow, it has increased boot time and the desktop just freezes for about 5-10s seconds. and my windows is not updating either how do I uninstall it please help
Hi Sir, I’m having a problem with Microsoft store, every time I try to open it crashes immediately I been trying to fix it every way possible but still. Can you help?
Have anyone tested other phones like Librem from Purism? I'm looking for a high-end performing Linux phone! Pine looks to be an extremely low performing device?
Goodbye Android & Apple - Pinephone Review - th-cam.com/video/lFELJ3E_-G4/w-d-xo.html
Desktop Firefox and Minecraft Server on Pinephone - th-cam.com/video/i9bQFzBsj1A/w-d-xo.html
----
What do you think the future of mobile phones looks like?
As I predicted, portable devices with scrollable/rollable screen. Something that fits into your pocket with the screen size of a tablet.
Still loving the new studio look, Chris
Been working on making Ubuntu Touch, my Daily driver on a Pinephone, problem is when I move from one location to another it loses the cellular signal all have to restart the phone to reconnect
i think that linux phones has the potentiate to shake the market up for phones. but it's a sad thing that in many countries you can't buy it do to custom taxing is to high, while they should be exempted from it, do to the lessened environmental footprint that some linux phones has, not all but that might help.
brow where is fire os? by firefox
Switching to a pinephone as a daily. Going to take a month or so to make the transition. Tired of the over reaching unbearable monitoring. I want my privacy back! Picking one up in 2 days.
Let me know how it works. I really want a librem 5 more but I can get 4 pinephone s for the family for one librem5 so it's hard to get the librem5 at current pricing and my budget
I think it is not ready as a daily driver yet.
But i do love the Pinephone, it will be ready as a daily in no time i think tho.
How is it?
You can just root your android phone and not install google applications, and you basically have the same thing just with much better functionality.
@@jupiterapollo4985 No, Google does still have some Google software so deep in the OS, that that doesn't work and even in the Android open source project that Huawei uses there is still Google software, but there is an open source Android custom ROM, that removes all that, /e/.
would love to see
1. opensource as a path to future.
2. a single ultimate architecture for all devices
3. official arch with different init options
Most the Mobile Arch based systems were using OpenRC instead of Systemd which I found interesting.
4. using wayland for everything and putting Xorg in it's grave
@@ChrisTitusTech have u tried anbox on pinephone??
Waiting for TitusPhone OS! 😃
My experience with Sailfish is that it put form over function. It feels great to use for a few minutes, but when you're actually trying to get stuff done the low contrast, non intuitive UI starts to get to you. Lots of light text on light backgrounds which *will* cause eye strain. Maybe it has been improved since I tried it out a few months back.
Please keep in mind that the Volla Phone does not have mainline Linux support (yet), so it's not in the same category of device as Librem 5 and PinePhone are. The upside of this is that Ubuntu Touch runs way better on it than it currently does on the mainline phones.
I still like de-Google'd Android better than Linux phones right now.
For Sure! The Linux phones aren't fully baked yet. If I had to choose one right now, De-Googled Android would really be the only option.
there's also an android build called glodroid for the pinephone. not sure if it's fully functional though.
I don't mind the propietary garbage, so I would be happy on a Linux Phone
Does anyone know of an android os that is known to work on the pinephone?
@@xXsavag3Xx1 there is glodroid. not sure how usable it is though.
I just want my privacy/security back. I like the phones that have manual switches on them to turn on/off features as well.
i would love to say goodbye to google and apple. thats what im looking for.
For now, this can't be used as a proper phone. So the best thing you can do is just de-google your android phone.
@@nyx6614 Of course it works as a phone, just not a smartphone.
Or buy a phone with /e/os on it.
In Europe available pre-installed.
Also Sailfish has pre-installed, all you need is a licence.
I use Sailfish OS on xperia x now, works very well.
But next phone will be Fairphone 3+ with /e/os pre installed.
No ios or Android for me..
Spying basterds 😁
Same here
Why still on youtube tho?
When it’s time for me to upgrade I’m planning on getting a pixel and putting CalyxOS on it
That's what I did. Works very well.
Do you think Calyx OS works better than Lineage OS or E os?
@@GeoTechLand yes calyx is better than lineage and e os
Thank you guys, I will going the same \😃🛡️
Linux / Open Source phones really have my attention because I'm sick of having a powerful pocket computer that I really could do anything with, but it's crippled by the OS. I can't just install another OS because of so much proprietary junk in the SoC.
On too of that my perfectly fine 2 yr old phone will never receive a new Android version from the OEM and also the miriad of privacy issues with apps and the OS itself.
Good video overall but a few comments and clarifications.
- Sailfish OS isn't fully proprietary. It's mostly open source other than the UI parts.
- To go back and forward in Sailfish, you swipe left or right within the app or tap the glowing dot at the upper edges. What you showed in the video is going back to the homescreen or app switcher :)
- Ubuntu Touch was originally developed by Canonical until 2017. It was picked up by the UBports foundation and still going strong :)
- This may decrease your enthusiasm with Ubuntu Touch but installing Firefox, Chrome and such isn't easy and if they do work, they're really slow. UT's rootfs is read-only because it uses system image updates. For installing via apt, LIbertine is used which is basically a container and this isn't fully working yet on the Pinephone. UT has been using mir but uses wayland on the pinephone which is still very early in the development. So maybe once wayland is working well on UT, Firefox, Chrome and other "Linux" apps will work well on UT.
20.04 seems will have been the trickiest and most dev-intensive release in the roadmap. It's about to come out (Soon™), but most of the work apparently was just porting most of the stuff to upstream packages. That's the hardest task but it was imperative as Canonical left a huge mess in that department and it became imposible to further develop and maintain with the little resources the devs had.
The release will also port Mir to Wayland. I don't know if that's gonna fix Libertine apps though. At this point though making Clicks seems to be the way forward.
@@nodezsh I don't think 20.04 will also bring the transition to Wayland. Also, UT will still use Mir. It's just that Mir is now a wayland compositor. In fact, it's already possible to use wayland on some devices. Best example of this is Waydroid. The full system still run on mirclient though.
@@AninoNiKugi I don't know where [if] I read that. My mind played one on me.
Yeah. Maybe graphic Libertine apps will work better on 20.04, maybe Miroil will eventually be deployed on it, I don't really know. But graphic Libertine is still gonna be unusable on 16.04, that's for sure…
@@nodezsh Once we have Libertine container based on 20.04 and libertine apps use wayland/xwayland then sure, GUI apps will become "usable". Of course, they won't be magically become mobile-friendly :)
@@AninoNiKugi We already have desktop apps that are mobile friendly. Otherwise Phosh would be useless!
The real question here is whether we'll ever get to run Plasma Mobile apps on Ubuntu Touch (and well… Clicks on other distros and UIs I guess would be fun as well. We really ought to do something about the fragmentation)
apart from security and privacy, I use Linux becaudr it's tons of fun. and Linux on Mobile, use it as a desktop too and all the possibilities ... oh man! that's a lot of fun
Waiting for my Pinephone.
I have been using my pine phone as my primary mobile phone since around April maybe Im a bit of a masochist but it got the job done for me and its been cool to watch the development along the way
Most of us started on Linux spending hours to figure out how to use it properly and/ or fixing it. The rest of the world laughed at us. Look at where Linux is today. The current projects are paving the way for a remarkable phone OS. We'll get there.
You got the in-app navigation in SailfishOS slightly wrong there, you used the peek gesture (that starts at the edge of the screen), which is for putting an app to the background and go to home screen, while saying sth. like "this is to navigate back in the app with the top title bar". The top bar is actually pulled down and contains the pulley menu. for going back (and forward, actually) to previous (or next) screen inside the app, a normal left-to-right swipe gesture is used - starting somewhere _on_ the screen, not at the edge this time. Also definitely worth a mention: Sailfish on phones officially supporte by Jolla (not the Pinephone) runs Android apps - at least the ones that don't require Google Play services.
Ubuntu had their own phone around 2014 and it didn't work out. Would love to see a Linux phone as a major player but I don't think it is going to happen soon.
webos was made by Palm...and it is part of LG tv's in last couple of years.
Exactly. I almost had an aneurism when he said it was from HP. It is sad really, parts of it were ahead of its time, but then HP got involved...
And it was originally developed for phones - specifically the Pre (Palm Pre, Pre 2, Pre 3) line of phones.
Pinephone is all about choices... and what other phone boots extra operating systems from sdcards? Lots of potential here for specialized cases.
I'm right there with you man... I have samsung note 10, thought I would use DEX as my computer... Nah, bro... But with Linux the hope is real. Thanks for all the great content.
Sailfish OS on my Xperia X was the most fun I've had with a smart phone. It's a shame that Jolla only provide official support on a bunch of outdated, mid-range Sony phones that are increasingly hard to find. Having Sailfish OS with Android support feels like a nice compromise between having a Linuxy phone and plenty of apps.
Just as a bit of extra notes, Sailfish has been my daily driver for over a year, and while I have more serious complaints that exist as a long-term user, many of the things you mention regarding Ubuntu Touch carry over to Sailfish. You can import contacts from Google, vcard, or a DAV if you're using one of those. It can hook into your email and calenders easily, you can add accounts for Twitter, Facebook, VK, likely more thanks to the abundant software community, you can also just as well SSH and VNC into and out of a Sailfish device and run software from a command line if need be. The most proprietary part of it is really just the UX, which is all built on Qt anyway. Flatpak support is well underway from the community, and while you could buy Sailfish X for compatible devices and get Android apps, there's also a project to implement Anbox as a free alternative.
This hasty approach with "distro" hopping (when we're talking ROMs) seems like it hurts you more overall. I sensed some real bias toward Ubuntu Touch, and while I understand the argument of Linux phones being super-scalable if you want that desktop option, Sailfish is a great option. You don't *need* to sign up for the Jolla store, since there's an open storefront thanks to OpenRepos you can install. It's well worth diving into, you should give both of them a chance.
Chris, dude your videos are so badass! 😎
Thank you for helping me switch to Linux last year. I instantly loved it and never looked back.
Chris I'm pretty sure that Webos pre-dates HP. They actually bought out Palm who developed the system and used it on their Palm Pre range of phones. I've used a few of these systems albeit some years ago in their early days. I tried Sailfish, Ubuntu Touch, LuneOS and as said Webos. When I tried them they were all quite clunky and would often lock up/freeze. So I only ever played around with them. The last time I looked at Sailfish it was pay to download but all the others were free.
HDMI does work actually. If you have a Braveheart or UBPorts model, you need to solder something on the board because Pine64 messed up some vconn switch or something, but the Linux kernel got HDMI implemented in software months ago.
Edit: also, the first Arch image you're supposed to SSH into over USB with a computer (a tablet with USB type-A could techincally control the PinePhone without a keyboard or mouse. You probably didn't want to make the video too long and I understand that, but the inaccuracies in this video bugged me) and the second one should have Phosh on it. I've been using the Arch Phosh images since the summer and I've absolutely loved them.
manjaro plasma is my favorite
I'd like a de-googled phone with an intuitive desktop mode, even just for using a browsers in a way thats doesn't suck. Linux is great, but just by seing this fragmentation, my hopes of using it instead of Android are also fragmented at the moment.
Im trying to do my research to decide whether I want to get a google Pixel or Pinephone and use Ubuntu Touch, or go for a Librem 5 Evergreen. Still have my first smartphone, a samsung from 2015 that barely works and the bootloader can't be unlocked. It's time for something new
Can you do one on a degoogled android phone with Windows phone homescreen and other apps like the windows 10 phone dialer, caller, messenger, groove-like. Music and so on and so forth?
I would personally go with a Fairphone, but well, they don't deliver outside of Europe, so you can't have one (except if I would order it for you and then send it to you, but there could be a problem with modem incompatibility (this can as it seems generally be a problem)).
While their boot loader is locked by default, they provide a manual for unlocking it and are ok with installing alternative OSs.
I am currently enjoying LineageOS 17.1 on my Motorla G7 Phone. I have no google apps installed too.
Gonna get pinephone by the end of the year not gonna run it as a daily driver but as a secondary device and i am also probably going to run either ubuntu touch or sailfish it is going to be fun
*AWESOME VIDEO CHRIS!!!*
btw if you have two apps open in ubuntu touch you can do a short swipe from the right to switch between the two apps
you can also do a short swipe from left to get the launcher and long swipe to get the drawer
finally if you partially swipe down from the top you can move between settings by moving your finger as well xD
What i need is a tablet with ubuntu touch, seems like a nice mobile computer
@@smpmuzpid not a bad deal at all, thanks
The Google/Apple Monopoly is getting ridiculous. Yes, it functions and most people could care less, but.... Wouldn't it be nice to see some FOSS competition to even-out things and for INNOVATION to start again? Thanks for reviewing these alternatives! (I think you should also do a video on a step-by-step guide on how to de-Google an Android phone with a good ROM.)
Is the Search bar on the home screen of Manjaro w/ Plasma a full system search like Kfind on the desktop, or is it just a web search?
I should like to buy any hardware phone I want, install a real linux kernel on it with kde, and then be happy.
I wish you could get any of the supported Xperia phones and try out a full-fledged version of the Sailfish OS on it.
I want what I’ve wanted for a few years now, and the closest anyone has gotten is the new Mac m1s, and that’s taking the phone tech out of the phone form factor (which is really more of just a skeuomorphic design) and put it into a laptop. A laptop where you can text/mms, make calls, have data everywhere, and access apps and full desktop programs.
I wonder if Linux distros in general got official support for Android apps like Windows 11 is getting would make it easier to make more smartphone based Linux distros.
before HP WebOS there was Palm and the Palm Pre. My PalmPre is here in front of me. Power it up now and then. Not too useful anymore.
Chris, I don't know if it is possible to install on this phone the Nokia N9 Harmattan OS which in my opinion was the best linux operating system. It was based on Debian. If someone can install on Pine phone it is you... Please try it...
Hey Chris! I really want you to cover different login managers in the tty. I want to see a cli display manager!
Can you review Graphene OS?
I have been fully dailying my Pinephone with arch for 4 months and great in-spite of the updates braking core utility and causing a reflash on occasion
I use this as a computer first with phone functionality second
Libre office openarena FPS minetest works too
Cover Graphene OS and CopperHead OS for Android phones.
All I want in a phone: Not to be spied on. Removable/Replace battery. Messaging. Able to make and receive calls with a contacts list. A camera that works. Calculator, Map and weather apps all open source. Enough hardware not to be a snail and hardware switches are a great bonus.
Just ordered the 3gb model and going to try it as a daily driver with Ubuntu touch. Here's hoping it can pull it off using the T-mobile network.
for 200 euro you wont get anything good
Personally, I'm most excited about Ubuntu Touch. It will open the door to a "Multi Device Ecosystem" for Linux. Which could bring in some more newbies. Which means more interest and maybe more reasons for the outside world to bring games, drivers and software to Linux. All of which excites me greatly.
18:35 You pinpoint an issue that many videos I've recently seen have also raised: Why have we endured being brainwashed into thinking that smartphones are no real computers? I would so much wish for a paradigm change. The pandemic in my country and the situation at schools where digital lessons are not possible because school children don't have a computer would be obsolete, because 95% of school children in Year > 5 have a smartphone, and they could easily make use of a computer that has a webcam and could use free and open source software to do essential school tasks.
I have a Volla Phone Already, I cant get it to work with my carrier but it does work with Verizon and T-Mobile based on discussions I've had with other devs. Volla uses Halium 9, and there is a quirk with the ofono stack that sometimes you wont recieve a call or messages, there is always a chance that could get resolved before you start using it, but just wanted make you aware of it. I have also tried VollaOS which is a interesting idea, Ive tried Sailfish on it, as well as e, I myself like Ubuntu Touch out of all of them though
I should point out as well developed as Sailfish OS and Ubuntu Touch are they don't yet work very well at all on the PinePhone, for these operating systems I'd recommend a Nexus 5 or similar
My dude, manual focus is your friend
so now not only do I have to comment 'year of the linux desktop current_year+1', I have to now also comment 'year of linux mobile current_year+1'
Haha. Yup!
I hate to say it, but I don't see Android being significantly challenged by other mobile operating systems unless a big company gets behind something else. Google integrates their services really well with Android and is one of 2 operating systems developers have invested in including iOS and I don't see that changing anytime soon.
I think I will most likely try PureOS or Arch running phosh. Does libhandy and Gtk work properly on Ubuntu Touch though?
Because I don't want to use a second Android when it comes to app development...
Have you an updated research into these options? How did you go using your "daily driver de-googled mobile"?
i had the nokia N900 and i had realVNC installed in it, i was logging in to a windows server (needed windows for the app it was built for) to control it from a distance, do you know what it felt at the time? REVOLUTIONARY, everybody was like WOW
I was under the impression that ubuntu touch was abandoned and ubuntu dropped support for their desktop manager that makes it go.
Canonical droped the project but it was picked up by volunteers who founded UBports Foundation (a German non-profit, they currently have some paid staff to work on the project). And yes, Canonical abandoned Unity, but UBports keeps developing it for Ubuntu Touch, now it's called Lomiri.
I like your new studio setup
I've been waiting for this episode
Convergence. Carrying my computer in my pocket is what I've wanted since my first 3g Sanyo whatever it was I had in 2003.
i loved sailfish os and would have kept using it over android if it werent for the fact that the camera diddnt have a built in HDR mode
My personal concerns re phones are repairability, privacy and limiting e-waste. I have a variety of old PC's and Macs running Linux, which every so often I'll give away to friends just needing a basic word processor/browser type computer. A fifteen year old macbook cannot play modern games but it can help a kid do schoolwork during a pandemic. What I want is an OS that does the same kind of job for old phones and hopefully newer phones too. I suspect our grandchildren are going to look at us in much the same way we look back at the shocking state of civil rights in our grandparent's time, except they're going to be shocked by the colossal wastefulness inherent in current technology and its impact globally. I have no idea of the technical challenges involved, which may be insurmountable.
I have the Pine phone running Manjaro. It has issues, the biggest being a bad package which does not allow me to update. The next is short battery life. I guess what I want is as simple a phone as can be while having multiple choices on apps. In the end I would only use one or maybe two browsers. I would also like the phone to be robust. I want no eco whatever. No apple id, no Google store, no android play, OK, so maybe F-droid or the AUR. I do not use many apps that other people use. I like a great navigation app. I like a message app. No games, no frills, no fat. The terminal is great. I only wish I knew more bash.
What I'm really lusting after is a 10" Linux tablet. So Ubuntu touch and ... what hardware? Samsung Galaxy Tab? Lenovo ?
I would also like to do the same with a phone. How would Ubuntu touch work on a Moto G6? Why? To get away from Google's spying. But I think that Linux may be able to better support office and document management apps. I'd love to have a longer conversation with you about this topic.
I love the look of Lune OS. It reminds me of HTC Sense. I would love my phone to run that software. I would also like the phone to have dedicated hardware for running its own basic software for the basic phone functions like dialing, calling, and texting.
Well… she's dead, last release seems was back in 2019.
postmarketOS had support for the UI but it seems to have been deprecated as well.
Thank you, Chris. Interesting and fun.
I have tested just about all the operating systems for the Pine phone
and the end results is it is not ready for prime time. Mechanically it
is but the closest I got to a viable operating and application system
was Ubuntu Touch, yet they still have a ways to go so my Pine 64 phone
now sits in it's box waiting for the next upgrade to Ubuntu Touch
because if anybody is going to make this work it's the team behind
Ubuntu Touch they do have the edge thanks to Canonical 5 year effort.
A new password manager video for the recent Lastpass refugees?
I don't yet have a SIM card to use with my Pine Phone, but KDE Neon utilizes opengl on this phone, so it has made a great little MAME arcade. :)
Did you install the OSes manually or is there a testing build with all of them?
good stuff bud. which is est for performance? currently I have Galaxy A11. can they install apk's or use Google Play Store? What installing an app from banking and proprietary commercial business like when they have a website to install app from Play store or Apple apps store?
I hope this wouldn't just be another fail project like so much Mobile OS before.. but for now it's still hard to get out from google, especially Maps & youtube.. there's alternatif but not good enough
Would you ever do a video on KaOS? Not a lot of great info on it.
Chris, why are you not using a Linux phone as daily driver yet?
I use my smartphone everyday for personal business. No social chat, no internet or youtube crazies or gossip period. TH-cam is fantastic. I have learn a lot of technical and DIY fixes that I would have never learned. I have been emboldened by quality youtubers like you. Home automation is overhyped and worthless. I like buttons I can press. A porch cam is useful in these days of porch pirates and wandering loonies. OEM phone manufacturers encrypt the bootloader making it difficult to repurpose old phones.
I don't need a Linux phone. I need to be able to easily install OS of my choice on any phone and this includes Linux. Also - display out needs to be supported in every segment, not only in 500$+ devices. I'll happily use my 100$ phone as a desktop replacement, as it definitely has enough horsepower to deal with browsing the web, simple office work and multimedia (if Raspbberry Pi can do that, my phone certainly could do that as well). Not being able to do so, even though HW is fully capable is one of the reasons of crazy pricing of IT components during the pandemic. People buy lots of stuff that their phone could fill in for, if only Google/manufacturers allowed it to become a desktop replacement.
Why isn't Chrome OS a part of Android yet? You should be able to dock your device in any USB-C docking station and use it as a dekstop. What's so difficult about it?
Can I use these as small portable PC. Plug an external screen and keyboard, using git, rust, java, etc in astandard way?
Which of the Linux OS's for the Pine Phone are GTK based?
Is there are a list of carriers that these OSs would be compatible with?
How do you get around banking apps in relation to qr pay or nfc pay etc?
Hi Chris,
I think this is a really interesting video.
I am wondering though if it is possible to install other OSses on older Phones.
See, I still have an older Microsoft Lumia 950XL and SONY Xperia XA2 Ultra phone which are out of Support. They are not broken or damaged in any way, but I would still like to use them.
That is why I was wondering if it is possible to install other OSses on these Phones. Either by hacking or Unlocking the hardware on it.
Thanks,
Argai74
Only thing is lagging is they all are sluggish and slow just need more snappy
Yeah, the specs on the Pinephone are a bit lacking which can cause some of it too. It is why I grabbed the new phone for next month. Hopefully it will solve the sluggishness.
@@ChrisTitusTech overall linux phones are sluggish.
I tried ubuntu touch on OnePlus 3t but still it feels like entry level android phone
It could just be because all the OSs are being loaded off an SD Card though.
Once I remember how I was fascinated by Samsung Dex and I wanted to have one. But it turned out to be tagged with a heavy price. Also, doing stuff like coding wasn't even possible on that (from what I heard from friends). Linux OS does open up the possibility of that however, the only thing that makes Linux, not as Phone's choice is because of the apps I am used to. I think I need to diverse more away from Google apps. It is tough but not impossible I know.
If any of these is gonna have any chance it must be able to run Android apps. And IMO it should handle processes like Android and not like Linux desktop i.e. just minimizing everything and putting it in the background or freezing them and when ram fills up it should just kill the last app in the background list. I don't wanna close explicitly apps on my phone.
I’m running anbox on my Manjaro phosh pinephone. Works good enough, but quite sluggish
please suggest a lightweight pdf viewer for windows
I am in the market for a new phone. But would like to apply the security settings of these phones. I am no techy person. I email, do some social on web browser, a couple apps, gps app, etc. Nothing high tech, any recommendations? I am needing a phone soon due to mine not allowing me to send or receive calls. I can't figure out why this has happened lately. But I can text message to and from and access the internet. Just no calls. Help is greatly appreciated!
Why you dont try camera on ubuntu?
i will hang onto my Samsung S8+ for 3 more years. I hope a there's a usable linux phone alternative available by then (for the mass market).
Dual boot Ub.touch. & Sailfish or /e/Os would be super choice for me .if somebody develop a tool to make this process easy (porting is a little bit difficult), well good bye google
What are we gaining in exchange for the ability to run android apps? If you care a lot about privacy then AOSP is already an option.
How did you install multiple OS into one Device?
Hey bro, please make video on how to install any linux distro. On and android phone hardware like rasberry pi
I've installed your debloat script on my pc using windows 10 pro build 21277rs but it is now slow, it has increased boot time and the desktop just freezes for about 5-10s seconds. and my windows is not updating either how do I uninstall it please help
probably easier to re-install windows.
Hi Sir, I’m having a problem with Microsoft store, every time I try to open it crashes immediately I been trying to fix it every way possible but still. Can you help?
Have anyone tested other phones like Librem from Purism? I'm looking for a high-end performing Linux phone! Pine looks to be an extremely low performing device?
Chris you have to try this phone Pro1x.
Would be cool if you could put any of these on lumia 950