Today 10 years ago I went to Poland to buy a Phone with pre installed #Firefox OS on. The Phone was a Alcatel One, so very shitty. Two years later I installed Firefox OS on my Nexus 5 instead.
It was a very good concept, but sadly rolled out on too shitty hardware so it never caught on.
oh wow, i had forgotten! I too was hopeful…
This makes me nostalgic for my Palm Pre and webOS.
Me too. I loved webOS. Favorite phone I’ve ever had.
I never understood why they targetted low end hardware with a tech stack that’s notoriously slow (web).
This was exactly my (dumb, layman) view of things - great idea hobbled from the outset by the marriage of slow web apps with slower hardware.
To keep it affordable?
Then use something more efficient than the web stack. In the end, Android ran better on the same devices and had better software support.
I was thinking of getting one of these when they were very cheap. I really wanted FF OS and other alternatives to succeed or at least exist, because Android was just never very good and I foresaw how Google is just gonna abuse its monopoly and make life difficult for everyone.
But Mozilla was like “now it’s not the right time to introduce a mobile OS” - wtf, when if not exactly at the time when markets were still forming? It was now or never, and Mozilla threw in the towel so quickly it almost feels like someone got a nice paycheck from Google or something.
And while I never got that phone at the end, it did look like it had some decent basis and ideas in it that could’ve developed into something cool. Alas.
What ever happened to the Ubuntu mobile OS?
Canonical stopped development and ubports took over
If you are still interesting in Linux phone, consider looking at PinePhone Pro. I would recommend it only for experience users and the phone experience is far from Android, but software is catching up. Check @linuxphones
P.S. writing this comment from PPP :)
I know about the PinePhone Pro and I am quite experienced.
But even hardcore hairy dude like Drew Devault disavowed it (source).It seems that the main complaint is calls and SMS. I use different distro (Arch, btw) with FOSS firmware for the modem and calls / SMS work fine for me.
bad link ?
Sorry, forgot that I need to use exclamation mark: [email protected]
:)
Nah. just not properly linked instance.
Or SailfishOS! Has Android layer where apps can run seamlessly (without some hardware stuff support, like fingerprint etc.).
Want to mention that on GNU/Linux we also have Waydroid that provides Android app support :)
I know about that, but from my experience nothing really compares to the ease of use of the SFOS AlienDalvik. Though something may have changed since I last checked (1.5 years ago).
I mostly wrote it for other readers.
Also used both, I would say they are similar. But Waydroid can’t forward notifications to the main OS as in Sailfish. Sad that AlienDalvik is not FOSS :(
Are there any foss options for non-tech people?
If you mean GNU/Linux - no. But you can buy a phone that supports Lineage OS. It’s Android distribution, so you will have everything you used to have on your phone and the OS will be fully FOSS. Or even maybe you current phone is already supported. Check their website.
Thank you. This seems to be the best option at the moment. Right now I’m stuck on iPhone which I bought without realizing how restrictive their OS was. However I don’t have the budget or interest in buying a new device currently, so I’m just keeping an eye on my options.
Fira font <3
I thought this was a urban myth or a collective hysteria.
I would love another, more privacy focused os. I’ve tried graphene, etc, but something altogether different would be cool.
It would be great, but a big problem that I see with a new, completely different OS is… the apps.
If a new OS not based on Android launches tomorrow, it will have no 3rd party apps, and it will be very hard to catch momentum without WhatsApp, Youtube, Netflix, Spotify, TikTok, Facebook,
TwitterX (🙄), Uber… all of those apps that most people use their phone for 90% of the time.It’s what killed Windows Phone. There was a period of about 6 seconds to get in on the commercial phone OS game, and it was long gone by the time Windows made a legitimate effort (Windows Mobile phones didn’t really count - they were stuck with legacy PDA software).
Honestly, the AT&T exclusivity and the late rollout of the app store (iPhones initially only had the factory apps) were the opening that let Android in.
deleted by creator
I have a de-googled LineageOS (absolutely no google packages or play services installed) with microg and Aurora Store. I use N26 and it works fine.
I know the feeling. I tried using a de-googled LineageOS for a while, but it just wasn’t viable because today’s world simply isn’t compatible with this lifestyle any more. I wish this technology had existed back in 2010, because I would have been completely free of Google. Living without all the fancy apps and stuff would have been fine, but living without money… that’s where I draw the line.
Can’t you just use the bank website instead of an app?
This is what we do in my house. Pretty easy.
No. All of the fucking banks make their own shitty app for 2FA, no way around it, at least in Europe. They are buggy, bad UX and less secure than simple TOTP but have their own dev departments to employ. I hate them with a passion.
Thats unfortunate ☹️ both of my banks provide a PWA, one provided a hardware 2FA device once I went in and told them my device is rooted
some banks only have apps
Yikes. I’d change banks
deleted by creator
What bank do you use that doesn’t have a website?
Have you tried using the aurora store?
I was pretty happy with my lineage-os install that had the play store as the only google service. F-droid for other apps, nextcloud for cloud+calendar. But you need an unlockable phone and a bank that allows unlocked phones for their app.
If its only cuz of the unlocked bootloader have a look at DivestOS, Graphene or Calyx
Edit: i use my ING Banking App on my Pixel 6 with graphene and before in my OP6 with Divest
Off-topic but needs to be said: fuck banking apps.
i gotta say this: dont bank on your phone. downvote me all you want but i dont think its secure. its almost just as easy to do it in a computer
deleted by creator
why exactly is it mandatory ?
Your phone is probably the most secure device you own, provided you don’t download shit like TikTok.
true, *unless you are running a proprietry os, so, most normie phones.
i really hope these alt-mobile OS’s take off, i know theres things like pinephone and kde mobile but they’re still a little bit rough around the edges last i checked… at the same time tho maybe i should do some more digging around. i imagine someone’s made a daily-driveable alternate OS for phones at this point
Didn’t Raspberry Pi have a DIY phone a few years back? I’ve always had that in the back of my mind to try but I’m not a tech person.
I remember using multiROM to install Lineage OS, Sailfish OS and Firefox OS all at the same time on my Nexus 4. I wished there was some kind of software today that you could dual boot an android phone.
What is this? A phone for ants?
I remember a time when all of the companies were striving to make cell phones as small as possible. But as soon as touch screens came out that trend reversed.
When we realized we could watch porn on them.
The nexus 5 was peak size for a phone imo, it’s a nightmare trying to find a decent 5" phone nowadays.
I got a oneplus one, that was good too
I want to see something like this but without the bezels
Iphone mini apparently is pretty good.
decent 5" android phone
Reminds me of the original 3.5” iPhone. Absolutely tiny by todays standards.
I once had the Nokia N9 with MeeGo on it.
https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N9
It was a great phone, but sadly there was little support for (3rd party) apps. I had it for like 3 months, could still get a buck for it (wish I’d kept it) and bought something else with the money.
The N9 was killed by Stephen Elop, the new CEO coming straight from Microsoft with a mission: get Nokia bought off by MS.
Right from the start, he ran an explicit counter-advertisement campaign against the N9 and Meego. Whatever commercial success it would be, this would be the first and last device running MeeGo from Nokia, and there would be no support for MeeGo.
Nokia was to embrace Windows mobile OS, that turned out to be a total disaster. But indeed, after he tanked Nokia, it became cheap enough to bought by MS, as Nokia got both cheap and undsirable by any other big player due to its binding to MS bad mobile OS, and Elop got his VP status back there.
This is a shame in the history of mobile phones and OS!
Later, some former Nokia would start their own phone company reusing part of MeeGo. Jolla was born.
It was summer 2011, I remember Windows Phone shops here in my area around that time, which sold something similar hardware-wise. I bought (I think) a Galaxy, but switched to the iPhone 4s when it was released here.
I miss my N82. So simple, had my music and SSH on in it. All I needed back then.
Reminds me of the pre phone/tablet line with webOS and the way hp or better their short lived CEO Leo Apotheker killed it. That was such a shame great devices and great os.
I remember Ars Technica had an article or series on his bad decisions called “Apotheker needs an Apothecary” and lit into him for all the dumb things he was saying and doing. I just don’t see how you can have the manufacturing and branding behemoth HP was then, get giftwrapped Palm and webOS while RIM was still in the process of imploding, and fumble the bag so hard
That home button is really cute. Reminds me of the iPod Nano 7
OS aside, the Nexus 5 was boss.
