Everyone is talking about getting a fairphone and whatnot but I’m concerned about the open source apk communities shutting down since the market share and interest is killed by this.

The tech companies are doing a great job at making me uninterested in the hottest new phones. I used to follow the news about them and know the tech specs and stuff, because I’m a nerd and gadgets are fun and smart phones in particular are the intersection of SO much technology and engineering. Moore’s law was alive and well during all my formative years, so I am even conditioned to expect the excitement.

But lately, not only have I been ignoring what the big players are offering, I have been ignoring the phone I already have! Instead I have a PC at the end of the couch with a monitor on an arm that s swings right over my lap.

I use my phone pretty much just for music, web browser, Voyager (Lemmy on the go), and occasional texting. When I am at home I will sometimes misplace my phone for hours and just not worry about it.

I have already pushed the megacorp phone + social media experience so far out of my daily life, that if future options for open linux phones are rough around the edges and don’t have tap to pay then oh well I don’t think I care.

It’s much easier to live without the shiny new thing once you see how well your brain does when separated from it. (and you have some loved ones who are still hopelessly addicted to the scroll)

I’ll be frank with you. As long as my customers are captive on either Apple or Google platforms I can’t do shit.

Call your representatives

Hire a lobbyist to donate millions of dollars to election campaigns for your representatives

So, does it mean that degooglized android phones will suffer as well?

I have been thinking this for some time, why not just have a certified burner phone or tablet and then a free phone as your main?

Realistically most of us have to install shitty insecure apps to survive in this modern world, but that doesn’t mean all our personal data and stuff has to be on the same device.

For the cost of one brand new top model phone, you could probably get a low-mid certified device and a decent Fairphone or equivcalent.

The comments keep mentioning Linux phones, have they managed to get Linux running on mobile hardware that I won’t have to go on an archaeological dig for?

Fairphone, here I come.

This is why we should use things like GPL.

F-droid will stop working I imagine?

It’s a shame webos got bought and turned into a tv os. It would shine on modern hardware and was ‘rooted’ out of the box.

Fuck you Google. I won’t do further updates on my Pixel and the moment I run into an issue I’ll move operating systems or phones if required. Half my apps don’t come from Google Play and I don’t want the developers to have to register with Google for anything.

Starting in September 2026, Android will require all apps to be registered by verified developers in order to be installed on certified android devices.

I wonder… I know that we used to mod our consoles due to the limits of ‘certified’ official software.

I’m using Rocknix on an android handheld and it feels so powerful to be running 6.18 mainline kernel with all the modern features I want despite having to build stuff from source since the package manager only has a small list of stuff mostly meant for networking (Entware).

Even though its in beta for my device (AYn Thor), it works so well after only 4 months of development that I’m genuinely reaching the point of perma install and removing the stock Android install from the device.

I would pay cold hard cash for an OEM to do the same with PostmarketOS. Throw in proper open source kernel modules and use Steam’s upcoming waydroid fork for Android compatibility, and then throw that sucker in the market and watch Google try to litigate it out of existence.

Linux phones look more and more attractive