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  • imminent_nebula@lemmy.caEnglish
    3·
    14 days ago

    Never heard of Droidian, but I’ve been loooking into the status of Linux phones lately. Mind giving a run down of your experience with it?

    • roundabout@feddit.orgEnglish
      1·
      13 days ago

      I am very pleased. It runs all the apps a desktop GNU/Linux runs. There are many apps from GNOME which have a small enough window, they aren’t very advanced, but the only way to get better apps is to actually use the phone with them (I am actually planning on writing some apps, whose GUI should fit this small screen too). However:

      1. Waydroid exists, though it is much worse than on a PC for some reason. It cannot play sounds, it does not have a shared clipboard and it crashes the compositor when trying to play a video. I am primarily using it for WhatsApp (which also drains the battery a lot). But it’s Meta’s fault: if they allowed us, I would have been writing a custom client.
      2. The camera app is pretty basic, I am probably going to write a new one including manual controls (tell me if you’re interested). Most normal GNU/Linux camera apps will not open the camera, because it is not bridged to libcamera apparently, though it will probably be bridged at some point.
      3. You do not really feel that you have Android drivers, they are pretty well masked.
      4. The proximity sensor is buggy (often, when the phone rang in a pocket, it would not allow lighting up the screen until the ring ended) and so I disabled it completely.
      5. Battery life is actually OK (without Waydroid running), but I haven’t measured. What’s impressive is that the phone never suspends, and the battery is still OK. With WhatsApp in Waydroid, it is short.
      6. As a phone, it is reliable, it does not drop calls.
      7. Of course, it is not treacherous computing and so it doesn’t pass Play ‘Integrity’. If you’re in the EU, in 2028 banks will be required to provide non-smartphone access to services (see the new PSR), but we have to see if the new ‘age verification’ app will not do the opposite. I am not accepting it on Android/iOS, as it should be possible to have the same functionality by using a web portal with a smart card reader (see my GitHub thread about it).

      Yes, there are disadvantages, but I am enjoying the vastly greater freedom and it’s the first time I can say that my phone isn’t working against me.