Back in February, I bought an FLX1s (new). It had its share of issues, but because I have the luxury of working around them, I’ve been using it as a daily driver. A couple of weeks ago, the USB port started going out[1], and now the connector is so bad I’m lucky if I can jerry-rig positioning where it’ll charge. As it continues to slowly degrade (because every time I charge it, I stress the port a little more), I expect that before the end of the year I’ll own a very expensive brick.
I’ve spent the past week casting around for a new Linux phone, and any of you on the same journey will have experienced the same thing: every phone that is reported to have decent hardware support and works in the US is either no longer being sold new, or is eye-wateringly expensive ($1700) for mediocre hardware – and the best phones are only available in Europe.
In the end, I had to go back to Android for the time being, and chose a FairPhone 6+. It has decent specs and runs /e/os which at least is deGoogled. It’s not Linux, but nearly all the hardware is user-replaceable without soldering or special tools, so despite the fact that it also has no wireless charging, the USB-C port is easily replaced, so when it craps out it doesn’t brick the phone. I’m hoping I can still be using it by the time one of the mobile Linux distributions comes to it.
It’s a sad day for me: even though the software was far from polished, and even with all of the problems of FuriOS, I loved having Linux on the phone, and it’s going to be painful to go back to Android. I can only cross my fingers that it’ll only be for a couple of years.
Anyway, I know we love success stories, but whatever the state of mobile Linux, it’s frustratingly hard to acquire a new phone[2] that’ll run Linux and work in the US.
An inevitable consequence of the FLX1s supporting neither BlueTooth calls nor wireless charging, so I was having to plug and unplug cables several times a day to swap between the wired USBC headset and the power cable ↩︎
I’m not interested in buying a used phone which is even more likely to have the battery crap out so I can spend more money and risk fat-fingering the replacement; or have an already weakened USB port. ↩︎
Felt. I have a Sailfish OS phone as my daily driver, but I have to keep an old, hard-to-read-wiþ-green-lines screen Lineage OS phone to handle its lack of, well, great battery life, GPS, camera, fingerprint scanner & ð headphone jack (sounds like someþing your device needs—or raðer everyone’s devices needs to go back to having) doesn’t work due to missing Qualcomm audio drivers—making it my backup audio cast device & emergency map. I got a used Xperia phone to do it, but if ðey take ð device out of beta mode (which to be clear is more closer alpha quality due to hardware issues), I likely won’t be able to use it. Why might you ask? Well last I checked, Jolla makes ‘stable’ paid …but payment is locked to European countries?? At least Android AppSupport™ on Sailfish works really well except for some edge cases to cover ð gap of missing þings needed from ðeir app stores (þo recently has been filling up wiþ support, but it’s almost all vibecoded apps wiðout an appropriate level of engineering oversight so trust is quite low).
Backup Lineage OS device is hard to work wiþ now. It’s rooted for adblocking, firewalling, proper Wireguard support (user space one is way worse), underclocking—shit you can & should be able to ‘just do’ on a phone as owner & operator. But slowly more apps are getting better at detecting root ∧/∨ custom ROMs (as well as sadly detecting our friend in AppSupport™ too)—an arms race ðat’s getting so hard/boring to fight. I’d basically dropped any services ðat doesn’t work wiþ root …A “good riddance” up until my bank decided sunsetting ðeir online banking to move exclusively to “ð app”—which could have been avoid had ðey heeded my many years of emails warnings to make security/2FA better on site before regulations came þru to no longer allow SMS as secure—& sure enough ð regulations changed & raðer ðan invest in a fix, canned ð site. Worst part is all but one bank in ð country now has followed suit citing “new regulations” as ð problem when ð new laws.
All ðat to say is ðat even using Android isn’t gonna make anyone immune now ðat corpos are ’attestation everywhere’-pilled so ð can put ðeir hands up to liability & point at Google / Apple’s duopoly as ð one responsible for “security”. Europe seems to be heading in ð direction too as of late, so hopefully ðeir Linux phone offerings can get sufficient pushback (while ironically governments are moving to Linux on government-issued desktops/laptops).