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I've been slowly migrating a lot of screen time from phone to laptop.
Phones can do some neat things, and they're the best device class for one-handed use -- and that does matter. You aren't gonna poke at a laptop in the car to pause music or something. If you're waiting in a line, easy to pull a phone out. And they have very low power requirements.
But a laptop running Linux is just a far more-open and configurable platform.
And even aside from the software restrictions, the hardware is generally a lot more capable. It's a lot more-comfortable to type on a laptop than a phone.
A smartphone is dramatically better than a laptop at being a portable phone. Laptops don't have a super-low-power-but-a-5G-modem-is-active mode.
But for most other things...a laptop is just a considerably-more-capable option. Web browsing. Posting on Lemmy. Editing text. Games. Has better hardware expandability and connectivity. Easier to repair. Better diagnostic tools. OS doesn't EOL in a few years; I can probably run current Linux distros on truly ancient computers.
And I don't really think that the smartphone industry is going to dramatically change on this direction in the foreseeable future.
I agree on all points but the last.
Over two hundred phones have been ported to postmarketOS and every person giving it a shot will improve it. Together with grapheneOS, there are huge possibilities to mix a phones versatility with the freedom of linux. Combined with manufacturers like fairphone and pine64, phones also become more easily repairable.
The issue currently is that we have become ver accustomed to phones being very polishe. a lot of folks dont appreciate the free and open source phones and OSs due to their freakishly expensive, subscription ridden devices being optimized better.
If tech interested folks would default to repairable phones and open OSs, we would make a considerable jump towards being mainstreamable.
I‘m not saying people are at fault. Its just the way it currently is. We‘re seeing big improvements. I hope this continues.
It's not that cut and dried.
A look at the postmarketOS devices page reveals:
"the most supported devices, maintained by at least 2 people and have the functions you expect from the device running its normal OS, such as calling on a phone, working audio, and a functional UI" (aka what you need a phone to be); Device count: 5, not a single one of them the kind I can go into a regular phone shop and buy
"Devices that have had a lot of work put into them, where regressions are actively fixed, and the port is overall in a pretty good shape (read: your experience will likely be bumpy and not overly smooth); Device count: 28, largely older devices (pre-2018, so again not something I can just go and buy, and exotics like above; There is a lot of orange in the features table)
The rest is under "Testing", and the best summary of that status I can find is "All the devices in this table can at least boot postmarketOS. To monitor boot progress, you must be able to receive output from the screen, a network adapter, or a serial port". So there is a total of 33 devices right now, largely exotics and older devices, that you could reasonably use with postmarketOS for any purpose other than testing and tinkering.
I am what you'd call 'tech interested'. I tinker with Arduinos and solder electronics as part of my hobby. I do a smidgen of self-hosting and similar, though I am not nearly as far into the weeds as many people, and it's not my key interest or activity. The thing about a phone is, I need it to work, because I need it for work. I don't have time or compunction to go through the process of installing an OS the manufacturer doesn't want me to install. I don't have time to deal with a non-polished UX or capricious apps that need workarounds to install on a 'non-standard' OS (for lack of a better term). I know that's not the fault of the OS, but a choice made by phone manufacturers and app developers, but that doesn't make it any less real or an issue for me.
And I‘m with you on needing a phone that works. Sadly, wishing it were in that place right now doesnt help. On the other hand neither does just jumping in the deep end.
With open source stuff, real people need to help out, either with work (eg testing) or with money, because the „build company, make open source thing, profit“ doesnt really work that way. Companies like pine64 deserve to be flush with money because they actually care to make something thats ours.
So yes, I also have a main phone for work atm while tinkering with the postmarketOS phone until I deem it stable enough for daily use.
And thats what I suggest to people who are willing and have at least one old phone they cant or dont use anymore.
P.s.: the fact that there are this many distinct phones that do at least boot while they are barely able to pay one person for dev work is actually great news.