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[SOLVED] Will Linux Phones ever become commercially viable and decrease to a price point of 200-400 USD? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Owell1984@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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Don't say, hey android has Linux in it, yeah no, idc, I want to know how far we are from buying a Linux phone at a price point of 200 USD.

A Linux phone is one which is built completely on Linux, uses Linux apps and most important has a terminal.

I don't want a Linux Phone for privacy, although that's a great reason, but I want it for the freedom it provides me. Hell, I don't care if Android itself comes with a terminal and has similar features to Linux, I just want a Terminal which can install apps, where I can write commands and it will execute it. Complete Control on my phone and how it behaves is what I want.

I want to tell it when to sleep, when not to sleep, when to boot, when to edit a file and how, when to take a screenshot and what to do with it and where to save it, etc, etc. I hope you get the idea.

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[–] ExLisper@linux.community 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I hoped for that when PinePhone came out but now I don't know. PinePhone should be easy to clone so I hoped more similar devices will start to show up and we will see some competition and progress but as far as I know PinePhone is still the only device like that. So couple years after it was released Linux on mobile still barely works. You can get Volla Phone with Ubuntu Touch and, according to their page, you will have issues with incoming and outgoing calls. Not really what I'm looking for in a phone... And then we have the issue with apps. What I'm actually using my Android phone for:

banking apps 2FA
electric car charging - my home charger, all networks of public chargers and my car itself use android apps
moonboard app
signal
GPS

Those features are why I have a mobile phone. Everything else I can do in my PC. None of those things will have dedicated Linux app except maybe for Signal but as of today even Signal doesn't have a mobile Linux app. GPS still have issues in most Linux phones. So as of today, years after PinePhone was release Linux phones are still useless to me. Maybe one day Android emulation will work well enough to support all those things but today it's also not a real option. I'm willing to use 'crippled' phone for some time (same as I was using Linux desktop back when it didn't have many popular apps) but as of today Linux phone would be a hobby project and I still would have to do everything on Android phone so it's not a great option. And I'm not sure this will change in the next 5 years.