this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2023
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oh god, please no, mobile Linux is not yet ready ๐ฉ
and i say that as a hardcore NixOS-User
Yeah, I've been watching the mobile Linux space with interest but it's definitely not in a place yet where I would consider using it as anything more than a novelty. The PinePhone is a neat little piece of hardware but no way it can replace my LineageOS phone right now.
I was vaguely wondering how hard it would be to use a GNU/Linux laptop as a phone. If you always carry a laptop, that's more-reasonable than it might seem, and that opens things up hardware-wise a lot. There are at least three obstacles:
The touch-oriented app infrastructure is stronger on smartphone OSes.
Laptops aren't as good at idling power-wise as phones. You want to be able to listen for calls without consuming a lot of power.
Apparently, while you can get 5G modems for laptops, getting one for a computer that can do voice service is not an option today. You can do VoIP or something, but I suspect that you're looking at a latency hit then.
Can they at least handle texting? A lot of services require SMS-based 2FA (insecure as it is) these days, so a phone that can't receive texts is a complete non-starter.
I don't know that off-the-top-of-my-head, but I would guess that with normal voice service the modem may well also handle texts, as at least historically, I believe the SMSes went over space in some sort of command channel separate from the per-active-phone timeslice reserved for voice.
However, you could hypothetically get SMS service and relay that to a your laptop-phone over IP from some service that provides VoIP service. With SMSes, unlike with voice, the latency shouldn't really matter.
Looks like the ecosystem still needs another year or two, but it's going forward steadily.
How hard is it to transform the steam deck into a phone? I mean the Software is still missing, but with enough Power you can emulate apps.
Well, for starters, it doesn't have a 5G modem, which is probably kind of going to be a basic want for a phone.