Linux phones are still behind android and iPhone, but the gap shrank a surprising amount while I wasn’t looking. These are damn near usable day to day phones now! But there are still a few things that need done and I was wondering what everyone’s thoughts on these were:
1 - tap to pay. I don’t see how this can practically be done. Like, at all.
2 - android auto/apple CarPlay emulation. A Linux phones could theoretically emulate one of these protocols and display a separate session on the head unit of a car. But I dont see any kind of project out there that already does this in an open-source kind of way. The closest I can find are some shady dongles on amazon that give wireless CarPlay to head units that normally require USB cables. It can be done, but I don’t see it being done in our community.
3 - voice assistants. wether done on device or phoning into our home servers and having requests processed there, this should be doable and integrated with convenient shortcuts. Home assistant has some things like this, and there’s good-old Mycroft blowing around out there still. Siri is used every day by plenty of people and she sucks. If that’s the benchmark I think our community can easily meet that.
I started looking at Linux phones again because I loathe what apple is doing to this UI now and android has some interesting foldables but now that google is forcing Gemini into everything and you can’t turn it off, killing third party ROMS, and getting somehow even MORE invasive, that whole ecosystem seems like it’s about to march right off a cliff so its not an option anymore for me.
It’s an interesting discussion to witness in these posts: convenience vs privacy and control.
The convenience and integration you get with commercial products like IOS or Android comes at a price. Everything that matters to you on a daily basis bundled together in one convenient package means that all things which define you as a person are conveniently interconnected for corporations to sell out your data for everyone who wants it.
GPS: your current whereabouts at any moment in time and a complete history of where you have been in the past
Payment functions: what you are buying and where you have bought it
Communication (Messengers, Phone): Who you communicate with and what you are talking about
Photos and Videos: Real life evidence from all the stuff mentioned above.
Web Browsing: Interests and Needs which will be used against you in a totalitarian surveillance state, at a glance
If you in 2025 still think this convenience is there to please you as a consumer I have bad news for you.
Convenience and interconnection of services look nice and useful but at the same time they’re a privacy nightmare that makes Orwell’s 1984 look like a bedtime story for children.
What this all comes down to: Strictly airgapping the boundaries between the different services is the only way to have a modicum of privacy. Photos do not belong in a cloud controlled by someone you don’t know and should be taken from a separate device. Navigation belongs on a separate device with no internet connection, payment should not be done with a personal identifier at all (if avoidable) etc. Living your life this way might seem terribly inconvenient, but as someone who was alive at a time where all this convenience didn’t exist I can tell you it has its advantages too. You’ll rediscover what really matters.