Hello All,
TLDR: Are there any device ecosystems that are worth exploring outside of the major hardware producers?
As we collectively watch consumer rights sink into tar, it begs the question of which mobile platforms (hardware and software ecosystems) one should be exploring.
Unfortunately, my mobile development knowledge is near zero. What options currently exist besides Android for those who want to tinker with every facet of their computing device? A good preference would be to begin learning with tools that will be around and widely accessible 10 years from now.
I’m not looking for a cutting edge, just something I can use to store music, make calls, edit photos, etc.
Thank you all for your suggestions on the previous post. The discussion led to a huge improvement in my search engine results!
Another post in the autism form, given we are here on Lemmy, and increasing collective technology literacy is generally good 😊
I must be the worst autist on planet Earth, because to “tinker with every facet of” my mobile phone is about the last thing I want to do.
So, definitely not iOS, because I’m pretty happy with iOS; also there’s no expectation of LARPing as a sysadmin for my phone, precisely because that simply isn’t possible to any meaningful extent.
Since my latest special interest has been compilers, previous obsessions about digital logic design snowballed into a curiosity about mobile tinkering :-)
I think when I tormented myself with Arch and went through half the system binaries it helped me develop a tolerance to computing torture
You should check out Gentoo. It sounds like it would be right up your alley, you learn a lot about compiling.
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Right now I use a pixel phone running graphene OS. Given that Google is about to kill side loading though I’d recommend waiting a bit, there’s a rumour that fairphone is working on something with graphene as well.
Ooooh fairphone with graphene? Sounds amazing ngl
thanks for informing of that rumor.
i have to hope for this too, since i am now regretting my choice of Graphene OS+pixel over fairphone.
however, i am very pessimistic about fairphone’s ability to source a secure SOC that would satisfy the Graphene OS team at a financially/eco’ly sustainable price point. at least within the next five years.
if GOS updates turn out to be impossible after the android changes, 5 years is a very long time to wait while using a decreasingly secure device.
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Maybe a linux phone. There’s also been some interesting devices featured on liliputing which have mesh network capabilities.
https://calyxinstitute.org/help/phones Do you mean something like this?
Fairphone seems interesting, but is not officially supproted in the US. I have seen there are workarounds… I did research recently for my wife and figured it would be too janky for her, but I’m going to strongly consider them in a couple years when I need a new phone.
For now I’ve got a Sony Xperia. Which has mostly been good - bit of a weird aspect ratio, but I love having a headphone jack and micro SD card. However, I just saw a headline today that Sony is changing some of the apps that control special features to now be paid… So if I had bought this phone specifically to use it as a monitor for my camera, I now have to pay $50/year. I don’t have any such camera and don’t plan on ever using that feature, but it WAS something advertised as included when I bought the phone that looks like it’s getting locked behind a subscription retroactively. Not as evil as Google or Samsung or Apple, but I have a hard time recommending Xperia’s now.
Honestly buying a phone kind of feels like a Faustian bargain these days. They’re incredibly powerful tools necessary to function in the modern world, but it’s nearly impossible to get one without selling a piece of your soul.
