I want to donate to a linux phone. I believe in linux and I want a linux phone. Maybe we can use one in very few years as a normal daily driver. It’s getting closer and closer every month.
I want to donate that we get there sooner. But which project? I’m following postmarket but I’m not sure if they are the most promising. What’s your stance on this? To which project would you give your money to accellerate it?
Edit: I don’t want to buy a phone. I want to support the phone os devs. Sorry for the bad wording.
The problem with Android is it is very invasive and in my opinion untrustworthy. How many of these Android OS’s from various vendors are not kept up to date, with unpatched vulnerabilities because they dump support to force upgrade their customers to the next model, when your phone should still be functionally viable. How many apps in the Android ecosystem are just info vacuums? It’s a very predatory ecosystem and i would prefer a libre solution to these scumbag predatory corporations. It blows my mind how people are so numb to the abuses of these companies, they won’t even consider alternatives. Iphones aren’t a viable alternative either unless you’re into joining abusive cults. I have both a Pinephone and a Librem 5, and they work fine if you don’t mind horrible battery life, i just wish we had more alternatives and I’ll put my money towards that endeavor.
Yes, Android has issues but what I’m saying is that so far Linux on phones really hasn’t been able to compete. No one want’s a phone with no camera, no GPS, no apps and terrible battery. Making Linux phones is just super difficult and sadly I don’t see it happening anytime soon. Android is a good platform with lots of hardware and apps. You have Fairphone offering long tern support, f-droid offering privacy oriented apps and LineageOS offering stable OS. Getting more phoes to support it is a better bet than getting Linux to properly work on modern phones.
This is a problem with the current industry, smartphones are conceptually no different than any other computer. It’s Qualcomm not publishing proper documentation and tools, propietary bootloaders, drivers being baked as Android packages, no specification how main processor can talk to a modem…