I don’t know why they made the background blur so subtle. Even I, as a non-UI/UX designer understand that readability is important. Apart from the slightly harsh edges, I think Liquid Glass looks solid. Way better than hideous flat design.
EDIT: To clarify, “Liquid Glass” looking solid does not mean the appearance seeming to not be liquid. It is, in fact, liquid.
cries in firefox os
When I first saw this… This is like a very very bad free Android icon pack. Makes the phone straight unusable. Can you actually switch to the normal “theme”? My wife unfortunately has an iPhone and I, as an IT guy in the family, usually get blamed for OS updates on her phone, whenever something becomes different. This won’t go down easily :)
I sure hope so. Additionally I hope apple will start paywalling core functions.
What I mean to say: lineageOS works well, the phones are cheap and very usable. The OS is free and the more people use it the better it will become.
I am writing this comment on an ubuntu touch phone, it is very usable surprisingly, been on it for months now
Are you in the US? If yes, which band (GSM/CDMA) and which phone? Ive been wanting to get off of pixels & Android for ages but I’m scared of not being able to actually use my phone as a phone.
Turkey, fairphone, turkcell currently. It runs android apps just fine
Are you just using web login for everything then? Like for banking and such?
How do you navigate Incompatibilities?
My banking app works just fine but probs specific to mine. android apps run just well. I don’t have much problems to navigate
Holy fuck that looks like ass
It’s liquid ass
I’m very open to being an early adopter of mobile Linux phones. I’ve been unable to because of a couple of factors. I last seriously checked about half a year ago so take this with a pinch of salt.
- Limited support for specific models. This means that the phone will work as a computer but won’t have the correct drivers for gyro, sim and whatnot.
- Lack of extensive driver support. Phones turn off components to save power, this was not supported the last time I checked and halves the battery life compared to stock android.
- Waydroid support incomplete. Many apps will work but some apps will bug out. Waydroid also has performance issues so it’s not as good as WINE for example.
- Not big enough community. A lot of models are maintained by a single dev that checks in every blue moon.
To get a Linux phone to be competitive on performance we’ll need to get driver APIs and component lists open sourced so it’ll be easier to gather the appropriate info and make drivers.
There has been tons of progress though, Gnome and KDE have really strong touch support now and the apps scale decently.
It’s coming but now fairphone is the only phone that openly supports Linux mobile distros and is open sourced.
I’m very open to being an early adopter of mobile Linux phones.
vs
the rest of your post
What you are trying to say is you are very open to be a late adopter of mobile Linux phones, adopting a Linux phone when it actually works.
Early adopters are those who tough out the crap. The issue with Linux phones is they’ve been stuck in early adopter land for the last 20 years.
I’m up for installing Linux on my last phone when it’s added to the list of devices that have official/unofficial support. I’m not going to install anything until WiFi and mobile data is supported tbh.
I tried installing Ubuntu touch for fun a couple of years ago but it didn’t boot. I just want to get to a point where I can install the OS and send bug reports.
I get what you are saying, but unless you buy a specific linux phone with some semblance of professional support (e.g. Pinephone) this won’t really get better. The best time to buy a Linux phone was a bit over 10 years ago when Canonical still actually supported Ubuntu Touch. That was pretty much the last time there was any serious effort in that regard. Since then it’s just been hobbyists doing hobby things in hobby quality.
In my case my country simply doesn’t get any
Lack of extensive driver support. Phones turn off components to save power, this was not supported the last time I checked and halves the battery life compared to stock android.
The lack of extensive driver support is real, but I’ve actually doubled my battery’s power with Lineage OS just by removing bloatware
LineageOS is based on android so it gets a lot of goodies with it.
I’d like to use a Linux phone, but it has to run Android apps though. They Gotta find a way, else it’s never gonna happen.
I mean Waydroid runs Android apps on linux. Its currently the only way to play Roblox on linux with only 1 layer of trust (Roblox itself) (Sober exists but theres no source code, meaning you have to trust Roblox and SoberDevs code)
It’d theoretically be possible to run a straight GNU/Linux tablet or laptop with a 5G cell modem for data, use SIP service and a GNU/Linux dialer, and then run Waydroid for any specific Android apps that one has to run.
Idle power usage is gonna be a lot higher than on a phone, though.
And a lot of Android apps are made with a touch interface and small screen in mind and are aware of things in a cell environment, like “only update X when on WiFi”. Not really common for GNU/Linux software to do that.
It’d theoretically be possible to run a straight GNU/Linux tablet or laptop
“GNU/Linux” is the full way to say what sometimes gets shortened to “Linux” — a family of operating systems based on the Linux kernel and a lot of software from the GNU project. This explicitly distinguishes it from Android, which also used the Linux kernel.
The former is not, in 2025, typically used to run smartphones. The latter is the most-common smartphone operating system in the world. If you buy a smartphone that isn’t an Apple smartphone, it almost certainly runs Android.
with a 5G cell modem for data
5G is the current generation of cell phone radio protocols. Communicating directly via voice over this protocol is not something that I believe is available to GNU/Linux in 2025. However, it can send non-voice data.
, use SIP service
SIP is a protocol for running voice over a data connection to the Internet. If you have an Internet connection, you can use SIP. There are companies, SIP service providers, which will, for a fee, provide a phone number at which one may be called or call others from a computer that can make use of SIP.
and a GNU/Linux dialer,
A dialer is the piece of software that on a smartphone, a user would probably call something like “the phone app”.
and then run Waydroid for any specific Android apps that one has to run.
Waydroid is a piece of software to run Android apps on a GNU/Linux system.
Idle power usage is gonna be a lot higher than on a phone, though.
Phone hardware and software has had a lot of work put into optimizing it for very low power usage. A larger device, like a laptop or tablet, will probably also have a larger battery, but it will consume more power as well.
And a lot of Android apps are made with a touch interface
Smartphones, due to physical space constraints in one’s pocket, typically have an entire side be a touchscreen. They do not have a keyboard. In general, software optimized for this works somewhat differently from software optimized for use with a keyboard and mouse.
Most GNU/Linux software is written with the intent that it be used on a system that almost certainly has a mouse and keyboard available. Most Android software is written with the intent that it be used on a system with a touchscreen available.
This means that even if one can run GNU/Linux software on a phone, much of the (large) collection of GNU/Linux software available will not be designed with an interface ideal for use on a phone.
and small screen in mind and are aware of things in a cell environment, like “only update X when on WiFi”. Not really common for GNU/Linux software to do that.
Smartphones have two widely-used mechanisms of accessing the Internet — connecting to the often slower cell network, or to a much-shorter range, but faster, WiFi network. Many people connect their smartphone to a WiFi network at some times and a cell network at others. Because this is so common, a lot of Android software has behavior designed to support this and act more-appropriately, like having an option to only transfer lots of data when on a WiFi netwprk. This is not the case for most GNU/Linux software.
Oh you misunderstood, I already know all this.
The comic is to point out why it’s difficult to grow adoption of a non-android / Apple smartphone.
Even what you think is a simplified explanation is, unfortunately, too complex for most as well. Tech literacy is REALLY bad in many places. Most don’t know what an “operating system” is, in many cases don’t know what a hard drive is (of any kind). Software is basically magic to them. Your explanation is great for people who already know the basic concepts, but sadly most of the population isn’t even at that level.
And this isn’t only the elderly btw, younger people are just as clueless these days because many schools don’t do computer classes anymore.
I feel like its implied by being on lemmy that you already know the basics and most of what was described in the reply though, making your point seem out of place without prefacing you meant the general public being able to use Linux phones and not just lemmings
like “only update X when on WiFi”.
Most Linux software only updates when the user tells the package manager to update it.>
I think you’re misunderstanding it. Most mobile apps have sensible defaults regarding data and battery usage, for instance, not updating (their feeds/server status/whatever networked service the app uses) if not in WiFi.
No, I think they understood. Android needs those settings because the process is automated. A Linux device would probably not automate updates like that and let users choose when to do so, which means they can just not do it until they get to WiFi.
Package manager update >< background information update
Unless your chat app requires a package manager update to retrieve new messages, we’re talking different things.
I’m talking about stuff like pulling down new podcast episodes and such.
oh yeah it’s weird how we’ve never figured out how to do that on pc
edit: /sArr can do it
I know Gnome has an option to mark a connection as metered, no idea what exactly that does though.
Idle power usage is not a lot higher…
I dunno, man.
Android and all its apps have had a lot of work done on keeping stuff low-power.
The GNU/Linux laptop I’m currently typing this on is drawing about 10W (granted, with the screen on, which is larger). The Android phone in my pocket is drawing (checks) a little under half a watt.
Granted, I didn’t choose the laptop hardware to try to minimize power usage; you can certainly get laptops that will draw less. But there have been a lot of engineers banging on Android power usage for a long time.
And stuff like auto-suspension of background apps using CPU time and stuff doesn’t have a GNU/Linux analog that I’m aware of.
There’s a GNU/Linux phones community here on the Threadiverse at !linuxphones@lemmy.ca. Even the phones they talk about there — where the hardware is much less powerful than typical current Android hardware — don’t have amazing battery life as phones go.
My tablet draws 4.5w at peak, at low loads it draws almost nothing (x86_64 tablet), maybe it’s the design of the laptop/tablet, but mine just consumes the same even with waydroid on, maybe setting efficiency in the BIOS help, but idk. On windows it just consumes a power plant every minute, linux is just efficient.
I’m always surprised more people still don’t know about it but FuriLabs does have an offering which I’ve heard does this pretty well: https://furilabs.com/shop/flx1/
And some more info. (albeit, 9 months old): https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1fa1ljn/furilabs_flx1/
It is using Halium but, otherwise, it’s proper GNU+Linux with decent spec.s.
I really want one of these.
You and me both, swelter; you and me both…
SailfishOS can do that. They have a sandbox for android that you should not really notice as a end user.
How good is it with background activities?
About the only thing holding me back is that my phone runs a continuous glucose monitor, constantly connecting with a small sensor in my arm. That all quietly dying in the background would just… not be an option.
A phone I’m excited for is the Bigme Hibreak Pro. Its got an e-paper screen that refreshes at a tolerable speed, and you can install apps from the Google Play store which run just fine. Will it ever play video smoothly? Fuck no. Is it cool? Also no. Is it horrifically expensive? Surprisingly, also no.
Bigme has also made some exciting (but way too expensive) progress in the desktop computer world by making a 60hz eink monitor. It frankly is terrible at most things people do on their home computers, but it can keep up just fine with the boring work stuff like Vim and the MS Office Suite. Am I willing to pay almost $2k for a monitor for work? Absolutely not, but I’m glad it exists.
I’d honestly like to have an e-ink monitor because I do a lot of coding and writing, without 60hz, just like e-book with speedy updates over empty space. It can be a secondary one dedicated to just these tasks. But the lack of demand makes it too exclusive for my pocket.
A program like Wine, but to run Android apps on a Linux machine would be great. It would use a lot less battery power than a virtual machine.
You mean…waydroid? It’s literally a translation layer running on a container, AFAIK. Then you can add an additional ARM emulation plugin for specific apps that don’t have x86 versions.
Oh I thought Waydroid was a VM. But still, it’s a lot more recent than wine. So is it really fully compatible with most apps?
It’s…kinda like a VM? But without the VM part. It runs in a container, AFAIK, so it’s using a lot less resources than a full blown VM. It works for a lot of apps. And the ARM emulation plugin helps a lot, too. But then again, I usually stick to mostly FOSS apps, and refuse to install the gapps suite. So, no Play Store. I can still install apps via Aurora, but there’s a problem there between Waydroid and Aurora, which leads to frequent crashes (of Aurora) when trying to install an app. But once the app is installed (you can download it by other means, and just install it into waydroid by running something like ‘waydroid app install myfile.apk’.
waydroid?
Waydroid with a ROM with GAPPS? I use lineageos on my linux tablet, a lot of android games run just fine.
Wait… can you please explain?
Waydroid is a android translator(?) for linux on wayland, it runs android applications in a translation layer (android has linux under it), so you can install a ROM (there’s a default one without google applications like google play services, but you can search a ROM with it) and run android applications like any phone with a custom ROM.
Edit: The tablet with waydroid running:
Muito interessante, valeu!
!suddenlycaralho@lemmy.eco.br moment.
Pqp, fui descoberto.
adorei que essa comunidade tambem existe no lemmy 💚
Can waydroid run on postmarketOS?
Yes.
Waydroid works to run android apps on my ubuntu touch
I am so considering starting to experiment with an Linux phone. But it will be a long time until it can do contactless payments, bank apps, safe biometrics and heavy apps. Now that I think about it,it shouldn’t be impossible.
I would say give up on contactless if you ever want to use a Linux phone. In addition to the fact that if youre in the US Google/Apple/Samsung are definitely selling your spending habits to the highest bidder, I see no future short of world peace where banks agree to work with FOSS devs to create a secure enough system for wireless payment to work.
Get a thin case and put your card in it numbers facing in. It works the same :P
Sorry but having to carry a wallet is a big trade-off for me. I would give up a lot of data for the convenience I have been enjoying for years of not carrying a single card.
Do you regularly use more than one card?
When apple pay became a thing (and gov wallet app soon after) my distilled wallet had three bank cards and 1 ID.
My phone wallet now has 10 bank cards, gov ID, drivers license and 4 loyalty cards and 1 transit related info card.
10 bank cards? how many accounts do you have 😵💫
I can’t speak to living that lifestyle, but I can at least share that there are options for loyalty cards on Android/Linux. I just have my one bank card I use and my ID. I bring my wallet when I know I need something in it.
SailfishOS (on Sony Xperia 10) and UbuntuTouch exist. Also the PinePhone but that is low low end.
Waiting for a stable release for OnePlus 7.
what phone is that? is that what Apple’s liquid glass looks like?
This is only a Control center thing AFAIK.
Is that an iOS app? I’ve searched and found references to “control center” for multiple OS. I have no idea what phone or OS is shown in the picture and can’t guess by the comments, because I don’t know how many meta levels of snark are involved!
It’s the thing you pull down.
It’s never going to be the year of the Linux phone until there’s one that actually has specs to do the things the majority of people want
Thus far, all the Linux phones I’ve seen had laughable specs. There’s the Liberux NEXX, but it’s still at the concept stage
It’s also $1500.
Step one is making it exist, step 2 is making it marketable and scalable. Expecting this for competitive pricing in the early stages is unrealistic. Until there’s a real market for truly open phones pushed with millions in marketing to go along with competitive hardware that takes ages to develop, the well-priced phone will remain laden with unauthorized changes, tracking and advertising. This is all before you get software developers on board before it actually sells to people.
Unless all you need are phone calls or text messaging. That could probably be done at a reasonable price. There’s probably already several decent projects out there to homebrew that.
PinePhone is available at half the price, and they’re striving for the same thing.
Great example. But if you’ve seen videos on them, most people wouldn’t be willing to use it. It’s not about getting nerds like us to buy one, it’s about getting someone used to the latest iPhone to use it.
Where are this video? I’d like to see it, honestly.
I’ve tried searching for it, and I couldn’t even find any real person (outside of ads) actually getting their hands on it.
Many come up when searching Pinephone Pro on YouTube. I don’t want to link any in particular because I can’t vouch for them, but they’re definitely out there. And they’re all about 3 years old.
I watched a few when it was new and it was clear it was for geeks. The killer for me is banking. Until banks are onboard with mobile check deposit, I probably can’t see them fully taking off.
deleted by creator
Perhaps closer to what you’re thinking of? https://furilabs.com/shop/flx1/
Trolltech made a great phone, apparently.
Wasn’t it always the year of Linux phones like Android has huge share of market and it is running Linux kernel but with Google spyware. Now it’s just Apple Spyware.
Lineage OS is android without google spy
without the proprietary google services package yes, but not entirely free from google. one obv example is connectivity check that pings google is still there as far as im aware (please feel free to correct)
I’ve been using custom ROMs since Cyanogen Mod 14. I know. But still the share of google spyware is high.
Way back when, I had a Palm Pixie, which ran WebOS. While it wasn’t FOSS, if you turned on developer mode, you would have full terminal access to the Linux system it was running.
I think HP eventually made it open source and now LG uses it for their TVs. But that phone’s OS was one of the best ones I had seen at the time.
WebOS, PalmOS, and Sailfish OS are the only mobile OSes I’ve ever not disliked. I wish Jolla seemed a little more trustworthy so I could switch to Sailfish as my main phone os
The Palm Pre 2 was, by far, the best phone I have ever used in my life. Then HP abandoned it, like they did everything else worthwhile.
It’s crazy how hp made great computers, made the best calculators on the market, bought the best mobile device manufacturer, and then were just like “wait let’s make awful printers and computers instead”
They abandoned the consumer market for business consulting and enterprise solutions (both of which, by the way, they suck at). They did this, because it makes more money. After all, if you’re going to suck at everything, whole-ass it, don’t half-ass it.
Wtf is this
Apple’s godawful new OS style. They call it “Liquid Glass” and it makes no UX sense.
*liquid ass
How are yous upposed to seeanything ?
iOS developer here and I would switch in a heartbeat but unfortunately it’s not about the OS, it’s about the software that runs on the OS.
Most devs wont build for an OS that doesn’t have an audience. And users will put up with a lot of OS junk for their apps.
So it’s gonna be up to someone to make a linux phone and use their wallet to kickstart a software ecosystem. One won’t happen without the other, at least not at the scale of Google or Apple.
You’d need it to be able to run android apps
SailfishOS
That’s not FOSS
Is there even one Mobile OS with full functionality that is 100% FOSS? Functionality implies NFC and Banking DRM Content watching Third party app install Phone Calls The default functionalities.
True. The entire OS is not FOSS https://docs.sailfishos.org/Services/Development/Sailfish_OS_Source/
I don’t know why we can’t just build off of Android. Just build one without google play services and good alternatives.
Because Android AOSP gets cutting down by Google. They remove more features year by year and make them proprietary.
Why can’t we just maintain the older bits ourselves
