I Bought a Linux Phone in 2026
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Sure, the year of the Linux Desktop might be around the corner, but what about the year of the Linux Phone!

  • sveltecider@lemmy.caEnglish
    11·
    3 days ago

    How comfortable is it to use graphene on a day to day basis? Considering getting a spare pixel. But that seems a hell of a lot more practical than a linux phone.

    • 01011@monero.townEnglish
      1·
      2 days ago

      You can run sandboxed google play services which allows you full usage of the vast majority of google play store apps.

    • poweruser@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      1·
      2 days ago

      It feels just like a regular phone to me. If I handed someone my phone they wouldn’t know it was GrapheneOS. The only thing they would fund weird is my launcher (KISS, which is certainly not for everyone) but that was something I installed myself.

      One pain point is that my banking apps didn’t work out of the box. That was solved by checking an unassuming box in the individual app settings. For some banks it might still not work (mostly for countries that have security key devices, I believe).

      I don’t have the adaptive battery charge feature that Pixels normally have, where it slows charging in certain conditions, to improve battery longevity. GrapheneOS’s version of this is just a simple option to stop charging at 80%.

      Probably my camera is less good that stock Pixel, but I can’t tell. It seems fine to me

    • arcterus@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      5·
      3 days ago

      Generally there are no real problems. If you’re fine with mostly stock AOSP, you should be fine with GrapheneOS.

      If you use Google Pay, you’re out of luck. There are alternatives for that depending on where you live though (mostly in Europe, in the US there’s no other option AFAIK). Rarely an app won’t work, but usually fiddling with some security settings for the app will fix it. Very rarely an app won’t work at all because (like Google Wallet) it uses Play Integrity and requires a level that requires Google to certify the OS.

      Pretty much the only thing I miss is the ability to do NFC payments.

        • 18107@aussie.zoneMEnglish
          1·
          3 days ago

          I can’t say for GrapheneOS, but NFC still works on my Fairphone 6 with /e/OS without play services.
          I can’t use NFC for payments, but I also can’t log in to my bank’s app without play services.

        • arcterus@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          5·
          3 days ago

          They’d work. You might need to install play services for those, not totally sure (Google has shoved an annoying amount of functionality into play services). NFC itself is functional, but various apps that support NFC may not work because of Play Integrity.

    • Frank@lemmy.caEnglish
      12·
      3 days ago

      Motorola announced today a partnership with GrapehenOS. Soon, we will no longer need Google Pixel.

      I’m not a heavy phone user, but I have GrapheneOS installed. I think it requires a bit of tech knowledge, but it’s cool.

    • bananapinball@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      5·
      3 days ago

      I’ve used the PinePhone, it was a fun geeky object to have. Most of my issues where related to the screen-size/format which most apps don’t handle well. Yes, apt/yay install <almost anything> does work… but you end up struggling to use it.

      PostmarketOS with sxmo was the most usable.

      Compared to GrapheneOS or /e/os, it’s day and night. You can’t compare apples and VHS tapes.