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Comment by alfiedotwtf | Hacker News Reader

I tried to like mine (BQ E5). But for an almost-flagship Ubuntu phone, reception was terrible. Went back to the Nexus (now 5x), and I've had zero issues in the same places I used my E5.

Maybe once they've polished a bit, it may be worth going back.

Corollary: I'll throw anyone money who can make a good (usable) Debian phone. Still waiting :(

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It always astounds me how many reviews of "phones" fail to mention phone-like qualities such as reception and ability of the mic to filter out background noise. These are all I care about when choosing a phone. Yet you can find 10-page reviews of phones in which nothing discussed would lead you to understand it's a phone.

They just cater to the audience, I suppose. The call features are a rather minor feature for many people nowadays -- I checked my call log, and it was 11 incoming+outgoing calls within the last 30 days.

It'll change if/when you have kids. You'll probably have a half-dozen calls a day coordinating things. And having a high quality connection for those calls is really important.

> It'll change if/when you have kids. You'll probably have a half-dozen calls a day coordinating things.

So much organising is done over WhatsApp nowadays that we have an old Samsung phone just to run that app, with only appropriate contacts loaded.

I'm not a fan of proprietary messaging but I can see that it is a lot more efficient for organisers than making a call to every parent.

I don't recall having made a voice call on it in months.

Hold on.......you can use smartphones to call people!?!?!

There seems to be more than a few of us for whom phone functionality is the least useful or used feature of our pocket computer. Meat-space happens in real-time, phone interactions are mostly asynchronous in my case (SMS, chats, etc). Mapping, notes, calendars/reminders, search and of course photos are used a lot more. But yes, in the occasion of actually needing a phone call it sure is annoying when your device can barely handle it.

There is a certain absurdity to it when I watch my friend trying to get the voice recognition to write a whatsapp message (over the handsfree system) while driving, when phoning would clearly make more sense. The voice recognition doesn't appear to work very well.

I basically never use the traditional phone features of my "phone" if I can avoid it. Talking on the phone is boring because voice is a synchronous protocol with low information density. I'd rather spend a few seconds every few minutes typing something back and forth so I can keep doing something interesting while information exchange happens in the background. If I'm going to spend the time it takes to talk with someone, I'd rather do it in person, where it is a rewarding social activity.

So I imagine those reviews of phones are simply written for people more like me than like you.

I have a BQ Aquaris 4.5 (for almost a year now I think). I have had no reception problems whatsoever. Are you sure you don't have a dud?

Disclosure: I work for Canonical, though not on the phone side.

Yes, it's certainly not a general problem (and seems unlikely to be due to running Ubuntu). I don't work for Canonical.

re Debian: your best bet is one of the chroot on Android apps. With some more skills you can get closer to just Debian on a phone that shipped with Android. Unfortunately with the way mobile devices are created, you'll probably never get a new device from mass-market mobile device vendors that will run mainline Linux and so Debian will never support mass-market mobile devices. OTOH, you can run mainline Linux on ancient devices like the N900 or on expensive not yet built devices from non-traditional phone makers like the N900 or Pyra.

https://wiki.debian.org/ChrootOnAndroid https://wiki.debian.org/Mobile#Articles http://elinux.org/N900 http://neo900.org/ https://pyra-handheld.com/

Why chroot? I've got a Debian install on microsd, with a script that symlinks it into the root. The only conflict I've seen so far is /dev/log. Hangouts may crash more, but when doesn't it?

Granted the only thing I really do with it is tinc/unison to sync photos. What I'm mostly missing is a keyboard, which I imagine could be filled by a portable chording one that I've yet to find.

The chroot apps are the easiest and most integrated way to have both Debian and Android installed and running at the same time. If you have the skills to do more advanced things, obviously that is better for you. With skills you can also completely get rid of Android and run a Debian UI.

Re (physical) keyboard, check out the Pyra/Neo900.

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