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Comment by SeripisChad | Hacker News Reader

I keep looking at their products (laptop & phone) and can't pull the trigger based on what seems like a lack of apps/UX. I really want have better privacy and support companies with that in their DNA. I almost purchased a black-phone before.

I really think sandboxing built-in emulator for android apps has to occur for the phone to get traction. I think i'm their ideal consumer and still can't see the value yet. I'm a technical person who is willing to deal with some issues/trade-offs for privacy, but still can't reach the tipping point to purchase.

I also think this a place where duckduckgo could partner with with their services. I think most consumers wants things to be polished and just work.

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> I really think sandboxing built-in emulator for android apps has to occur for the phone to get traction

> I think i'm their ideal consumer and still can't see the value yet

I don't think you are their ideal consumer. They're appealing to the Stallmans, the people who aren't looking to replace their smartphone, but for which this would be one of their first. I have heard someone say about the Pinephone (similar project): "I don't want a smartphone. But I want this. "

I do think they could vastly expand their appeal by adding Android emulation, but I have a feeling using the (which seems like the) market leader (Alien Dalvik) would be some licensing hassle, as you'd want to allow people to install their own distro and still use it. Add to that the whole (admittedly important) thing about everything being open software.

> I don't think you are their ideal consumer. They're appealing to the Stallmans, the people who aren't looking to replace their smartphone, but for which this would be one of their first.

That's certainly part of it, however I do have an iPhone currently, (seems like a better, if less than ideal option than Android), however am not happy about the locked down nature of iOS. Free software smartphones are necessary simply because they're the frontier the PC was in the 80s.

> I don't think you are their ideal consumer. They're appealing to the Stallmans

I would disagree with this point. I think this is exactly what the Purism marketing would like you to believe, but in reality, it just isn't true.

I would class myself as on the Stallman spectrum - I use a libreboot'd X200 running Trisquel, a dumbphone, no social media etc, email providers using Free Software, and so on.

In my experience of the community, Purism is very much disliked by many, and even seen as harmful to the efforts of the Free Software community. The inclusion of PureOS on the FSF distro list has more to do with technicality rather than recommendation and their hardware is pure marketing BS.

Acknowledging that missing Google Play Services is a big deal and will in fact miss most apps that people want when they think "android", you could do it with AOSP which is mostly Apache-licensed. As for having to install Google Play Services yourself, lineageos users don't seem to mind.

The app issue is a chicken-and-egg problem that ultimately sank Windows Phone, Blackberry 10 OS, Palm WebOS, Firefox OS, Sailfish OS and Samsung Bada OS.

Fortunately in 2019, mobile devices aren't as reliant on native apps. I use Uber's PWA and Google Maps Go PWA, which used to be my biggest app-only dependencies. For other stuff, I find that the stock music and video player apps are more than good enough.

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