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Comment by amelius | Hacker News Reader

To take one example: the interaction with your bank goes through a web-browser, I suppose? You probably need a special device for 2FA? In most bank apps, you can simply log in using a PIN-code and do things like check your balance, make small wire transfers, and make payments in stores through NFC. Doing these things in a web-browser on a mobile phone with a separate 2FA device is much more cumbersome.

(I use Linux exclusively on the desktop so I know what you are talking about, but it just isn't going to work on a phone in the same way).

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:shrug: I don't have a bank app installed on my phone right now. And there are absolutely going to be Open Source 2FA apps being built for Pinephone, so I'm good there.

Currently, I don't use a banking app because I don't trust my bank to have that level of access to my phone with a proprietary app, and because my bank's app isn't particularly good in the first place. So I'm not really losing out by using Pinephone. In fact, I might have more functionality after switching, since Android development is a mess and on a Linux platform I might be tempted to build something quickly for myself that periodically pulls down the CSV data from my bank and does a few things with it.

I'm not saying that proprietary devs are going to start mass-building apps for this, I'm just saying that for a segment of the population, this may turn out not to be the problem you think it is.

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Apps on my phone that I need replacements for:

- NewPipe

- Podcast app/music app

- Maps

- AndOTP

- Signal (and/or Matrix)

- Orgzly

- Email

- Good browser support

- Maybe a few misc utilities, probably something I'm forgetting

Do I have confidence that those apps or equivalents will be ported? Honestly, yes, I do. It would not take an insurmountable amount of work to build a Linux ecosystem that was more functional than my current phone setup.

- NewPipe -> for audio online there is AudioTube and for video there is Plasmatube - Podcast -> Alligator (an RSS reader) is gaining support for podcast soon (there is an open MR) - AndOTP -> Keysmith, but it still missing some features like scaning a Qr code - Signal (and/or Matrix): I develop a matrix client called NeoChat - Maps: there is PureMaps powered by OSM - Orgzly: still missing - Email: there are some poc that are able to read mails but this will still require a lot of time - Good browser support: Angelfish is great

You can find a bigger list of apps in https://www.plasma-mobile.org/. There is a few still missing that I will try to add later.

Let me reply to that by listing existing apps listed on http://appl.ist:

- NewPipe > FreeTube, AudioTube

- Podcast app/music app > GNOME Podcasts, GPodder/Lollypop, Elisa

- Maps > PureMaps, GNOME Maps

- AndOTP > Keysmith, GNOME Authenticator, Two-Factor-Keychain, Numberstation

- Signal (and/or Matrix) > Axolotl / various, Nheko feels most complete currently

- Orgzly > Emacs maybe?

- Email > Geary (I still use Evolution though)

- Good browser support > Angelfish, desktop Firefox has been adapted nicely, once Chromiums Wayland supports matures it will also be a viable option (it’s very fast, but has annoying issues with text input currently)

It should be pointed out, however, that the mapping apps available on the PinePhone are little more than tech demos. Their feature set is vastly smaller than e.g. OSMAnd on Android. For me, even if the PinePhone took over my phone calls, Signal messenging, etc., I would still need to carry around an Android phone for decent maps.

The PinePhone is just like an ordinary desktop Linux computer in the sense that there is a terminal right there, and you can run any shell-based apps you want. That means that instead of waiting for NewPipe to be ported, you could just use youtube-dl.

Right, that's part of what's exciting about it.

To develop apps for Android I have to set up an emulator, dev environment, learn a bunch of extra ropes, package everything. But I can throw together some bash scripts in a day, it really opens up the possibilities to solve a lot of my own problems.

Compare that with something like Windows Phone. Not having apps there is a serious problem, because I don't necessarily want to pull out C# and build an entire app to fix every issue I have.

> the interaction with your bank goes through a web-browser, I suppose?

Can also be done with Android app via Anbox: https://social.librem.one/@dos/105119691527269967

If could be done for the guy in your linked example, he was lucky and you shouldn’t be giving people false hopes. More and more bank apps are requiring phones that can pass Safety Net, and Anbox won't.

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