Comment by didericis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by didericis | Hacker News Reader

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It’s a downgrade, but the freedom of running linux on a phone is nice. I have a pinephone running sxmo, probably the nerdiest and least friendly ux possible.

I’ve been using it sparingly, but intend to make a full time switch pretty soon. Having a phone with less capability and a focus on privacy will I think help make my phone less of a mental zapping appendage and more like the useful tool I remember these things being way back when.

I guess I’m arguing why even bother with a full replacement? I know everyone else seems to be all in on mobile/leaving a modern app ecosystem feels like getting left behind, but maybe everyone else is wrong. Maybe it’s better to just step away from all the ultra modern attention grabbing bricks of pure unadulterated dopamine and switch to a hacky little portable computer when you need to look something up, or text someone, or call someone, or work on some text document you have or whatever.

If you have a phone with even a crappy browser you have access to a ton of modern functionality anyway if you want it, minus all of the notification hell.

>minus all of the notification hell.

I'm a huge believer in disabling any form of push notification. Nobody's software is entitled to my attention, I'll use it when I feel like it, not when it nags me for attention like a petulant toddler. I don't know how people tolerate their phones pinging, flashing, and buzzing all day like a pinball machine that's been very personally crafted to extract as much attention from your day as possible.

A little off topic, but since social media seems to be the main driver of this "phones as a personally crafted distraction" I'd love to see what a social network that's not actually deeply antisocial would look like. No push notifications, no filter bubbles, no politics, no "nudge" messaging from governments and other organisations aiming to subtly change people's behaviour, no creepy advertising pushed to a perverse degree. Just give me a place with a good chat client, a way of asynchronously keeping in touch with people in my life in that long range between "good friend" and "stranger" (seriously even the Facebook walls of 2008ish would do), and just enough non-obnoxious adverts to cover costs and make a reasonable profit. Oh yeah, and you should always be able to pay a small monthly fee to be rid of ads if you want to.

I'm using a PinePhone right now and I hope I won't need to switch back to Android. I grew used to this freedom.

However, I would recommend it only to the most determined people because many things don't work well.

Forget GPS navigation. GPS does not get the correct location most of the time, AGPS only works through a hacky bash / python script. There is no good gps app anyway.

The sms app on phosh is crashy and does not yet support MMS for which you have to use another hacky script (but I'm working on an alternative app).

The phone often needs to be rebooted due to the modem sometimes not waking up. Calls are not high quality. No built in way to have a reliable alarm if the phone is not plugged. Photos are bad. The phone is generally slow for many modern web apps targeting more powerful hardware.

The phone takes time to wake up for a call.

I would not want to experience an emergency requiring to call someone.

The phone is not waterproof so it will likely break if it takes a good rain.

The on-screen time is not great though you can buy spare batteries which can largely change the game. Remember to set the sleep timer to 30s, which you need to do using the command line if you use Phosh, it helps a lot.

A smoother transition could be to use a degoogled android phone, maybe with MicroG for cell/wifi based location and only using free software (from F-Droid). But you'll still rely on proprietary blob.

I only ever used open source apps on Android and always refused to use apps like WhatsApp & its friends, which helped the transition to the PinePhone.

On the flip side, the PinePhone is getting better every day and the ability to just buy a spare battery and a battery charger and swap them as needed without any tool is really nice.

I typed this message on the PinePhone by the way. It's far from horrible despite my comment.

edit: what I want to say is, wanting to migrate to free and privacy-friendly software is probably a good thing, but increase the chance it will work by not making it too hard. On the desktop, Linux distributions are delightful to use, free software phones are still pretty much work-in-progress unfortunately. The gap between a degoogled Android phone and a PinePhone is huge, probably way bigger than between an iPhone and a degoogled Android phone.

How does wasm run in general? E.g. .net blazor/rust apps? I feel wasm web apps running in a chromium clone could gain momentum.

I don't know, I don't think I've encountered any WASM app. Chromium is generally slow on the PinePhone, I would highly recommend Firefox on Phosh (unusable on Plasma unfortunately if this hasn't been fixed). Gnome Web and Angelfish (KDE's mobile browser) work well too.

I would not seek for WASM apps though. Those generally require big and heavy runtimes to be loaded in the browser for questionable benefits, with no way of sharing those runtimes with other apps. I would rather look for native apps, or Web apps with lightweight frontends which can actually be quite fast if done well.

> There is no good gps app anyway.

Forget global positioning specifically, shouldn't a good OpenStreetMap atlas application without automatic positioning be feasible, if not presently available? Today it might feel like caveman technology, but it's not that long ago that having a high quality up-to-date world atlas that fits in your pocket would have been considered a considerable marvel. That such an atlas might also tell you exactly where you are at all times is icing on the cake.

Let's forget GPS.

Well, you have those options which work well enough to be usable (you don't have pinch zoom, Gnome Maps takes a while to load, openstreetmap.org does not fit very good on mobile, both require an internet connection):

- openstreetmap.org

- GNOME Maps

Then you have Pure Maps. It allows offline maps using OSM Scout Server [2]. It seems good, however it overheats my PinePhone and crashes probably out of lack of resources. So I don't use it. It could be because of Flatpak, but I'm not sure.

As for how to build a good alternative, I see these possibilities:

- contribute to Pure Maps to make it more lightweight. Maybe it's just a matter of building native packages for distributions like Mobian and Manjaro.

- Look whether KDE has a good app for that. They have Marble on the desktop but I'm not sure there is a mobile version that works well yet so porting this to mobile could be a way. KDE apps are generally very high quality though Marble could use some refinement.

- using C++ and Qt/QML with its Map widget, and find a way to use OSM Scout Server to provide the tiles. Actually, Pure Maps is a QML app.

- build a minimal web page showing a Leaflet or a MapLibre widget, connected to a backend built using a compiled language like C++ or D, itself connecting to OSM Scout Server to provide the tiles. Or to OSM Scout Server directly if it is possible.

The last option is probably the most lightweight solution, provided you probably have a browser already running on your phone. I'm not saying this out of my ass by the way, I'm building an SMS app using Svelte for the user interface and D for the backend connecting to the modem and managing the SQLite database. It's way faster than chatty. Maybe don't use React though, this is heavy (Mattermost works but is almost unusable, Element (Matrix) works way better but you still feel latency everywhere).

[1] https://openrepos.net/content/rinigus/pure-maps

[2] https://rinigus.github.io/osmscout-server/

I’m the same way. For times I absolutely need an app (like banking or healthcare), I’ll boot up an old iPhone I keep around for that exact purpose. Otherwise, I keep no apps other than browsers on my current phone.

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