Ask HN: Open-Source Mobile Phones | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Open-Source Mobile Phones

24 pointsmiohtama13 comments

As now EU is about to mandate mandatory government black surveillance binaries on mobile phones and chat apps, what useable open source mobile phones out there exist? Are any of Android derivates in a shape you can use them as everyday phone?

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There is /e/ OS - https://e.foundation - which also offers their second version of the Murena phone that comes pre-installed with the OS - https://murena.com

They also sell other phones pre-installed or you can install it yourself.

Disclaimer: I haven't used it yet but trying to find some time to install it on my Pixel 4a.

Otherwise Fairphone is fairly open.

You won't find anything that's usable and is fully open, i.e. no firmware blobs etc

I don't think there's any open source hardware, but you can use GrapheneOS on a Pixel and it works well.

Good call. I've been using GrapheneOS for the last three years, and I recommend it highly.

It works. I did it for a year and I wouldn’t say it works well. The level of polish simply isn’t there; I missed many, many important shots because the camera app would take a full 4-5 seconds to launch on flagship hardware.

I've always used Google Camera on GOS for this reason.

It's the one Google app I use. I believe I have it sandboxed effectively, although I'll admit that I'm not knowledgeable enough to really confirm that.

Installing Google Camera to be able to have a good camera was a compromise I was prepared to make, and three years later I'm still happy with that compromise, although it might or might not be one that others would accept on their own devices.

@sneak, was there anything other than the camera about GOS that you considered a shortcoming?

Google Camera on GrapheneOS on my Pixel 5 doesn't work very well. I can take several quick pictures, then about after picture six, it starts taking several seconds per picture (the picture-taking-button grays-out and does not do anything).

This isn't unique to GOS. I've had this issue with Google Android Pixels for years, and owned the 3, 3a, 4a, 5, and 6a now.

It's _always_ been an annoyance of mine and is definitely not exclusive to just my latest phone.

This seems likely to be hardware limitation rather than software? Assuming the phone works anything like the DSLRs I've had experience with do. Photos get sent to a fast buffer when taken and then written to the slower memory in the background - initially you can take photos as fast as the buffer will accept them, but once it's full you're limited by the write speed of the main storage.

Thanks, I'll give it a try.

The Graphene camera app is certainly a low point imho, but you dont _need_ to use the Graphene camera app if that's a deal breaker.

pixel call quality (for me) kinda sucks. I whole heartedly love grapheneOS - but the call quality and camera quality is pretty horrible.

The camera app is not great, I am considering switching to an iPhone simply to take better pictures. Occasionally the fingerprint sensor on my Pixel 6 on a secondary profile bugs out as well and decides to stop working even after entering the PIN, and the only solution I've found is to end the secondary session and start it up again.

Oh and the battery life with sandboxed play services is disappointing too, if I go out for the night I need to charge it beforehand.

Other than that I have no complaints.

I've been using OpenCamera even before I started using GOS, and now for 3+ years on it.

Haven't missed a shot yet, and the HDR photos come out great!

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