Linux phones are still behind android and iPhone, but the gap shrank a surprising amount while I wasn’t looking. These are damn near usable day to day phones now! But there are still a few things that need done and I was wondering what everyone’s thoughts on these were:
1 - tap to pay. I don’t see how this can practically be done. Like, at all.
2 - android auto/apple CarPlay emulation. A Linux phones could theoretically emulate one of these protocols and display a separate session on the head unit of a car. But I dont see any kind of project out there that already does this in an open-source kind of way. The closest I can find are some shady dongles on amazon that give wireless CarPlay to head units that normally require USB cables. It can be done, but I don’t see it being done in our community.
3 - voice assistants. wether done on device or phoning into our home servers and having requests processed there, this should be doable and integrated with convenient shortcuts. Home assistant has some things like this, and there’s good-old Mycroft blowing around out there still. Siri is used every day by plenty of people and she sucks. If that’s the benchmark I think our community can easily meet that.
I started looking at Linux phones again because I loathe what apple is doing to this UI now and android has some interesting foldables but now that google is forcing Gemini into everything and you can’t turn it off, killing third party ROMS, and getting somehow even MORE invasive, that whole ecosystem seems like it’s about to march right off a cliff so its not an option anymore for me.
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It’s an interesting discussion to witness in these posts: convenience vs privacy and control.
The convenience and integration you get with commercial products like IOS or Android comes at a price. Everything that matters to you on a daily basis bundled together in one convenient package means that all things which define you as a person are conveniently interconnected for corporations to sell out your data for everyone who wants it.
GPS: your current whereabouts at any moment in time and a complete history of where you have been in the past
Payment functions: what you are buying and where you have bought it
Communication (Messengers, Phone): Who you communicate with and what you are talking about
Photos and Videos: Real life evidence from all the stuff mentioned above.
Web Browsing: Interests and Needs which will be used against you in a totalitarian surveillance state, at a glance
If you in 2025 still think this convenience is there to please you as a consumer I have bad news for you.
Convenience and interconnection of services look nice and useful but at the same time they’re a privacy nightmare that makes Orwell’s 1984 look like a bedtime story for children.
What this all comes down to: Strictly airgapping the boundaries between the different services is the only way to have a modicum of privacy. Photos do not belong in a cloud controlled by someone you don’t know and should be taken from a separate device. Navigation belongs on a separate device with no internet connection, payment should not be done with a personal identifier at all (if avoidable) etc. Living your life this way might seem terribly inconvenient, but as someone who was alive at a time where all this convenience didn’t exist I can tell you it has its advantages too. You’ll rediscover what really matters.
I think some of this data is stuff im fine to share with some caveats. I think we can have a world of convenience and a world where people have a decent level of privacy. Of course there will always be tradeoffs but we can find a sane middle ground because at the moment its 0 privacy.
GPS data can be shared while im using a map to navigate and They must not “know who I am”. I am ok to be a datapoint but I dont like when they build a personal profile with this information.
Payments are fine if its my bank and they never sell that info.
Communication must be encrypted and I do not want them knowing who I am talking to.
Photo and video thats private should be encrypted but anything posted public is public. I would use cloud storage but it needs to be encrypted.
Web browsing I dont mind if the site tracks what I do on the site but it must only be stuff I do on site and not build a profile using my off site data.
Don’t want or need any of those things you mention. I want a phone, I want to be able to send messages, I want GPS and a camera. Good battery life, wifi and enough memory and storage… And then privacy…
I already don’t have any of those things on my de-googled android. I’m used to it. Sure, they would be nice, but it’s not a dealbreaker that I have to tap a card instead of my phone, or use Bluetooth instead of carplay, or type on my phone instead of talking to it.
The only thing I was missing without Google was push notifications. And that works out of the box on my /e/ OS FP5. It provides the same API as GSF, but with a different, anonymous push service. I doubt that there will ever be a workaround for Google Pay, because you need the intersection of a well-known company and low level device integration for that to work. And as you say, it’s not a big deal. The Graphene OS guys were pretty smug for a long while about how superior their sandboxed-GSF approach is, but look how that worked out for them. MicroG was always the right idea and if it can’t be done with MicroG it isn’t worth doing (on Android).
Everyone here just saying “oh I don’t use that therefore no one needs it and should just lose it and switch to a Linux distro” is not helping anyone. This person told us their requirements to switch. How hard is that to understand for anyone. They also told us the requirements of most of the population. This concept should not be so hard to understand. Everyone has features they need in certain products. Some people don’t care how headphones sound they just care that they make sound others are really picky audiophles. It’s all preference
Who said that? There is a lot of comments saying “I dont use those features maybe i should switch” but I dont see a single comment telling others to switch.
Actually I don’t need any of those things you mention. It may be a mistake to assume that Linux phones should imitate Google/Apple phones.
My thoughts exactly reading this list. I don’t use any of those as-is and have zero interest. I do agree Linux phones seem a bit behind at the moment, but as soon as they’re on par with say GrapheneOS, then we’re golden.
It’s not that I want an imitation, but I do want certain functionalities to be available
Same. Never use these things on Android.
Seeing where desktop Linux was just less than 10 years ago and where it is now gives me optimism for mobile Linux. But I suspect the overlap between developers and users of those 3 features is pretty small, so they might be a ways out.
I was about to suggest getting a head unit that isn’t tied down to CarPlay or Android Auto, but then I realized I drive a really old car from the days you’d easily take out the faceplate or the whole unit to deter theft.
Yea, modern vehicles tie a lot of things into the head unit and they just aren’t possible by going third party. But using the CarPlay/AA feature could be a way to bring similar choice to a system that is otherwise locked-in
As a long-time Linux user I can’t say I’ve noticed big changes in the last 10 years… Maybe I’m forgetting, but when I first used Linux on a desktop I had to compile drivers from source to have working graphics acceleration and WiFi. Things have come a long way since then, but by 2015 I feel like those big things were all sorted. There are still many small things but I think most of those are unchanged, too.
Are those actually the only things you find lacking? If so that’s really good, practically the same as using LineageOS without any Google services.
I don’t use any of the stuff you mentioned and might have to consider Linux mobile as a daily driver if it’s that good. Especially if Google kills custom ROMs, it sounds like the people already running them would feel right at home switching to Linux mobile.
More importantly, how’s the app situation? Can people generally expect most of the desktop GTK or Qt apps they’re familiar with to be usable on a phone form factor? Is there a reliable way to run Android APKs on regular Linux now? At the very least F-droid apps?
Yes most native applications are responsive and adapt to mobile.
GTK has it built into it’s widgets. But some third party apps on GTK/QT may not adapt.
The capability is there though.
To answer your question about Android apps, there is an application called Waydroid that can run on Linux phones. This essentially emulates Android and you can install apps on there. Some Play Store apps require access to Google Play Services, and even though MicroG tries to emulate it without being as privacy invasive, it is not perfect and some apps won’t run well or even at all.
I only use it for a few things that do not have any way to access through a web browser.
Yes, you can even run android apps on Linux mobile using waydroid or something similar. So even if you need your stopgap android apps while waiting for Linux equivalents, waydroid has your back.
As for me, I plan on using PWAs as much as possible.
huh? which linux phone got useful since you’d stop looking? I run pmOS edge on competent hardware with lotsa RAM and fast storage and that thing isn’t even close to being usable in everyday life.
just basic stuff, like turn it on and it works. the keyboard works. an intuitive UI that you use while walking and dodging other pedestrians. a rock-solid base that doesn’t freeze and stutter with the menial-est of tasks.
the three things you mention couldn’t be farther from my mind if I wanted to.
Fairphone, FLX1, and jolla phones are supposed to be acceptable. They aren’t flagships but they are fine.
My experience too with Linux on phones so far. Really, really want freedom of choice and to be free from Android. It isn’t a real choice if I want a social life and a phone that isn’t a brick.
By tap to pay, you mean things like Apple pay and Google pay? We don’t have that on degoogled androids, let alone on Linux phones…
But they are still incredibly useful. I do and will put up with a fully-googled phone just for that convenience.
do they come with a surcharge on every payment?
I don’t use any of the “needs” you mention (phone payments, carplay, voice anything) and can’t see any of them as necessary. I can see thinking of them as cool, but that is different. I don’t particularly think they’re cool, but that’s just me.
That said, Linux is mostly a desktop system with a CLI and some GUI tools. Phones as we know them have considerably different requirements. Linux could be underneath it all, like it is in Android, but at the end there is a lot more besides LInux and its apps.
I did use Meego/Maemo for a while (Nokia N900 and N9) and they had nice aspects, but the phones were way too small and slow.
Someone did do some work on reimplementing the Android Auto Client Server API.
Just needs time and interest.
God i wish I was smart enough to contribute to these things
Claude code can help
No it can’t. Why would someone maintaining a code base want to read and debug code submitted by someone else who didn’t even bother to write it, especially if I’m not already using Claude code or another vibe code generator.
- Would require banks and such to cooperate. Good luck with that, Microsoft and Google will just pay banks to keep us out
#1 only happens if the EU gets it as a secondary part of whatever their plan is to de-americanize payment-processing
tap to pay
I don’t see why the Linux kernel couldn’t add support for NFC devices or someone couldn’t write a driver. I always pay for everything in cash anyway.
voice assistants
I know there are foss and local-only voice assistants for Android so it is possible. You’d be limited by the computing power of a phone so eg I imagine running ollama on a phone would be a huge battery drain.
Which is why having it call out to something I control rather than a tech bros server is okay to me.
Yeah, Android Auto is definitely the thing I didn’t think I needed and now can’t live without.
I have no idea if there can be a foss alternative that would work with existing cars…
/e/OS works with Android Auto
Why? I don’t drive and don’t have a car but I can’t imagine the car itself not already having the exact same features since modern cars already have what is essentially a tablet built in.
Also, why not just have one of those phone holders on your dashboard like people have been doing before car integration was a thing?
Cars have garbage software running on even more garbage hardware, Android Auto and Apple Carplay offload the processing to your phone which is orders of magnitude faster
Exactly. Apple CarPlay and Android Auto took off because car manufacturers have always sucked with tech and this gave them a super cheap way to make a quantum leap forward.
In car nav systems are nowhere near as up to date and useful as maps or Waze. And updating them is often as clunky as a new windows install. Some can only be updated by the dealer. It feels 20 years behind to use the systems offered by a lot of car companies.
Many cars built in features are so terrible they border on useless. Some doesn’t even have things like GPS at all. My EV uses CarPlay for that and has no navigation built in at all, even though it has a GPS radio it uses for onstar services.
Not even close by the time you get the car the maps are years out of date. And POI not even close to google or apple maps.
but then you can’t crash while swiping sub menus.
I don’t really see any of these as deal breakers, because I think the state of Linux phones in 2025 isn’t about being “finished” or “perfect,” it’s about being part of a bigger journey. Every limitation mentioned is just a reflection of where things stand right now, not anything permanent. What kinda excites me is that Linux phones are built around openness, community, and the freedom to adapt, qualities you don’t really get with mainstream options. Sure, there are missing features, rough edges, and some compromises, but none of that outweighs the value of having a device that puts you in control…
While I appreciate that, I really want the freedom to use it that way I want to, not the way others are happy with. It’s open, which makes that theoretically possible, but I’m no Linux dev. I can’t create missing features. So I need to work with what people smarter than me came up with.
I get what you mean. The openness invites possibility, but for a lot of us can feel limiting when we can’t build the missing things ourselves…