@zillion I don't have any thoughts on the current feature phone/flip phone landscape, although I expect I will at some point in the near future.

When I do, I'll blog about it ajroach42.2com

@zillion The most affordable linux-based phone is the pinephone.
I missed my old Nokia linux phones, so I got one a while back to play with, but never used it as a daily device.

pine64.org/devices/pinephone/

PinePhone

An Open Source Smartphone Supported by All Major Linux Phone Projects The PinePhone is a smartphone that empowers users with control over the device.

^PINE64

Sensitive content Click to open/close

@geniodiabolico ADB will keep working for installing applications for people in your situation.

But yeah, this is some shit.

@Longplay_Games Right?

But when the recent EU move that phones have to hav ea locked bootloader, who knows what comes next.

@lyncia Back to the Ma Bell days of a leased phone line, wiretapped and bugged within an inch of its life?

Does feel that way.

@mdm @pre

I feel like this is meant to point out that android is open source and that, if phones worked the way laptops do, we'd be able to just install a fork of android.

But en.xiaomitoday.it/goodbye-boot…

Goodbye Bootloader Unlock in Europe: What's Happening?

The landscape is changing for those who have turned modding into a form of digital control. Bootloader unlocking in Europe is at risk of disappearing.

^{Gianluca Cobucci (XiaomiToday.it)}

Ugh, I just read up on that and while I don't think it's as straightforward as outlawing or banning bootloader unlocking, that's certainly the approach that device manufacturers seem poised to take, since it's the easiest way for them to conform to the regulation.

I assume it's a shitty unintended consequence of a badly designed rule, but that's without knowing how corrupt the EU regulatory process is. (If it was coming out of the US FCC, I'd probably assume the opposite at the moment.)

However, one small bit of progress is that, compared to 10 or even 5 years ago, it's much easier to call up a device manufacturer in China or Taiwan and have them make you a short run of custom handheld devices to whatever specifications you'd like.

It's not economical if you only want to buy one or two (of a truly custom design), but if you're willing to buy dozens or hundreds, it's not like you need to be Samsung to make a smartphone anymore.

@Kadin2048 If you're not in the US, for sure.

But 1) They still gotta have an OS. 2) in the US, we gotta deal with tariffs on all that now, making it 2x or more as expensive, 3) most of the major US carriers require your phone to be one they have personally approved.

Some of the smaller carriers are exceptions to this but, at least where I live, my options are verizon and ATT, and both are only offering esims which will only work on devices they've approved.

It's not *impossible* to route around, but it's harder than I'd expect anyone who lives nearby to undertake.

Yeah, I don't like eSIMs for a bunch of reasons, but as long as devices continue to have physical SIM slots (which is admittedly going to become more of an issue as time goes by), you can drop an eSIM-to-pSIM adapter into them.

Most of the ones I've seen generally have a companion app that will let you load and switch between multiple eSIMs on a single card, as well.

esim.me/ seems to be a popular choice, but there are lots straight out of Shenzhen too.

If you pick the right baseband / cellular modem, you can also change the IMEI to whatever value you want. (A *friend* of mine may have a bunch of Netgear LTE pucks that report themselves as iPhones to the cell network, for... testing purposes. Thanks, Quectel!)

But in general, I expect there's going to be a widening gulf between people who know enough about hardware to make the phone do what they want, and normies who are going to take it in the tradesmans' from the cellular companies. Such is deregulation.

@North_of_Nowhere @matthew

> even if all i can do with it is voice and text

If there was a linux phone that could do voice and text, I'd be happy! I haven't found one.

I'm in kind of a charmed position in that I have no need for an Android or Apple device.

There are a few ways that *life* is trying to conspire to make me keep one in spite of that, but most of them are things I can currently route around.

But I'm no longer in an oncall rotation. I no longer use Okta. I can do 2FA a dozen ways that don't mandate google.

I'm not normal.