Luana @luanaDo I know anyone here who daily drives #LinuxMobile / #postmarketOS on their main/only phone and would be willing to share their experience?
Luana @luana@tech.lgbtI’m wanting to go to Linux mobile and am wondering how it feels to actually daily drive it
How well does whatsapp under waydroid works? (Oh, also: do you get notifications?) What about discord?
Any cool native apps? How good is Tuba on mobile? Any telegram clients?
Basically I only use my phone for Mastodon, a telegram group and eventually discord or youtube so nothing too complex. (Also photos and calling/receiving calls obv lol)
Also bank apps but that’s safer if you keep it on a separate phone at home anyway so I’d just to that.
) @comcloudway@social.ccw.icuMostly because I somehow messed up my flare (signal client) configuration (and I missed stickers
).I've used WhatsApp inside Waydroid a couple of years ago, and I think notifications weren't working? However, I also always shut down Waydroid when I'm not using it to save battery power - so I guess why would they?
My chromebook is still running pmOS, and from experience I can say that Tuba works pretty well on mobile as well.
The Discord web app works fine as well (at least for the stuff I do) and Chats can handle Matrix rooms.
I have a OnePlus 6T and I think the camera is not functional - on my PinePhone the pictures weren't in a quality I'd use for anything.
However, it is not like I never use pmOS on my phone. This first thing I did when I got it, was setting up dual booting, mostly to be able to use bank apps and my camera. And I still regularly switch between them, if I need to do something Android can't do, or when catching up on Webtoons. I literally can not recommend Komikku often enough
.I've also started working on my own YouTube client (via Invidious), however I'm busy doing other stuff right now, so you're probably better off using a different one, or simply using the web app.
.Also, g4music is amazing, if you like listening to full albums.
Whilst I'm on the topic of music, I had problems connecting my Bluetooth headphones nearly every time, but I've been informed that this is not a problem everybody is experiencing. The normal speaker and microphone worked when I test called myself using a different phone.
Actually, nearly all gtk4+libadwaita apps I've tried work flawlessly on my laptop, chromebook and phone. For example, foliate
.I can only recommend giving Linux on mobile a try, and if it doesn't work out, switching back, or if you are able to setting up Linux as a dual boot.
I personally find that Linux is way less distracting, and it is way easier to find the app I'm looking for (although this might be because I don't have as many apps).
@luana How it feels? Super fun. Can feel familiar if you are used to the OS – not only the apps, but also the file structure.
WhatsApp? Never used, but notifications in Waydroid won't show up in the system. Even if, for battery life, you want to configure Waydroid to automatically freeze, so no background services.
Discord? If you don't need screencasting nor camera, go with Waydroid. Even with camera support in pmOS, Waydroid doesn't support the modern libcamera stack, needed for phones. 1/6
@luana Telegram? Go with Telegram desktop. On GNOME and Phosh, there are automatic OSK issues. And as they are trayless, Telegram will not stay alive in background without a close button, but if it's there, notifications are reliable, if the phone is awake.
On that note: Automatic suspend is possible and greatly increases battery life, but there is no dozing like on other mobile OSes, waking up the device periodically, ensuring background services keep running for things like notifications. 2/6
@luana Just the modem stays alive, but even wake on calls is often deactivated – the modem wakes the system with every change (e.g. signal strength) and there is no component that filters those messages to directly go to sleep again.
Tuba? Works great! Never tested background notifications, though.
Photos? The cameras don't work on most devices. If they do, they don't give those shiny overengineered pictures you might be used to. And support for rear and front camera are separate things. 3/6
@luana How close we are, depends on your use cases. It's easier to get to QR code scanning than to sharable selfies.
Calls? Depends on the device, audio routing isn't trivial. Expect a bumpy experience. Also VoIP isn't supported yet.
Banking apps? No way, they'll run in Waydroid, it has no hardware key store, and doesn't pass SafetyNet / Play Integrity.
Cool native apps? NewsFlash, Wike, Foliate? Hard to recommend anything. Don't know you, and you said, you don't use the phone a lot. ^^ 4/6
@luana Other shortcomings? No cell broadcast alerting. With suspend, alarm clocks don't work yet. It uses the retired Mozilla Location Service that will stop working in three weeks. Map apps are lacking features for navigation for anything but public transport, POI search+filtering, offline maps.
What about Waydroid? It doesn't provide geolocation. And besides audio input+output and displaying apps, it doesn't integrate, really, so no Bluetooth, file sharing, contacts, or calendar, either. 5/6
@luana And apps in Waydroid don't see a mobile connection, so "Only on WiFi" options don't work.
I hope this goes in the direction you were hoping for. Otherwise, feel free to ask. 6/6
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