The obstacle is not technical, nor marketing or adoption.

The obstacle is the complete lock-down of LTE and 5G. If your radio isn’t certified, it doesn’t matter what os you’re running.

Android is already a Linux kernel. There’s incredibly little barrier for vendors to start selling a Degoogled Android phone, it would be very simple.

We’re in this ecosystem because the profitable manufacturers are busy profiting from you being locked in - pleading for manufacturers to make “open” phones is an unfortunately vain endeavour. Legal intervention is the only way this might get fixed, but governments also like you being locked in because it makes surveillance super easy, so…

We need more apps for linux phones and more userbase.

This is what killed the Windows phone. Microsoft’s attempt to break into the smartphone space had everything else. Massive user base, huge brand name recognition, deep industry ties for cheap mass production, fantastic hardware, advertising, and a great mobile OS. The dreaded Windows 8 tile system sucked for traditional desktops and laptops, but it was great on a phone screen. I had 2 Windows phones, to this day they are the only Microsoft products that I have anything good to say about.

But there were no apps available. I mean, sure, they had their own Microsoft apps like a mobile version of their office suite, and there were a handful of other popular apps that devs had ported over like Evernote. But their appstore had almost nothing compared to Apple or Android, and Microsoft never was able to convince devs to port their apps to a third platform.

Linux is in a much worse initial starting point. ARM-based versions of Linux have always lagged behind the typical x86 versions. That’s changed a little in the last few years due to popular ARM SBCs like the Raspberry Pi, but it’s still not nearly where it would need to be for anybody other than hardcore enthusiasts to adopt.

No normie is going to be interested in paying $500+ for a phone that has a few hours of battery life, worse performance, far less compatible software, and no compatibility with Apple/Android integrations for things like car play.

I’ve wanted to switch to a Linux phone for at least 5 years. Every new mobile Linux project that comes up I was following closely, but they all fail in similar ways. Sadly, I think that Google will have to basically kill open Android before we see a really strong push towards a Linux phone that isn’t just a tinkering platform for early adopters and devs.

Custom roms can be just like distros. The problem is non unlockable bootloaders and device attestation and that’s only getting worse with the help of the govs. If we wanna try something, it would be directed here. But they’re really convinced only big corps can do it.

Anything else installed on a device, including GrapheneOS, will render it a dumb device. People don’t want that, they don’t even want freedom actually. They don’t want linux, never picked it up for decades. It’ll even get banned.

I completely agree with this, and the next phone I purchase, I’m going to make sure it’s capable of running post-market OS before purchase.

I’m willing to put up with the inconvenience to help push Linux phone adoption forward.

Agreed! Google can and will tighten its grip. I think Graphene is amazing, but its only a stopgap solution until we can get a true open source alternative up and running. We don´t have a lot of time, and I think ultimately we might be looking at serious legal problems where governments mandate that accessing the internet anonymously is a crime.

Sure, but Linux phones are not anywhere close to ready for prime time at the moment. Right now even the best options rely heavily on Waydroid, which is the worst of both worlds since it’s still emulating Android, and doesn’t even work well in the first place. Someone will have to invest a lot more money & time into Linux phone projects. We can’t even get Linux on Arm working well in general in most circumstances yet. Not to mention, Linux distros could learn a few things from Android’s security practices. It’s already inspired atomic distros, which is a start, but has a few issues in my opinion.

Until all that is solved, GrapheneOS all the way.

The problem with mass producing pre-installed linux phones is that you need a lot of capital to mass-produce and any investor that can offer that amount of capital will require you to harvest and sell user data in order to make maximum profit.

There are small companies that offer pre installed linux phones (Murena is an example, though I don’t know too much about them) but they will never become mass adopted in a market economy.

Make Linux phones actually worthwhile to use and I’ll switch in a heartbeat. Until then, custom ROMs it is.

Mobile Linux is developing rapidly, however it will be many years before it approaches the usability of iOS or Android and will almost certainly never have some features like nfc payments.

I am using Sailfish OS which has surprised me with its reliability, good ux and ability to do most things.

It is in a weird state, most of the OS is open source, but a few parts a proprietary. However when I was looking for the best Linux alternative to Android it seemed the best option. It seems rock solid, it has a lot of native apps and for the things that aren’t native I can just install android apps straight from the Aurora store and they work as fast as if they were native.

amen! too many people think that we can defeat google by individually each installing custom roms on everyone’s phones.

i think we can still use android since it’s FOSS, but it’s gonna have to be factory degoogled. and legislation has to be enforcing it.

I’m open to it if an MFA solution exists. I am reliant on MS Authenticator for work. Outside of that, I use Bitwarden for MFA and passwords. Unfortunately, my client can eat me for lunch and don’t need me to survive, despite the inverse.

Mobile Linux really is quite good, I’m hoping more Linux-only phone hardware comes in the near future. Honestly, I am not convinced we even should have cellphones to begin with: relying on the proprietary cellular network which can so easily be monitored, hacked and used to abuse you and your privacy is a non-starter to me. Let’s just go back to the era of mp3 players and laptops.

Did you do any research what Android is running on?

They do use the Linux kernal