Android 12 still, and that just came a few months ago.
It's a minimal stock Android without any protection against pocket dialing or ghost touches. And updates are slow to come, although I think we are finally on the third month of consistent monthly updates. aptX is a shitshow at the best, broken at the worst, so bluetooth music listening isn't great, which is not a good thing for a device that got rid of the 3.5mm jack.
You are better off using CalyxOS on the Fairphone, which fixes all of those problems, except it doesn't have true Google Play services.
At the same time, I kind of respect their conviction to only sell in Europe where they don't need to participate in global shipping to the same extent, and don't need to grow unsustainably. We want something like the Fairphone? Someone here has got to make it.
They come correctly assigned from the chip manufacturer. The manufacturer supports DisplayPort over USB-C, and Google removed the code in their implementation.
I use Samsung Dex as a daily driver basically. I’m a doctor and I use it to review patient charts on Epic. I also fully transitioned to Google docs+reworks for working on publications. It’s so easy to set up wherever I go. Amazing battery life and incredibly lightweight.
Tbh I usually just use it to play games on a bigger screen with a Bluetooth controller when I'm bored, Nintendo Switch style. There are plenty of console-style mobile games + streaming services that can make it a pretty good time killer if I'm the only one in a waiting room or something.
8 years to not-remove a part of the spec AOSP supports natively.
8 freaking years to develop a solution for native video-out that isn't the confusing, low-quality, barely recognized DisplayLink.
8 goddamn years to admit to themselves that Chromecast mirroring is a dog shit alternative to DP-AltMode.
Yeah, I've been watching the mobile Linux space with interest but it's definitely not in a place yet where I would consider using it as anything more than a novelty. The PinePhone is a neat little piece of hardware but no way it can replace my LineageOS phone right now.
I was vaguely wondering how hard it would be to use a GNU/Linux laptop as a phone. If you always carry a laptop, that's more-reasonable than it might seem, and that opens things up hardware-wise a lot. There are at least three obstacles:
The touch-oriented app infrastructure is stronger on smartphone OSes.
Laptops aren't as good at idling power-wise as phones. You want to be able to listen for calls without consuming a lot of power.
Apparently, while you can get 5G modems for laptops, getting one for a computer that can do voice service is not an option today. You can do VoIP or something, but I suspect that you're looking at a latency hit then.
Can they at least handle texting? A lot of services require SMS-based 2FA (insecure as it is) these days, so a phone that can't receive texts is a complete non-starter.
I don't know that off-the-top-of-my-head, but I would guess that with normal voice service the modem may well also handle texts, as at least historically, I believe the SMSes went over space in some sort of command channel separate from the per-active-phone timeslice reserved for voice.
However, you could hypothetically get SMS service and relay that to a your laptop-phone over IP from some service that provides VoIP service. With SMSes, unlike with voice, the latency shouldn't really matter.
It seems to me that that might seriously deter third-party Android distributors—AFAIK most do not ship stock Google apps for all the basic utilities, they only ship the auxiliary ones like Gmail or Docs.
OK Google, you win. I capitulate. Next phone is going to be Apple. If it's locked down, low customization walled garden either way I'd rather something with trade in value and a bit of snob appeal.
Wish I could, and I'm completely with you on both manufacturing and mining needed to enable our phone addictions. But I need it to function in modern society, much like my car or industrially farmed food. Being reachable and being able to reach out 24x7 is now an expectation. I don't have the practiced skills to be useful as an agrarian, and not being into religion I'm pretty sure the Amish wouldn't take me in.
Once the not-user-serviceable battery dies or hardware start to glitch at around 2 years of age a replacement is mandatory for me. Apple's phones seem to be designed for a service life of 3-4 years rather than 1-2, so that may be a way to help.
But...but.... Isn't AOSP open source? Did someone lie to me? Just restore the functions! Right? Am I right?
Or was Google just exploiting people believing that they were participating to an open source project?
This news serves as perhaps further evidence of AOSP’s reduced significance, as Google seeks to tie more and more previously open-source features behind its own proprietary frameworks and services.
androidauthority.com
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