Poe’s Law is alive and well.

Dude. On what hardware? My 1 years old AND 4 years old Samsung phones now lock their bootloader.

Random, fly by night China phones won’t have enough documentation or enough consistency in hardware to be a viable rally point for firmware devs, will they?

Don’t get me wrong. I will buy exactly that Linux Phone for my next device if it gives me three browsers and enough untracked fundamental functionality like calculators and contact lists.

But I’m genuinely worried there won’t be a hardware vendor in the game in my market (the land of Y’allQaeda) to sell me a compatible device that plays nice with the three mobile providers that still exist here.

Control. Where else are we going to go?

Thanks for sharing all of that. I got to think a little bit about stuff that normally I would take for granted.

Meanwhile…

If Reddit Old would play nice with said device, and doesn’t have a native app, I probably will settle on that when my ReVanced 3rd-party-Boost finally dies. (I also use the same developer’s Boost for Lemmy app).

I already use Amazon in one browser instead of its app, and Facebook in a whole separate browser on my device, even.

But there are apps on in daily, like my brokerage account and my budget/financial app (Monarch Money is worth the subscription, for me).

I would absolutely pay for access to

Honest question - why not fork android which already has all of the infrastructure needed for things like 5G handling, power management, and a widely supported ecosystem of components and vendors?

I would try a Linux phone, absolutely, but why not just Android instead?

The issue is current and future vendors for current and future Android phones are largely tainted and lockstep with Google.

But wouldn’t developing off yesteryear Android still be leap years ahead of just reinventing the wheel around Linux? I kinda thought Android was Linux for our devices.

I’m mostly saying this just because I’m jealous to bring all of my APK’s with me into that future.

I don’t want to give up my reddit app and my current trio of browsers.

I kind of feel like MS tried three distinct times, first with their WinMo products pre-Apple, then with their Nokia partnership, then finally with one last push through the mid-10’s before Intel finally made x86 on mobile an impossibility (nuking the Atom line, selling their 5G modem business to Apple, etc) and before there just weren’t any paths forward for MS.

Amazon and FB having their own phone product lines felt like the weirdest me-too-also-ran Android reskins to extend their own walled gardens, but also felt like both threw in the towel after like 18 months?!?

MS had to be a loser for more than a decade before they gave up. They were really great at being a big loser.

It’s just … apparent that nobody is going to do this for the love of the game, and that they can only get minimum market presence by financing their way to launching yet another walled garden ecosystem. Which is exactly what we all want to avoid in this group.

You need a certain critical mass to enter this market, since you need to be able to get an army of Foxconn slaves to produce the handsets.

No company is going to be and to swoop in and eat those two’s lunches.

I’m sorry, you lost me at…

but the vast majority of investors are aware of the risk of not diversifying your portfolio

The vast majority of investors, myself included, are … not that savvy. I only sorted diversification this year and I’m still tech-heavy but we all are just eating what’s on our plates and available.

I don’t believe these markets will have humanity’s interests at heart, either.