I probably can’t get a new phone super soon, but it’s been quite frustrating how little support there is for iOS versions of open source software I’ve been slowing moving towards or investigating. I absolutely get why though!
I have the capability to understand complex topics but it takes me quite a few tries to really get it, so I’d like some help or recommendations of things that aren’t “just use linux”. (I am slowly dipping my toes by using WSL for things, though.) I am always searching for software, but I’ve never been active enough in communities to ask for personal recommendations and be warned of short comings. Obviously if you find recommendations, they want to look the best to you and hide their faults. I do try and research as much as possible, but like I said, I can get confused or not understand the drawbacks or full level of manual work/environments needed to operate at times.
Mostly I’m looking for day to day things that I can operate from my windows computer, but can also connect to my phone, assuming I get an android next. (Librem phones looks cool, but switching carrier providers is not feasible for me at the moment.) The boring things, like calendar, email, notes (I do use obsidian already). But if you’d like to gush about your daily drivers, I’m all ears!
I highly recommend Android. Just don’t install Google Play Services (use F-droid instead)
For that they’ll need to flash a custom degoogled ROM, so it would be necessary to get a phone that allow bootloader unlocking, and there’s a limited choice of smartphones with good community dev scene.
Xiaomi is usually pretty good when it comes to unlocking bootloader. The process is a bit annoying, but at least it’s “official”.
It is annoying and to unlock the bootloader you MUST have windows…the Linux tools don’t work …luckily I had an old laptop with a windows partition to do the job…and waiting a week to actually unlock it was super annoying… Besides that flashing lineage with microg was super easy …xiaomi has a great hardware for the price though
I didn’t have much difficulty to flash roms on my OnePlus 7T and 9Pro too, idk about newer models.
I have a redmi 4x that I simply can’t unlock by any means. I lost do many hours of life with that, until I gave up and bought a motorola.
Really? Why not?
Apparently, the process requires your mobile carrier to send a couple of international sms messages, but it’s not supported by the available carriers in my country.
After struggling for a long time, and realizing it was made impossible to me by the manufacturer, I became a bit careless, opened it up to use EDL mode, and started looking for unofficial methods. In the end, some indonesian software messed up my phone and I had to erase the frp using a tool called “miko tool” just so that it didn’t become useless.
That sucks. The process I followed had this SMS part but my local carrier sent and received the SMS without problems …I just had to disabled WiFi in order to proceed the unlock …xiaomi was not my first choice when I bought it but pixel phones are way too expensive in my country …they are IMHO the best phones to use custom Roms
I find it hard to consider xiaomis as the best option, after my experience. If you live in a supported country, you’re ok, but if not, they don’t give a fuck about you.
Around here, pixels are too expensive too, but motorolas seem to be a good option and with a good method to unlock the bootloader.
I had a Motorola too …good phone depending on the model…yeah the support for xiaomi here is terrible too I had a bricked mi4 back in 2017 that just bricked out of nowhere and couldn’t have it fixed …support makes Motorola the best option in most cases here too
That’s good to know!