It's always the same old raspberry pi glued to a battery, a screen and an lte module.
Please, come back when the software is half decent. First generation of iphone level of smoothness and intuitiveness should be the bar. Hell, even an old fashioned blackberry experience would be good enough
After using a Linux phone (specifically, the PinePhone) as my daily driver for the past 19 months, I must say that the overall experience has been quite poor. While basic functions like calling and texting are functional, the device falls short in many other areas. For instance, web browsing can be challenging - although most websites do load properly, opening the keyboard has made multiple website completely unusable or behaving strange.
Additionally, while I have experimented with apps for different platforms like Matrix and Mastodon, many of these are still works in progress, and compiling them can be a time-consuming process.It's worth mentioning that even the most optimized apps for Linux phones can still crash from time to time. Additionally, many apps that might work perfectly fine on a Linux desktop are simply not designed to be used on a phone, making them unusable in practice.
While there is a solution for running Android apps on the phone (Waydroid), it too can be unreliable at times and has been known to cause the phone to hang. Furthermore, there are numerous software-related issues, such as crashes after updates, voice-related problems (e.g. microphone or speaker not working), modem connectivity issues requiring a reboot, and the device failing to turn on the screen until a hard reboot is performed (it thinks it's being held up to the ear like during a call). Lastly, battery life is a real issue. It's worth noting that I'm running the Phosh interface on Arch Linux.
The irony is my newer iPhone has at least half of the same issues:
Keyboard doesn’t open randomly, sometimes browsers lock/hangs (both Safari & Brave), apps will crash for seemingly no reason, random OS crashes (rare but at least monthly), phone will think its being held to ear even on a level surface mid-call.
Linux phones are definitely still a ways away, but its funny how similar the problems are, they’re just less severe.
Frankly, what does "designing hardware as a EE" have to do with software issues your parent has described? Pine64 sells PinePhones, but doesn't do any software development, not even kernel drivers. That's not "failure", that's the expected outcome. You got what you paid for. The community does an amazing job supporting the hardware, but there's only so much you can do with self-motivated volunteers on such a complex project.
There are other projects out there where you pay for both hardware and FLOSS software development, such as Librem 5 with PureOS.
I tried using my Pinephone, but after years of development it's still impossible to quickly type your unlock pin without the whole thing lagging. That's right, the simplest screen ever, displaying just a grid of numbers lags
I think the point is open software all the way; the hardware is not the issue. As long as there are binaries without source included, we have a problem.
I agree with OP to some extent here. A phone is critical “infrastructure”. A high bar is basically a given at this point if you’re trying to pitch someone to use your product. Or it’ll remain an experiment and never go mainstream. Apple prioritized experience over features early. Might be something these projects should consider if they are serious about adoption.
Please, come back when the software is half decent. First generation of iphone level of smoothness and intuitiveness should be the bar. Hell, even an old fashioned blackberry experience would be good enough