I Bought a Linux Phone in 2026 - YouTube (www.youtube.com)

submitted 10 hours ago by harmbugler@piefed.social to c/linuxphones@lemmy.ca

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Sure, the year of the Linux Desktop might be around the corner, but what about the year of the Linux Phone!

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[-] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 9 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

With the fact that Google is talking about controlling our devices, I am seriously considering going to a Linux phone even if it is a step down in user experience, just to give the middle finger to Google. I already run Lineage OS without Google Play Services, but I'm beginning to become afraid that they're going to lock down AOSP to where you can't install applications either.

Like sure, for now, it's only going to be on devices with Google Play services. But what's to stop Android 19 from being released and making it to where you can't even do it on AOSP?

[-] harmbugler@piefed.social 6 points 7 hours ago

It's not much choice if only iOS and Android are on offer, so it's great to see alternatives that work. That being said, I'm considering a dumb phone and a small data-enabled Linux tablet.

[-] sem@piefed.blahaj.zone 1 points 6 hours ago

How do you survive without Google services? Did you have to unlear / switch a lot of stuff? Like gmail?

[-] Teppichbrand@feddit.org 2 points 31 minutes ago* (last edited 24 minutes ago)

Not OP but I like to share my experience.
I never have never been entangled too much with Google, so getting away for me was more like choosing a different path from the beginning than finding my way back.
I use Posteo for my mails. It comes with contacts and three free calendars I can sync using DAVx5. This works perfectly. I use CoMaps for navigation and a funny old TTS engine called eSpeak. It doesn't have traffic yet, but the EU told all members to openly share all traffic information, so in looking forward to that. Until then, I drive without that information, which was perfectly fine for all time until like 7 years ago. What else? Aurora Store to get a hand full of apps from the Play Store like Signal and Banking. That's it. You just decide to live without it and do it.

[-] ArmchairAce1944@lemmy.ca 5 points 7 hours ago

I bought a Google pixel 10 and the first thing I did with it is install grapheneOS.

[-] sveltecider@lemmy.ca 10 points 10 hours ago

How comfortable is it to use graphene on a day to day basis? Considering getting a spare pixel. But that seems a hell of a lot more practical than a linux phone.

[-] frankring@lemmy.ca 10 points 9 hours ago

Motorola announced today a partnership with GrapehenOS. Soon, we will no longer need Google Pixel.

I'm not a heavy phone user, but I have GrapheneOS installed. I think it requires a bit of tech knowledge, but it's cool.

[-] sveltecider@lemmy.ca 5 points 7 hours ago

I don’t mind the technical set up, I just wanna know if it’s a neutered experience or not

[-] ageedizzle@piefed.ca 1 points 5 hours ago

Will some Motorola phones come with Graphene preinstalled?

[-] arcterus@piefed.blahaj.zone 4 points 8 hours ago

Generally there are no real problems. If you're fine with mostly stock AOSP, you should be fine with GrapheneOS.

If you use Google Pay, you're out of luck. There are alternatives for that depending on where you live though (mostly in Europe, in the US there's no other option AFAIK). Rarely an app won't work, but usually fiddling with some security settings for the app will fix it. Very rarely an app won't work at all because (like Google Wallet) it uses Play Integrity and requires a level that requires Google to certify the OS.

Pretty much the only thing I miss is the ability to do NFC payments.

[-] sveltecider@lemmy.ca 3 points 8 hours ago

Is NFC gone entirely? Would yubikeys with nfc work?

[-] shortable@feddit.online 2 points 5 hours ago

I logged into my credit card app by holding the card to the NFC reader on graphene

[-] arcterus@piefed.blahaj.zone 3 points 7 hours ago

They'd work. You might need to install play services for those, not totally sure (Google has shoved an annoying amount of functionality into play services). NFC itself is functional, but various apps that support NFC may not work because of Play Integrity.

[-] 18107@aussie.zone 1 points 7 hours ago

I can't say for GrapheneOS, but NFC still works on my Fairphone 6 with /e/OS without play services.
I can't use NFC for payments, but I also can't log in to my bank's app without play services.

[-] bananapinball@sh.itjust.works 5 points 9 hours ago

I've used the PinePhone, it was a fun geeky object to have. Most of my issues where related to the screen-size/format which most apps don't handle well. Yes, apt/yay install does work... but you end up struggling to use it.

PostmarketOS with sxmo was the most usable.

Compared to GrapheneOS or /e/os, it's day and night. You can't compare apples and VHS tapes.

[-] bananapinball@sh.itjust.works 5 points 9 hours ago

And to reply to your actual question.

GrapheneOS works perfectly fine for a daily driver.

[-] DmMacniel@feddit.org 5 points 10 hours ago

Keep in Mind that Ubuntu Touch isn't the only Linux OS for the fairphone, via postmarketOS you can also use plasma mobile (kde), gnome mobile (GNOME duh) and others...

this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2026

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