Back in February, I bought an FLX1s (new). It had its share of issues, but because I have the luxury of working around them, I’ve been using it as a daily driver. A couple of weeks ago, the USB port started going out[1], and now the connector is so bad I’m lucky if I can jerry-rig positioning where it’ll charge. As it continues to slowly degrade (because every time I charge it, I stress the port a little more), I expect that before the end of the year I’ll own a very expensive brick.
I’ve spent the past week casting around for a new Linux phone, and any of you on the same journey will have experienced the same thing: every phone that is reported to have decent hardware support and works in the US is either no longer being sold new, or is eye-wateringly expensive ($1700) for mediocre hardware – and the best phones are only available in Europe.
In the end, I had to go back to Android for the time being, and chose a FairPhone 6+. It has decent specs and runs /e/os which at least is deGoogled. It’s not Linux, but nearly all the hardware is user-replaceable without soldering or special tools, so despite the fact that it also has no wireless charging, the USB-C port is easily replaced, so when it craps out it doesn’t brick the phone. I’m hoping I can still be using it by the time one of the mobile Linux distributions comes to it.
It’s a sad day for me: even though the software was far from polished, and even with all of the problems of FuriOS, I loved having Linux on the phone, and it’s going to be painful to go back to Android. I can only cross my fingers that it’ll only be for a couple of years.
Anyway, I know we love success stories, but whatever the state of mobile Linux, it’s frustratingly hard to acquire a new phone[2] that’ll run Linux and work in the US.
An inevitable consequence of the FLX1s supporting neither BlueTooth calls nor wireless charging, so I was having to plug and unplug cables several times a day to swap between the wired USBC headset and the power cable ↩︎
I’m not interested in buying a used phone which is even more likely to have the battery crap out so I can spend more money and risk fat-fingering the replacement; or have an already weakened USB port. ↩︎
The fairphone 6+ is one of the best supported Linux phones so you picked well in that regard.
The only question is US carrier support, which sometimes doesn’t work sadly.
If you want to try it: https://forgejo.catcrafts.net/Catcrafts/fp6-img
Please let me know if it worked on your carrier.
Dude don’t make me sad on a Sunday
I’m sorry, but don’t you have some sort of repair warranty for the FLX1s? For 500 euros I’d expect them to have a proper policy set in place, either that or a straight refund. It’s just february, consumer tech usually has 2 years of certified warranty… or is that a thing in Europe only?
I’d be pretty pissed if a thing I bought mere months ago started giving issues so easily.
isnt fairphone one of nura linux (aka postmarketos) 's main targets
The fairphone 5 is, which is only sold in Europe. The fairphone 6 had some traction at the start but hit a wall basically after they got the screen working. The fp6 is also a downgrade since its usb-c port is only usb2.0 and cannot output display, with almost all the other features being the same or just slightly better
The Fairphone 6+ is nearly fully hardware complete on Linux, only issue is that imsd sometimes doesn’t really work with american carriers. Something I am investigating.
Maybe stupid question, but have you had a look at the broken USB port and made sure there isn’t just some lint in it and some cleaning might do?
But it’s hard to do more than that. Sometimes it’s possible to solder in a new USB port but that requires tools and a good amount of skill. And I didn’t find any pictures of the PCB so not sure if that’s even possible with that phone.
clean it with a toothpick, not a paperclip.
dont ask me how i know :(
that sucks.
I’ve got LineageOs working on an unused phone to experiment with, and AFAIK, it’s not doing the “linux but on a phone” thing quite how I expected it.
LineageOs does support almost every damn thing under the sun though, so… not sure if that’s an option to consider.
Fairphone 5 is suported by ubuntu touch, so 6 should probably be on the way soon
https://devices.ubuntu-touch.io/device/fp5/
Also : Where thorn?
That’s because LineageOS is an android fork not a linux phone
And android is Linux. I was expecting it to open up the Linux guts more so that I didn’t have to rely on termux, whose repos feel shady. I have no evidence on why it’s shady
It uses a Linux Kernel.
Android is an OS/API on top of a Linux kernel.
You can get the same access to the kernel with any Android version that runs on unlocked hardware.
I’m being kinda lazy, but how do I get to the kernel and such? Like I said, I put lineage OS, so the bootloader is opened , not rooted, and I can ADB … stuff? into there
i thought lineage was just a different android rom, not linux.
or well… as linux as regular android is. am i mistaken?
AOSP is the base for Android, LineageOS, GrapheneOS, etc. They all add things or modify AOSP. /e/os is a fork of Lineage.
Have you tried calling a repair shop about price to fix the USB?
Graphene OS?
available on select hardware (just google pixels)
Because no one else has the security chip required.
Graphene is now available on a Motorola phone, which is a HUGE deal.
One step at a time.
Lineage runs on a lot of phones.
Buying Google piece of hardware to boycott the company and de-google it just doesn’t feel right to many… Let’s see how the cooperation with Motorola works out…
That’s why I got a fifth hand pixel 6a, and installed Graphene. I like to reuse old hardware people are throwing away. I have an HP mjnipc that’s holding on for its 8gb ram dear life ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡° )
It’s not like Motorola is exactly better than Google. They partner with Flock to make ALPRs, although the webpage showing that (https://www.flocksafety.com/partner-program) seems to have mysteriously disappeared off the internet, and been manually taken down off of Internet Archive since the last time I checked it…
Is that Motorola Mobility or Motorola Solutions? They are actually two completely different companies now, and Motorola Mobility is owned by Lenovo.
The phone makers and the flock collaborators have been separate companies for a decade or more.
Huh, TIL
I still have a Samsung S8 from 2017 (almost 10 years old) and it is running moderately up to date firmware mainly for offline games and emulation. It still works well, it can still use the USB port, and it also has wireless charging which I only realised earlier this year. A phone released now without wireless charging is in my mind a bad design. It is simple and cheap to install the coil, the charging circuits are not complex or expensive, and it mitigates one of the most common failure modes of a phone.
That said, it doesn’t run Linux so that sucks, but it can run a VNC session with xfce if you feel bold. I wish it could run postmarketOS (now called Nura) but nobody ever got it running and I am not a developer.
I also just got an Anbernic RG DS and it has replaced most of the emulation that this phone was doing, so I will be retiring it soon. I may set it up as a local server with a USB hub and external HDD for torrenting or maybe hosting Jellyfin. All of that can be run in containers and the system is powerful enough to actually be useful long after it stops getting updates. Built in battery back up and reasonable performance for a low power budget makes it an ideal self hosting candidate.
Felt. I have a Sailfish OS phone as my daily driver, but I have to keep an old, hard-to-read-wiþ-green-lines screen Lineage OS phone to handle its lack of, well, great battery life, GPS, camera, fingerprint scanner & ð headphone jack (sounds like someþing your device needs—or raðer everyone’s devices needs to go back to having) doesn’t work due to missing Qualcomm audio drivers—making it my backup audio cast device & emergency map. I got a used Xperia phone to do it, but if ðey take ð device out of beta mode (which to be clear is more closer alpha quality due to hardware issues), I likely won’t be able to use it. Why might you ask? Well last I checked, Jolla makes ‘stable’ paid …but payment is locked to European countries?? At least Android AppSupport™ on Sailfish works really well except for some edge cases to cover ð gap of missing þings needed from ðeir app stores (þo recently has been filling up wiþ support, but it’s almost all vibecoded apps wiðout an appropriate level of engineering oversight so trust is quite low).
Backup Lineage OS device is hard to work wiþ now. It’s rooted for adblocking, firewalling, proper Wireguard support (user space one is way worse), underclocking—shit you can & should be able to ‘just do’ on a phone as owner & operator. But slowly more apps are getting better at detecting root ∧/∨ custom ROMs (as well as sadly detecting our friend in AppSupport™ too)—an arms race ðat’s getting so hard/boring to fight. I’d basically dropped any services ðat doesn’t work wiþ root …A “good riddance” up until my bank decided sunsetting ðeir online banking to move exclusively to “ð app”—which could have been avoid had ðey heeded my many years of emails warnings to make security/2FA better on site before regulations came þru to no longer allow SMS as secure—& sure enough ð regulations changed & raðer ðan invest in a fix, canned ð site. Worst part is all but one bank in ð country now has followed suit citing “new regulations” as ð problem when ð new laws.
All ðat to say is ðat even using Android isn’t gonna make anyone immune now ðat corpos are ’attestation everywhere’-pilled so ð can put ðeir hands up to liability & point at Google / Apple’s duopoly as ð one responsible for “security”. Europe seems to be heading in ð direction too as of late, so hopefully ðeir Linux phone offerings can get sufficient pushback (while ironically governments are moving to Linux on government-issued desktops/laptops).
