zlacker

This is 'easily' solved by following the Apple road - focus on one or two devices. I think many FOSS enthusiasts would be happy to buy such devices.

(I am holding out hope for the phone that the GrapheneOS project is planning to make.)

>>microt+(OP)
This has been attempted multiple times, and always fails because followoing FOSS to the letter doesn't play with how hardware industry works, and when people aren't willing to make concensions they cannot ever deliver a product the general public would replace their Android/iOS phones with.

>>microt+(OP)
Are you aware of the PinePhone and Librem 5? As others have said, it's already been tried.

I bought a PinePhone, and after a few too many show-stopping issues (not being able to receive a call for a scheduled job interview was the last straw), I went back to using LineageOS without gapps. I'm not a developer either, just a fairly technical user, so when the device wasn't working, all I could do was report bugs, and things weren't improving fast enough. I haven't checked on progress in a while now. postmarketOS seemed like the one to follow, and they do also support some beefier devices like the OnePlus 6T, but then you'd miss out on the PinePhone's ability to easily remove the battery and to boot off the SD card in addition to eMMC.

I also felt a bit bait-and-switched that the PinePhone Pro came out not too long after the original and then everyone seemed to switch to that one. It reminded me of the awful Gemini PDA and how quickly they rushed out a successor without fixing any problems.

>>pjmlp+p3
GrapheneOS and SailfishOS focus on a narrow set of devices and they can keep up with hardware support. I agree that you have to make concessions in terms of allowing proprietary firmware blobs and opaque baseband hardware. You also have to choose your hardware wisely (e.g. GrapheneOS can/could piggyback on Google's driver work).

I was just saying that you can make the problem more narrow by not trying to support every device out there. Start small and pick your battles (which probably means using AOSP and using sandboxed AOSP).

I think the main issue of many previous attempts was what typically happens in the FLOSS community: there are N attempts rather than one coordinated attempt (Ubuntu Touch, Plasma Mobile, PostmarketOS, PureOS, etc.) and everybody is targeting different hardware. It's similar to how the Linux desktop got fragmented, though it's even more problematic for mobile, since the usage is probably 1/1000th of Linux desktop usage.

>>opan+W4
Don’t worry, the PinePhone Pro is now EOL while the original one will go on for 2 more years!!!

>>opan+W4
> after a few too many show-stopping issues (not being able to receive a call for a scheduled job interview was the last straw)

When was it? There are no complains from people daily driving both phones in the last couple of years AFAIK.

>>microt+78
Yeah, the fragmentation is the main issue, however Firefox OS is a proof that even a single device doesn't work if there are no concessions, and the only thing left are unintesting hardware for the general public.

>>fsflov+i9
Late 2021, IIRC.