November 26, 2021MP3, OGG, Podcast

374.5 – “Smart” Phones

1:46 Linux Innards
42:07 Vibrations from the Ether
51:07 Check This Out
54:28 Announcements & Outro

In our Innards section, phones

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

Twitter. Discord. Telegram. Matrix. Reddit. Youtube.

Linux Innards

Joe
- First smartphone was the samsung behold 2 which i hated
- I also had the htc dash which was a blackberry knockoff but pretty awesome
- Then the htc hd2 which is the most modded phone ever
  - Windows mobile
  - Android
  - Linux
- After that i went back to samsung and had the s3 which is a great phone and if you can find one that is working still has its uses. My son is using one now
  - I used this phone until it died, smaller device but ran well and did everything i needed
  - Still good today as an MP3 player which is what my son uses it for
- Then the Note 3
  - I used this for a long time
- S7
  - I still use this for some things but the ports are getting old. The 3.5mm jack no longer works and the usb connection is a bit wobbly
- Note 10 plus
Tony
- History – The First Smartphone I bought was the Nexus 4 which I got in February 2013. This was a great introduction to the smartphone experience but quickly started to feel restricted and in October 2014 I made the giant leap to a OnePlus1 which I paid £299 but was a premium phone for a mid range price at the time.
- When that started to feel its age in 2017 I bought a Nokia 6, this was a great Phone and the following year I purchased the 6.1 upgrade for my wife who had been using my old Nexus 4 as her first Smartphone. Unfortunately I dropped the Nokia in 2018 smashing the screen badly and was sold the Huawei P20 lite which I used as my daily driver until last week when I went and bought the Nokia X20 6.6” behemoth which I am still getting used to.
- This phone has the advantage of receiving guaranteed Android updates for 3 years from release and I should get to Android 14 before the time runs out from the current Android 11 that is installed.
- Before retiring the OnePlus1 as my daily driver I did delve into the world of alternative Roms and successfully installed Lineage to it, but had an issue with upgrading it at one point and that led me to purchasing the Nokia 6. A while back I decided to have a play with the OnePlus1 and I have installed Ubuntu Touch to it and last night was playing with it and have got it running the latest update of the 16.04 install. I know that they are working on getting 20.04 and I have enabled this to be downloaded as an OTA update when available for the OnePlus1.

Norbert
- 2010 – Neonode N2
- 2010 – (Apple iPod Touch 4G)
- 2014 – Sony Xperia SP
- 2015 – Sony Xperia Z Ultra
- 2016 – (Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 9.7”)
- 2017 – Sony Xperia X Compact
- 2019 – Samsung Galax
- y A8 (2018)
- 2021 – LG G7 ThinQ
Josh
- My initial foray into the world of smartphones were all lower tier devices which were “free” with the signing of a contract. They were all quite terrible and that’s probably why I can’t remember any of them specifically.
- My first noteworthy smartphone was a Nexus 5 which I purchased early in 2014. It was quite an impressive device for its price point and I still have it today as a backup phone, although it now runs Ubuntu Touch in place of Android. I have had to replace the battery on it once and it does suffer from the all too common power button issue on occasion that causes it to constantly reboot which is why I eventually moved on from it.
- From there I decided I wanted to focus more on privacy so I went through a number of different flip and feature phones only to find most of them ran stripped down versions of Android and the lackluster performance was maddening. Just attempting to text while the system lagged caused multiple input errors but there was a bit of nostalgia returning to T9 predictive text.
- I decided to return to the world of smartphones and purchased an LG V30+ off of Ebay. I got it at a very reduced price due to some screen burn in but the phone was pristine outside of that. This is still my daily driver today even though the OS hasn’t received a security update since August of 2019. The DAC is still considered by many to be the best ever put in a phone which is why I’m reluctant to replace it. I use it mainly for listening to music and podcasts and store as little personal data as possible on it.
- I also purchased a Pinephone UB Ports edition and a Sony Xperia X which I installed Ubuntu Touch on with hopes that one of them could serve as a privacy focused daily driver. The Xperia is usable if you’re willing to compromise convenience quite considerably but the Pinephone remains little more than a developer’s toy that cannot be daily driven under any realistic circumstances. Unfortunately it seems the reality of a capable Linux phone is still quite a ways off into the distance, the hardware is there but the software is definitely not.

Vibrations from the Ether

Brad A
Larry M
William W

Check This Out

Announcements

Next Episode – 2 pm US Central time on Sunday, November 28th
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Next Live Stream – 2 pm US Central time on Saturday, December 4th
Get the Live Stream converted to your time zone

Wrap-up

Joe – Tllts.org, linuxlugcast.com, MeWe, [email protected], Buy Joe a coffee
Tony Hughes – HPR – http://hackerpublicradio.org/correspondents.php?hostid=338, Twitter @TonyH1212, [email protected], [email protected]
Norbert – [email protected]
The Other Other Josh – [email protected], Josh Thacker on Discord, and @Metal_FOSS on Twitter
Nishant – [email protected],riconghost on instagram, riconghost@Github, Ghost.Ricon on DIscord, maverick00783 @ Steam

Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible …

Norbert for our audio production
Leo for timestamps and publishing
Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
Hobstar for our logo
initrd for the animated Discord logo
Londoner for our time sync
Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
Archive.org for hosting our audio files
HPR for our backup Mumble room
The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>