This is a follow up to a post I made a while ago; My Mobile Phone Problem (and potential solutions). That was a semi-organized rant about what I am going to do in regards to having a smartphone, my 'problems' being lack of data privacy, security issues having an outdated Android version, and wanting basic ownership of my own stuff (can't load alternate OS easily on majority of android phones). Since making that post things have meandered and generally got worse, with new and exciting (abysmal dogshit) changes coming to android. This will also just be a whatever rant, not advice or a guide to follow, but maybe some aspect can be helpful to others *shrugs*
Swapped phones I decided to 'upgrade' to a spare phone from my brother in law. It is only an upgrade in the sense this Samsung Galaxy A11 has android 12, vs my old phone having android 9. Any android post 10 is apparently way more secure than 9 and below, plus they don't require manual install of all F-droid app updates (more on F-droid later). My old phone is a grey market LG V30+ (that I had to manually update with local firmware to get VoLTE working when GSM was turned off where I live), it is a decent snappy enough phone with a hi-fi DAC (good audio). The Galaxy A11 is a budget piece of shit with like half the processing power. Blessing and a curse, in that because it sucks I want to use it less (my main goal). It is only slightly larger than the V30, but that size difference quickly gives me thumb RSI trying to type on it. When I swapped I cleared all data off my V30, and have not transferred it to this Galaxy, I also barely installed any apps, only email, music, watchin vids on pipepipe, and web browsing on ironfox. Speaking of, IronFox runs pretty slow on this thing, and it never works on mobile data, so I need to keep firefox focus as a backup XD. This setup is bad, but by design, again I am training myself to use the thing less. Also, the Galaxy has no LineageOS support, and the V30 has no official way to unlock the bootloader + VoLTE may not work with Lineage anyway (so it won't function as a phone here, this is listed as a 'quirk', lmao). I've never used lineage outside of emulation/virtualisation, you should check out lug's blog if you want to hear from someone actually using it on a phone.
Alternatives and Potential Setbacks I have been looking at some replacements/alternatives, I am in a pretty unique life position where I don't actually 'need' a smartphone (no work, I get a pension for being a carer). But I don't know if that will change in the future, like if I didn't have one during covid restrictions I would have been prevented from entering certain places (we had to 'sign in' for contact tracing and proof of vaccination). Nobody cares about covid precautions anymore (I do, because I am immune-compromised), but if something similar were to come back there may be another smartphone-app based system that could be problematic if I don't have one. Also where I live is toying with the idea of making licenses and identification stuff 'digital only' and potentially 'going cashless' in the future. So any alternative I may decide to use could end up working out poorly for me, hence the 'limbo' feeling I have around all of this. Anyway, I'll go over some of the things I've considered.
Tablet or 2-in-1 (x86) I think it would be better to separate the internet capabilities of a phone onto a tablet. I do use my laptop quite a bit, but it isn't really something I can carry around outside of the house easily. I am interested in an x86 architecture one, because all ARM tablets are locked down to Android or iOS, and any that aren't are super expensive niche products. At least with an x86 tablet I can put a Linux distro on it and have better control over a thing I own. Funnily enough, the most common (and relatively cheap second hand) x86 tablets are the various Microsoft Surfaces. The community working on the 'linux-surface' kernel have done A LOT of work with compatibility and their custom kernel add-on, and they have good documentation about what features work or don't per each model. Their work is sent upstream to the Linux kernel itself, so in the future their custom kernel add-ons may not be necessary. Although, many models still don't have important features like touchscreen and cameras working, you really need to scour through their feature matrix and read notes on the specific model you are interested in. Even then, the distro you want may not work, so it's a bit of a gamble regardless. ALSO, AVOID the Surface 4 line, it's like the 1st gen Xbox 360 of Surfaces (see flickergate). While looking into x86 tablets I also came across some interesting 2-in-1s from other manufacturers, with the Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga 11e really catching my eye. It actually has Linux support, and you can open it up to repair/replace parts (which you absolutely CAN NOT do easily/at all with Surfaces). It has an 11 inch screen, so it's more like a modern netbook, and I keep seeing them reeeeeaaaallly cheap 2nd hand. They aren't super powerful, but for quickly turning on to use a web browser portably, it might be sufficient. But again, I am not willing to commit yet, I really like to take my time with stuff like this and make sure I'm not impulsively or unnecessarily 'buying a solution' to a problem, as we are so heavily prompted to do under this economic system. And honestly, I think these options will become cheaper over time now that Windows 10 is EOL, as most of them older than 5 years "can't" run Windows 11.
Feature Phone Still thinking about this one. There are some veeeeeery affordable ones second hand where I live, and I might be able to trade in a smartphone for credit to not actually pay any extra cash. I've even seen some good cheap second hand ones that have wifi hotspot capability (would pair well with a tablet/2-in-1). I don't have social media anymore, and any messaging app I have on my smartphone I can use on desktop/laptop instead (whether natively or with android emulator). Texting with a keypad might be rough, but again unique life position where I don't have to do that often, and anyone I would text is happy to voice chat too (academics may refer to this as a 'phone call', lmao). I am comfortable speaking on the phone, I think I had a bit of a hang up/nervousness about it for a while just because smartphones kinda killed phone calls for me for a long time and I was out of practise. But I am very much a "just stop thinking and do the thing, then you won't be nervous anymore" person (worked great when learning how to give injections as a nurse, I am not joking XD). There are some potential issues with modern smartphones though. A lot of them have simple operating systems based on like Android 4-8, so that might come with security issues. The dominant multi-phone systems are the HMD/Nokia S30 OS (which inserts ads into the menu system prompting you to buy games) and KaiOS (potential security issues, waning support, who knows how long it will exist for). Anyway, again just thinking about this and exploring options, not buying any time soon. A weird aside to this though;
'Digital-Detox-washing' Products I don't know what else to call this, if you are familiar with 'rainbow-washing' or 'green-washing', this is the same thing but for 'digital detox'. Products that have been created or marketed specifically to target people wanting to use their smartphone less. It's actually pretty rough looking at feature phone communities online, you see a lot of kids under 20 with posts like "used to spend 14+ hours per day on my smartphone before switching to this feature phone". I don't really want to get deeply into 'smartphone addiction' discourse here, it feels like a lot of complaints are from boomers who don't control 100% of their family's attention anymore (while also being heavy smartphone users themselves), but smartphone addiction does exist and does serious harm, with the exact same mechanism of action as other behavioural addictions (like gambling). The people afflicted by this are not choosing to be so, as with all people suffering from addiction, and any 'blame' should be directed at those creating the addictive source for monetary gain. For gamblers that is casinos, sports betting advertisements etc. For smartphone addiction, that is engagement focused smartphone apps and websites, and the phone manufacturers. Anyway, for people struggling with this issue, now you can buy a $300-$600 non-smart phone about it! Like the fucking lightphone (“It’s more than a simple phone, it’s a lifestyle change.”) or the HMD Barbie Phone ("give your smartphone a vacay and live your dream life"). I feel better already! And abolustely no shade to anyone who would find these to be a useful tool for dealing with smartphone addiction, I just think the marketing of them is very predatory. You are attempting to make a conscious decision for your own benefit after a personal struggle, and some company is waiting there trying to exploit that by selling you something. Plus when you look up reviews of these things, it's either general phone/tech influencers doing their thing (influencing you to buy stuff), or holier than thou "I'm better than you because I stopped using a smartphone two weeks ago" style creators. Weird scene.
Cyberdeck speaking of weird scenes; cyberdecks are mini portable computers, usually bespoke/custom built. They can have a physical keyboard, can be a variety of sizes and shapes, can have touchscreens, and can be based on multiple architectures (ARM and other RISC variants super common, but also x86). These days they are often built upon Raspberry Pis or other single board computers (Radxas, Rocks, the various other Pis). Cool idea, but either prohibitively expensive, or at the very least more expensive than a smart phone, for far less functionality, and require extensive highly-technical modification. Look around at them online though for a bit of fun, most forums are filled with people posting absolutely diabolical builds.
Google Developer Verification *tips hat* You didn't think 'ol Disco would leave without mentioning the potential doomsday of open source Android app development did ya? This is probably the biggest cause of my 'limbo' feelings around smartphone use. I do not want to use an android smartphone without F-Droid or the ability to install apps from third party sources, so this will prompt me to leave that market indefinitely. There are a lot of unanswered questions about how this will be implemented and on what devices. Will this apply only to new phones? How can they add this function to unsupported phones but not provide newer versions of Android to them? Will old unsupported phones become solid gold because they can still run third party apps? See the many problems this creates for F-Droid in this forum post, and this news/blog post. From all the stuff I have read about this, it seems the only thing that would reverse it is anti-monopoly/pro-consumer laws in a large enough market that would prevent Google implementing it worldwide, many point to the EU's Digital Markets Act as this solution, but who knows. Who knows is my general feeling about my personal smartphone use at this point.
Android Emulation/Virtualization I mentioned this in my part 1 to this post, but I have actually had time to test it a bit since then. I believe on Windows and Mac you have easier solutions in Bluestacks (on both) and LDPlayer (Windows only). On Linux there is only really Waydroid and Android x86, some other projects exist(ed) but these seemed the easiest from what I read. Waydroid is a full Android system running containerized in a Wayland desktop. It was a pain in the ass to get working, theres sooooo many little issues that pop up which I struggled understanding with their documentation. I initially couldn't work out how to get a GAPPS version (for play store apps) of it installed, eventually found the solution in a forum post and launched it. My laptop fan went off into the atmosphere, and it didn't have play protect enabled (can't run play store apps). At that point I had fiddled with it on and off for days (cumulatively over months) and I just gave up. Could have probably worked out how to add MicroG to solve this (if it even worked), but I was just so over it. I decided to pivot back to Android x86, which I have used on my main PC before. It runs a full play protect/play store enabled version of android in a virtual machine flawlessly, the name refers to it being a port to x86 architecture (it will run in any VM software on Windows or Mac too!). I think it actually runs android 9 (which may be a problem for some use cases), and they do work on updating it but it's a community project that depends on the spare time of volunteers. I didn't try this initially because I thought virtualization would be rough on my laptop, and I tried getting a VirtualBox .deb file running with no luck (my laptop runs Debian 12, VirtualBox isn't available in the package manager). I then read about KVM/QEMU virtualization, and how it's apparently faster and more efficient. But it seemed very technical and terminal based, I often struggle without visual/graphical aids for technical stuff. Luckily I stumbled across Boxes! a GNOME developed app that provides a graphical layer to KVM/QEMU virtualization. Typical barely descriptive GNOME app name, but this thing is actually simpler than VirtualBox was, and will probably become my main VM app now. I loaded Android x86 on my laptop via Boxes, and it works really well without melting the CPU. At this point I don't really have to use any android apps, but I wanted to make sure there was an option if I did. Maybe if you are trying out something similar some of this info could be helpful, I might do another post just about Virtualization and Boxes in the future though!
So anyway, I am just kinda stuck in between potential solutions still, and waiting for certain things (future of 3rd party apps) to become clear before proceeding down any of these paths. Thanks for reading this meandering long post! One more thing that I want to share that has helped reframe how I view buying/consuming stuff is this excerpt from Michael Parenti's 'Inventing Reality: The Politics of Mass Media' which Sadgrl hosts on her archived site, it's really insightful :)