Some years ago, mentioning Linux for daily non-gaming use:

Guy: “Installing Linux is complicated though”

Me: “It wasn’t bad 10 years ago, and now it’s as hard as clicking Next a few times, even faster than Windows”

Guy: “Well duh, you have ten years of experience installing it!”

Difficult to argue with this non-logic.

Looks like it is partially supported: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Nokia_Lumia_520_(nokia-fame)

I have a Lumia 635 and got tmpfs to start, but then I am lost at “locate your ramdisk” https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Nokia_Lumia_630_(nokia-moneypenny)

IMO you would need a large capacitor between power (after diode) and ground, to provide enough current when device’s power consumption spikes (otherwise, it will shut down)

Here is my version without touching BMS or original battery: https://yaky.dev/2022-09-06-smartphone-without-battery/

Some projects that kind of do that come to mind:

Beeper, which is a hosted Matrix server (probably Synapse) with bridges to other messengers, and a client (probably derived from Element?). But it’s all called Beeper to be more “normal”.

Snikket is a “rebranded” prosody XMPP server, Conversations client for Android and Siskin IM client for iOS. Also, all are Snikket, no scary abbreviations and different app names.

Average user does not care, as long as it works.

https://xkcd.com/2501/

PinePhone is $200. But the manufacturer offloaded all development onto the community.

Librem actually pays some developers, but their phones are $700+. And you will find many complaints about refunds.

Cheap prices are possible by economies of scale by manufacturers, but same manufacturers guard their proprietary hardware.

Also, how “pleb” are we talking about? Many people DGAF and just want their calls/text/apps to work.

Does NovaCustom just buy phones and installs iodeOS on them? Or are they involved in development of either?

This is the manufacturer, SHIFT: https://www.shift.eco/en/shiftphone-8/ Hardware does look easy to access, and should support custom OSes.

This is iodeOS: https://iode.tech/iodeos/, which looks like LineageOS + additional features and privacy-as-a-service kind of deal.

On Android, there is Quicksy, and yes, it uses phone number sign-up for ease, but it seems more private than corporate apps.

Without phone numbers, there’s Conversations.im. There are some public XMPP servers with open registration, but you would need to find one, e.g. sure.im by Tigase lets you make aan account, but I don’t remember if calls work.

Are you looking to self-host something as well? Snikket is all-in-one chat+calls, but you would need to host a server. (Still based on Conversations and XMPP)

The best explanation I saw several years ago: Large tech companies drive change through competing individual teams and projects. So some manager pitched a half-assed idea, somehow convinced upper management to go with it, got developers to heroically implement it, and might have gotten some bonus for doing so. It doesn’t matter if there was no value as long as some decision maker thinks there is (or does not care, or numbers were fudged anyway).

It is literally change for the sake of change.

Moved from mid-range OnePlus to a-model Pixel with GrapheneOS. It’s much better, don’t miss anything. There was no LineageOS for that OnePlus yet, every OnePlus app would scream at you if you turn off Google Play Services, had some unreproducible bugs with GPS failing, log files filling up disk space, and killed any non-whitelisted background apps. GrapheneOS works as I expect it too, and with the exception of Google+carrier suddenly killing RCS, I did not have any issues.

Got PineTime pre-tariffs (even though it took a while to ship to US)

Pretty neat piece of hardware, has everything that I want (notifications, time, weather, timer), InfiniTime OS is open source and was easy to read, build and flash (had to do so to add missing Cyrillic letters and a shortcut)

As long as your expectations are that of a microcontroller-powered device and not a supercomputer-on-your-wrist, it’s fantastic.

IMO Snikket (XMPP) is the easiest all-in-one solution with audio/video chat at the moment. Pretty good on resources too.

I currently host a Matrix Synapse server, but:

• Matrix seems to be expanding in the corporate / institutional direction, more services are expected for regular functionality
• Element X (upcoming client) breaks calls compatibility with old Element, now requiring Element Call. It’s kind of a mess, I presume this is to support group calls, but makes it a PITA to use currently.
• Even with small number of users, Synapse DB grows in size due to state_groups_state table, non-deletable users, and copying ALL data from other servers’ rooms (this one is by design but still…)

I ran prosody server and used Siskin IM as a client, it worked pretty well. But as others mentioned, since this is Apple, the client developer has to run a push server, no background processes and long-polling allowed. Some other XMPP clients (Secret Messenger I think) did not have that set up and do not have notifications.

Profanity for XMPP and gomuks for Matrix are both neat ncurses clients that work pretty well.

Looks like BM818 in Librem5 supports VoLTE, but might have issues with some networks.

PinePhone’s (and one of Mudita’s phone’s) EG25 modem technically supports VoLTE, but was very flaky for me (in a mid-low signal area)

FuriLabs (FLX1) seems to have VoLTE working.

Ubuntu Touch explicitly states that it does not support VoLTE.

Nice! Writing a similar converter was my first step when I set up my parallel site-capsule.

Love gemtext, it’s so simple yet pragmatic. (And there is just one version of it, unlike Markdown)

When I last used Dino (a few years back, on a PinePhone), I had to build it with notification sounds flag. Not sure if this is still the case, or if that is the same for calls.

./configure --enable-plugin=notification-sound

While looking for above, also found a GitHub issue with your problem

Osmin on PinePhone was… Tolerable. I’m just pleasantly surprised it worked okay with GPS being integrated into the modem.

Takes a long time to get a GPS fix (like old standalone GPS units), but it’s possible to provide A-GPS data to it.

There is the “allow background usage” and “optimize”, but also, locking the app on the app switcher is supposed to help it stay alive.

Depends on Android flavor too. OnePlus OxygenOS, for example, does not respect the “do not optimize/sleep” setting, and will not let apps run in the background (or foreground) unless the app is in the invisible whitelist. E.g: WhatsApp is fine, but SimpleX is not.

https://dontkillmyapp.com/

You cannot use Proton Mail with another provider. And you cannot access Proton Mail from a regular email client (app) due to their encryption setup. (technically you can, but you need Proton Bridge proxy)