I have been looking at Fairphone and Volla, and it feels like the Smartphone scene for Linux is going very strong right now.
Think of it like this: We got 3-4 end-user ready Ubports smartphones, made by IN Europe(Volla/Gigaset is), with recent hardware, swappable battery, very good service and repairability in various formats. You can even purchase Gigaset phones (commercial equivalents of Volla) in stores/Amazon for a very good price.
The immediate orbiters of Linux smartphones like Fxtec, Planet Computers and Jolla are also based here.
I think we reached the year of the Linux phones. Atleast it is not the niche it was in 2020. I wonder how usable ubports is. If you got any experience with these phpnes on ubports, feel free to share.
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Though I’d rather recommend you just get out of WhatsApp entirely (it’s still owned by Meta after all), one way to go would be by using a matrix client (like element) with the WhatsApp bridge.
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The messages would still go through WhatsApp, but they are e2ee anyway. The part where it would protect you is that you wouldn’t have the app installed on your device, so Facebook won’t be able to get your location, access your contact list, etc.
@spiritedaway @Bondrewd It depends on what you mean by ‘modified non standard’ and ‘stock Android’, but banking apps will generally work on a number of custom Android distributions providing they aren’t rooted.
All of my (UK-based) banking apps work on Calyx, for example.
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@spiritedaway Yep — if you want it to. On initial install you choose the level of integration you want microG to support, as detailed here: https://calyxos.org/docs/guide/microg/
I’d imagine most apps you need should run under waydroid
I’ve looked into this already, contactless payment will not work on waydroid or anything that isn’t stock
Yeah…if more apps were web based or have web counter parts for mobile it would help.
In my case my main bank works exactly the same through the app than the browser mobile version, all can be done from either. That said I do not expect to be the same for all banks.
But yeah I would still have the issue with WhatsApp, if they had a web client like the telegram one it could work aswell. Although as other pointed out you might get away with some kind of bridge.
Main issue is that the two-factor authenticator app is usually only available for Android/iOS (some are still supporting SMS, but they are trying to phase that out)
Their web app now actually works almost stand-alone. And as projects like yowsup have shown, it’s also possible to create your own stand-alone WhatsApp client (it’s only a matter of doing the work).
Oh yeah… My main bank still uses SMS. But yeah on of my secondary banks has an app notification two factor thingy… But the SMS is still there as fall back. But true that if they end up removing that it could be a problem yes.
And good to know about the WhatsApp thing thanks for sharing.