I’m just going to get a stand alone Garmin GPS that comes with a map update subscription.
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It is connected loosely the Host’s talked about this product . Awhile back .
Yeah. OSMAnd is what I’m taking about.
Let’s see what this will bring…
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My old Samsung is really happy about that.
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I would love to load something on my Samsung S6, but Straight Talk says it’s locked. It takes $150 to unlock it because it hasn’t had service on it for awhile. My current S7 is unlocked because I have paid for service for 12 months. I don’t want to tinker with my current phone. What could I do with this S6? Anyone know a legitimate way to get something on it and use it as a daily driver phone?
What do you mean exactly? I use Ubuntu Touch on the S3 Neo.
Edit: You probably mean something else. I only ever used Ubuntu Touch and like it. I do not use any Android apps on my phone and this device is not yet supported to run them.
Does Ubuntu Touch work with a Samsung S6?
I’ve had a look, but it seems it’s not supported (yet).
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Unfortunately not. I also had a look after the newest announcement.
Hello! i have that one for some months now and are using it as my daily driver. It’s a work in progress but it works. Don’t expect the same functionality like an ordinary android, iphone, or lineage or others.
There are not that many users around yet, and that shows in the app store. The os on the phone (ubuntu touch) has one truly annoying bug and that’s the wifi. It forgets it’s wifi ap’s regularly. The fix is easy, just connect manually, or, sometimes, you need to enter your password (again).
I made a bug report for that.
Another bug which annoys me is that it rejects from time to time, without warning, the sd card. Sometimes the device doesn’t recognizes the card any more. Only solution is a reboot.
When it comes to apps, i’m using a few of them, but not that many. I don’t trust them all that much. Protonmail has an unofficial app, but i’d rather see one developed by Protonmail themselves, for instance.
Some of them are buggy, others work out of the box. (navigation, for instance, is rock solid).
I bought this phone because i believe in the mission and want to support this initiative. If that comes with several faults and bugs, so be it. Chicken and egg…
It’s a good phone if your expectations are set for “it’s in development, but has real potential. We just need more people using/buying this phone”.
And if you look at the price (where i live 300€), it isn’t that big of a hurdle, seeing what you get for that.
Knowing what i know now, i’d do it again.
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I think that will be difficult on Ubuntu Touch.
Well, actually, there’s Axolotl. A signal app, under development. It works, i’ve used it too, but again, it’s unofficial. (So keep that in mind, regarding trust etc…)
The companies that produce the apps we love are not yet producing apps for this platform. So we have to make do with unofficial ones.
Battery life is ok for me. You mileage may vary.
You can switch from the ub touch enviroment to the volla os without problems. I haven’t tried that yet, as i’m happy using ub touch.
If your needs are phone calls, txt messages and a (under development) Signal app, i’d say you’re good to go.
I’m glad you’re considering buying a volla. This will help spread the message that there are phones out there that aren’t spying on you.
Well, the short of it goes something like this.
They claim that the phone (all parts) are made and built in Germany.
The back is made out of recycled plastic and can be removed, thus giving acces to the battery. Which can also be replaced. That’s a good thing.
They also claim that no parts are either glued or bolted, so in case you have a problem, you can send the phone back and they’ll fix it and send it back.
The os itself is a standard Android, without the usual bloatware. (don’t know exactly what that is, but i can only hope it’s degoogled. Maybe you could ask them).
Updates: they say they’ll update the phone up to android 12 and that you have 3 years of security updates, coming from a server in Germany. (don’t know if that’s what you want, but that’s what they say).
The marketing here is that it’s CO² neutral, but let’s be honest here. That’s allmost impossible, but it’s a great marketing gimmick. But besides this, i think this phone is something.
For a price of 400€, it’s not cheap, but the removable battery is something to consider.
Well translated.
It comes with stock Android but not un-googled. They offer you the standard support that comes with a lot of stock Android devices, three years, and then you can “throw it away”. So much for being CO2 neutral. Three years is a joke for a company that claims to be environmentally aware.
Edit: They claim to recycle parts and probably you can give it back and still the parts come from Asia. You can also send the phone to be repaired and of course it is great that is has a removable battery.
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Ah, no un-googled phone then. That’s not good. I’m removing this one from my list of phones to keep an eye on.
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@Daemonicvs are you sure about that? I just checked the site and there are models available. Or did i miss something?
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Yep, if you can’t pick up a Pinephone, finding a compatible Android smartphone with an unlockable bootloader and working well with LineageOS (I have been running LineageOS for months now on my ASUS Zenphone Max Pro M2 and aside from the speaker not working (fixed by formatting the cache partition) and notifications for some apps (part of Google’s firebase service, so it depends on the app if it uses it or not), it has been smooth sailing, with pretty much all of my apps bar a few being available to use.
It has been amazing and I will never be running stock Android on a device again.
If someone shows up in a chatroom for any operating system, Android, Linux, MacOS, Windows, BSD and they get a user to run their random binary (assuming their device gives them the freedom to install things) it’ll be game over for any platform.
That there was an open CVE for a way to brick the modem if you already had access feels like it misses the point that this was a cross-platform user vulnerability.
I do think hobbiests and especially Arch users (see: AUR) tend to be more on the edge of the trust spectrum though and these events may not of happened otherwise. Really sucks either way.
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A pinephone was on the list of phones to consider, but i haven’t heard or read great reviews. (at that time, this might have changed).
Volla was the only viable alternative for now. (looking at price, buying and shipping).
I’d like to have a graphene ready phone, but that would mean forking over 600$, to buy one in the U.S. I don’t even want to know how much import fees and tax i’ll have to pay to actually get it into Europe. So for now, that’s a no-go.