I just ordered a FairPhone 5 for the purpose of test-driving any reasonable Linux solutions on it. My eventual preference will probably be Mobian or Postmarket OS with plasma-mobile, but those appear to require additional dev time before they’re practical daily drivers, especially on the FP5. Ubuntu Touch appears to be a reasonably mature option, and they specifically single out the FairPhone 5 on their website as the best supported hardware right now. I believe this maturity may be largely due to utilizing closed source Android blobs to drive phone hardware which isn’t ideal for us FOSS purists but at least has the advantage of accelerating their dev efforts.
I assume this won’t become my main phone right away, but I’m curious whether this community believes Ubuntu Touch (or something else) on a FP5 could potentially be a reasonable daily driver by now. A similar post from about year ago answered No, though their question didn’t specify which hardware.
Thoughts? Maybe an alternate distro I should at look at for the FP5 specifically?
Great question! I’ll post a followup after the phone arrives and I’ve had some time to experiment. My bank’s app might run under waydroid for now, but I’m concerned they’ll subscribe to Google device integrity bs once implemented. When that happens, I’ll be limited to browser only. This is fine for checking balances and transferring funds between accounts, but I’ll lose access to remote deposit functionality. I’ll either have to occassionally use my old phone for that, or drive to a branch like we did in the pre-internet days.
SMS and phone calling should behave normally on most OSs (if not ready yet then its not a daily driver candidate for me yet). I can’t speak to WhatsUp; I strongly recommend something like Signal instead. I know WhatsApp is popular tho, but if they require device integrity there’s not much we can do solve that
I would be curious to test such device the moment critical apps work in some form. Im ok with browser only, but full functionality. Im already using social media under browser only to limit its reach as it is.