5 ms·

What you can do with that phone that’s useful?

seba_dos1 1mo ago
Everything I do online when I'm not in front of a PC I do on that phone. Web browsing, RSS, instant messaging, e-mail, social media, banking, navigation, public transport routing, TOTP auth, music playing, photo taking, weather checking, "smart" home stuff, conference agendas, occasionally some games or even software development (but not a lot these days - I used to program on my phone a lot when I was a teenager though). I even ran Jamulus on it to jam online during covid because it achieved better audio latency than my laptop, long before it got its Android port. Oh, and phone calling sometimes too, even though I've never been a big fan of that. Anything I need to, really.
- peroxy 1mo ago
  And how is that any different compared to Android/iOS?
  - timbit42 1mo ago
    No tracking.
  - seba_dos1 1mo ago
    Everything happens on my terms. The phone never tries to grab my attention unless I explicitly make it so. All the things I use are FLOSS. I can patch anything I want down to the kernel and bootloader, often on the phone itself (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49191008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49191008). The OS is managed the exact same way the OS on my PC is and all my skills and knowledge directly transfer over, so I can script it or write applications the exact same way I did on PCs for decades. No "side-loading" shenanigans whatsoever. I can use any browser I want with any extensions I want. I've even used it at a game jam once - plugged a screen, keyboard and mouse in and made a game with the same tools I would have used on a PC (QtCreator, Allegro, GIMP, Inkscape, Audacity, LMMS) and cross-compiled it to Windows and macOS right from the phone using the exact same tools and workflow as usual. I could probably go on and on. It feels like my little personal pocket computer rather than an appliance that someone lets me play with on their terms. BTW. Funny how it can go from "it can't possibly replace Android/iOS" to "how is that different from Android/iOS?" :)

Everything I do online when I'm not in front of a PC I do on that phone. Web browsing, RSS, instant messaging, e-mail, social media, banking, navigation, public transport routing, TOTP auth, music playing, photo taking, weather checking, "smart" home stuff, conference agendas, occasionally some games or even software development (but not a lot these days - I used to program on my phone a lot when I was a teenager though). I even ran Jamulus on it to jam online during covid because it achieved better audio latency than my laptop, long before it got its Android port. Oh, and phone calling sometimes too, even though I've never been a big fan of that. Anything I need to, really.

peroxy 1mo ago
And how is that any different compared to Android/iOS?
- timbit42 1mo ago
  No tracking.
- seba_dos1 1mo ago
  Everything happens on my terms. The phone never tries to grab my attention unless I explicitly make it so. All the things I use are FLOSS. I can patch anything I want down to the kernel and bootloader, often on the phone itself (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49191008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49191008). The OS is managed the exact same way the OS on my PC is and all my skills and knowledge directly transfer over, so I can script it or write applications the exact same way I did on PCs for decades. No "side-loading" shenanigans whatsoever. I can use any browser I want with any extensions I want. I've even used it at a game jam once - plugged a screen, keyboard and mouse in and made a game with the same tools I would have used on a PC (QtCreator, Allegro, GIMP, Inkscape, Audacity, LMMS) and cross-compiled it to Windows and macOS right from the phone using the exact same tools and workflow as usual. I could probably go on and on. It feels like my little personal pocket computer rather than an appliance that someone lets me play with on their terms. BTW. Funny how it can go from "it can't possibly replace Android/iOS" to "how is that different from Android/iOS?" :)