Linux phones are still behind android and iPhone, but the gap shrank a surprising amount while I wasn’t looking. These are damn near usable day to day phones now! But there are still a few things that need done and I was wondering what everyone’s thoughts on these were:
1 - tap to pay. I don’t see how this can practically be done. Like, at all.
2 - android auto/apple CarPlay emulation. A Linux phones could theoretically emulate one of these protocols and display a separate session on the head unit of a car. But I dont see any kind of project out there that already does this in an open-source kind of way. The closest I can find are some shady dongles on amazon that give wireless CarPlay to head units that normally require USB cables. It can be done, but I don’t see it being done in our community.
3 - voice assistants. wether done on device or phoning into our home servers and having requests processed there, this should be doable and integrated with convenient shortcuts. Home assistant has some things like this, and there’s good-old Mycroft blowing around out there still. Siri is used every day by plenty of people and she sucks. If that’s the benchmark I think our community can easily meet that.
I started looking at Linux phones again because I loathe what apple is doing to this UI now and android has some interesting foldables but now that google is forcing Gemini into everything and you can’t turn it off, killing third party ROMS, and getting somehow even MORE invasive, that whole ecosystem seems like it’s about to march right off a cliff so its not an option anymore for me.
I still don’t see why phone-based tap-to-pay is even a good thing. What, I should hand over all my financial credentials to Google or Apple or Microsoft in addition to my bank? I think not. I’ll just keep using a physical card, thank you. (Which, by the way, can often still use tap-to-pay as most modern cards have RFID chips embedded. No different than with your phone, except it’s not tied to one of the big oligarchs, even less so if you use a credit union as opposed to a bank.)
Bog-standard bluetooth is more than enough for me.
Why would I need a voice assistant? I can find out information almost as easily just using a search engine. And if I’m driving, I’m not so busy as to be unable to pull over to the side of the road if I absolutely need to check something. Or, you know, get everything ready before I go. At the further risk of yelling at clouds despite my relatively young age (I’m in my early 30s), I think voice assistants and IoT things are largely just fluff that over-complicate things in a world that is already over-complicated.
1 - you arent. You dont need to. They have it other ways. Tap to pay is done on device with a revokable token. If the device is stolen, the token can’t be easily accessed and can be remotely wiped at any time, unlike a stolen card which you have to call in to disable and even that doesn’t always go over well. 2 - Bluetooth doesn’t give me maps or a UI to access my music, podcasts, etc. 3 - feature parity wins people over. You aren’t going to bring people in to the ecosystem by selling on having less. You can sell on mandating less, but opening with “here are the things a Linux phones CANT do” will never get this off the ground.
That’s the problem. The things you think “people” need is what they already have and it can’t be different. “I want to trust everything on a company online but I want my data to be private and safe.” You have to choose. For those people who think they “need” what you say, they already have apple and Google.
Just like Linux was never meant to replicate windows “features” like cortana and others, and it didn’t, and it works for those who don’t want those things which is why they want Linux.
The requirements for Linux to have your “needs” would make me not want it, and then it would just be a poor version of apple without the trillions of dollars that come with it. It wouldn’t please either side.
The things open source people care will always be a minority. It’s sad but it’s the reality.
Bluetooth works fine (or should work fine) with music, podcasts etc. I do it now with a phone, it’s a standard I don’t see why a mobile device running Linux would be any different.
As for maps, the voice goes over Bluetooth so I don’t see an issue there either.
You can’t choose a specific playlist or album over Bluetooth via the head unit is what they were saying. And with the maps some people don’t like to have the voice on and prefer to actually be able to glance at a map when needed, on the head unit.
True, but then again I dont want to mess with any screen while I am driving. I line up a couple of podcasts or episodes and that is several hours right there. Or stream from my server, and just line up what i want. I can still skip fast forward change tracks, and I don’t see why, on a linux phone, I couldnt make the blue tooth inputs do more if I mapped them that way.
It’s just good in those moments where things have fucked up for some reason and you can either quickly stop at the side and easily deal with it on the head unit or if there’s no traffic around you can slow down and touch the buttons you need to bit by bit while keeping an eye on the road. Or, even better, if you have a co-driver they can sort it for you on a screen that both you and them are able to deal with.
Its funny, because that is my experience with carplay, but not my devices.
Car play fucks up. One of the reasons I don’t want it.
I just want a touchscreen cast. Is that too much to ask?
Touch screen cast would be awesome too. I’d love for there to either be that or an open android auto/car play standard. The former would probably be easier and I imagine some aftermarket head units have that functionality already.
I’ve actually wanted to DIY a head unit at some point and getting a good satnav experience on it would be key to it being a daily DRIVER.
vocal map instructions suck and always will
I noticed that googles is horrendously bad. The open source stuff is ok.
the open source options (that I found) lack hours and public transit maps
Not for nothing, tapping to pay with phone is not the same as using the physical card to tap to pay. In the former case, your actual card info is not transmitted.
The former you said? So phones tap to pay are more private in principle?
Arguably, yes. When you pay with one of the phone wallet options, you transmit a unique set of info, like a verification token or 2FA token for example, which your banking service confirms is valid for your card and the transaction goes through. But the vendor never receives your real card info.
And since a card cannot transmit a unique token every time (because it’s static), it has to include real card info? (Although theoretically it could suffice with limited info as well, I’d imagine. As long as the info gets confirmed by banking service as valid)
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