At a loss who this is aimed at. Corporate? Because people who call without asking are not gonna bother with clicking a reason. (Or worse, click emergency every time because that means the other person will pick up) And people who ask already know if person is free/available/wants to talk.

If you’re on Android, try GeoShare, it allows you to share location from Google Maps to CoMaps, so you could easily use CoMaps for navigation.

Just to confirm #1: moved to another city, and pretty much any address within the city is now searchable and correct. POIs are a bit off, but I try to update them.

Some years ago, mentioning Linux for daily non-gaming use:

Guy: “Installing Linux is complicated though”

Me: “It wasn’t bad 10 years ago, and now it’s as hard as clicking Next a few times, even faster than Windows”

Guy: “Well duh, you have ten years of experience installing it!”

Difficult to argue with this non-logic.

AFAIK, custom ROMs ask for specific OS to get specific firmware for some peripherals (modem, WiFi, BT, etc).

E.g. installing Ubuntu Touch on Nord N10 5G requires a downgrade to OxygenOS 10 using the official tool, which (i believe) installs original firmwares.

Looks like it is partially supported: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Nokia_Lumia_520_(nokia-fame)

I have a Lumia 635 and got tmpfs to start, but then I am lost at “locate your ramdisk” https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Nokia_Lumia_630_(nokia-moneypenny)

IMO you would need a large capacitor between power (after diode) and ground, to provide enough current when device’s power consumption spikes (otherwise, it will shut down)

Here is my version without touching BMS or original battery: https://yaky.dev/2022-09-06-smartphone-without-battery/

Samsung Galaxy S5 was/is a good device for tinkering. Supports many custom ROMs from CyanogenMod to Lineage to Ubuntu and postmarketOS.

Has a removable battery, 3.5mm audio jack, SD card slot. IIRC it worked fine on 3G, but did not support calls on 4G.

IIRC app stores downrank apps that are not regularly updated too, hence the vague “bug-fixes and improvements” updates in many apps. But seriously, how much could a developer update in a calculator, habit/medicine tracker, sky map, or any other app that is a complete feature?

Some projects that kind of do that come to mind:

Beeper, which is a hosted Matrix server (probably Synapse) with bridges to other messengers, and a client (probably derived from Element?). But it’s all called Beeper to be more “normal”.

Snikket is a “rebranded” prosody XMPP server, Conversations client for Android and Siskin IM client for iOS. Also, all are Snikket, no scary abbreviations and different app names.

Average user does not care, as long as it works.

https://xkcd.com/2501/

It always seemed like shouting in a room full of people. Any coherent thought instantly became an unreadable mess due to the post character limit. Never understood live-tweeting. You could DM some company’s support person… but why?

And I blame link shorteners’ existence on twitter, too.

So did “Amazon”… :/

PinePhone is $200. But the manufacturer offloaded all development onto the community.

Librem actually pays some developers, but their phones are $700+. And you will find many complaints about refunds.

Cheap prices are possible by economies of scale by manufacturers, but same manufacturers guard their proprietary hardware.

Also, how “pleb” are we talking about? Many people DGAF and just want their calls/text/apps to work.

Does NovaCustom just buy phones and installs iodeOS on them? Or are they involved in development of either?

This is the manufacturer, SHIFT: https://www.shift.eco/en/shiftphone-8/ Hardware does look easy to access, and should support custom OSes.

This is iodeOS: https://iode.tech/iodeos/, which looks like LineageOS + additional features and privacy-as-a-service kind of deal.

The most obnoxious case of needy apps I witnessed was when I disabled Google Play Services on a OnePlus phone. Every default app (including Phone and SMS!) would spam notifications saying something like “Google Play not found, functionality is limited” every minute or two, while the real impact was minimal.

…made by developers with a special student/hobby account, only for a limited number of devices.

Half-assed “solution”.

On Android, there is Quicksy, and yes, it uses phone number sign-up for ease, but it seems more private than corporate apps.

Without phone numbers, there’s Conversations.im. There are some public XMPP servers with open registration, but you would need to find one, e.g. sure.im by Tigase lets you make aan account, but I don’t remember if calls work.

Are you looking to self-host something as well? Snikket is all-in-one chat+calls, but you would need to host a server. (Still based on Conversations and XMPP)

IMO not as good as The Circle. Although it follows one character, they move between so many departments, it reads more like a collection of short stories.

My best guess (especially if taken by the water) is a juvenile bald eagle. They don’t get the distinct white head feathers until 2 or 3 years old.

Although, Golden Eagles live around the Rockies, too. But the pose makes it difficult to see details and size.