[LAC-Tech]

Can you use whatsapp on a pinephone? I know there's web whatsapp but you need to sign into that with a native app.

Honestly the browser, google maps (which works in the browser), whatsapp, SMS, phone calls, alarm, stop watch, camera... that's really about all I use on a phone. If I can find a linux device to switch that does that, I'll switch in a heartbeat. Phones are the least pleasant part of my "digital life" because of their toy operating systems.

[kop316]

Matrix has a managed bridge to WhatsApp:

https://element.io/blog/ems-launches-fully-managed-matrix-br...

And there are a bunch of Matrix clients for Mobile Linux (I use Nheko, but Fluffychat is quite good as well)

[Kbelicius]

Maybe look in to sailfish os. It has android app support and so far (almost 3 years) whatsapp has worked for me without issues. Don't know about google maps, haven't tried it but I did install microg and got my bank app to work on it.

[jeroenhd]

The phone runs Linux, and on Linux you can run Anbox/Waydroid to run Android apps. I don't know how well WhatsApp works on Anbox, but theoretically it should be possible.

From what I've read online the SoC is quite slow compared to most modern smart phones so your mileage may vary. Sadly, the mobile phone market is as closed down as ever, making it very challenging to get any kind of open source system to get calls or texts. There's a reason they shoved an external chip in there!

If you want an open, somewhat limited but usable smartphone experience, check out Sailfish. They've been in the mobile phone market for years and their original base in Android makes the OS compatible with quite a few devices with decent SoCs.

Personally, I'm waiting for the day you can hack PostmarketOS onto a phone and just use it as a phone, but that's not going to happen any time soon on closed hardware.

[linmob]

> Personally, I'm waiting for the day you can hack PostmarketOS onto a phone and just use it as a phone, but that's not going to happen any time soon on closed hardware.

For a select few devices, my personal favorite being the Xiaomi Poco F1 [0], [1] (despite afaik needing Windows to unlock its bootloader), this is already true. Sure, that's not "every phone", but at least one relatively available and nice (for the price) phone.

[0] https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Xiaomi_Poco_F1_(xiaomi-be...

[1] https://tilvids.com/w/3mn337s4Mx2WPSHRX3KJsz

[ttarr]

Try Poco F1, almost everything works, at least as a phone.

[liotier]

So, an operating system whose governance isn't against the user's interests (that means free software) - but an Android environment aboard too...

[LAC-Tech]

Everything I want runs on the web. Except for the apps that need to scan the qr code so they can run on the web...

[linmob]

Megapixels (the most popular PinePhone camera app) can scan QR codes (but it's obviously limited by the overall quality of PinePhones camera hardware).