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by emptyparadise 1405 days ago
What alternatives do we have? Don't mean this as a dismissal, genuinely want to know more about the state of open source hardware.
3 comments

Librem 5 of course.

The Gigaset phones might be interesting. Built in Germany, rebranded by Volla among others.

Sony Xperia and Fairphone are far away from vanilla Linux I think (someone may correct me).

> Sony Xperia

Tried one with JollaOS. GPS doesn't work, and headphones didn't work. No idea about the stock experience tho.

> Fairphone

It's a pretty Google-centric Android experience.

You can't even get past setup without signing up with Google.

Fairphone and Librem are alternatives to Pine64 hardware in the same way that a Lamborghini may be an alternative to a Toyota Yaris. They aren't even remotely in the same pricing band.
They are still alternatives… with different pros and cons, the price being one of them.

But the Fairphone is not an alternative to the Librem 5 and the PinePhone, and those are not alternatives to the Fairphone. They target different things.

Not any really. Which is why this situation sucks the most.
It's not necessarily open source hardware, but there's the option of getting a used or new old stock phone that works with a distro like postmarketOS, or /e/ phone, etc.