what smartphone OSs exist besides android & iphone? Customising?
August 24, 2015 4:25 PM Subscribe
Anybody got experiences using OSs besides iphone, android? Customising them? Dual config eg of sailfish, ubuntu? Best phones to try this on? Tips? Avoid?
intending to spend a few more years contemplating smartphones before buying, and being extremely poor and a control freak, i'm trying to find out more about options to make your phone do exactly what i want and nothing i don't want, like i do with my Firefox (so customised most people can't recognise it as a browser) and my Linux. I understand what an OS is but no deeper, and don't want to learn programming. One day i will buy a secondhand smartphone and start installing different OSs. Apart from android and iphone, are there other OSs for mobile phones out there, and what's having them like? Any experiences? I know you can't just download 'ubuntu' for your phone, you need it to have been adapted to your phone (i am not capable of compiling or any other task, i'm barely past needing .exe files). I'm interested to learn, if Jolla or Ubuntu or any other OS (free preferably - i think Jolla's is Sailfish) have been fun to install, run, customise, or a nightmare... I'm not interested in dual-boot config. Break it remake it is my motto! Are particular phones easier to install lots of OSs on? Do you ruin your phone forever once you do it? Must it be unlocked? How does it compare to PCs, the only thing i have experienced so far? I'm not after an 'answer' but rather all sorts of ideas and experiences! Thanks! (NB willing to cope with languages and maths i don't know)
intending to spend a few more years contemplating smartphones before buying, and being extremely poor and a control freak, i'm trying to find out more about options to make your phone do exactly what i want and nothing i don't want, like i do with my Firefox (so customised most people can't recognise it as a browser) and my Linux. I understand what an OS is but no deeper, and don't want to learn programming. One day i will buy a secondhand smartphone and start installing different OSs. Apart from android and iphone, are there other OSs for mobile phones out there, and what's having them like? Any experiences? I know you can't just download 'ubuntu' for your phone, you need it to have been adapted to your phone (i am not capable of compiling or any other task, i'm barely past needing .exe files). I'm interested to learn, if Jolla or Ubuntu or any other OS (free preferably - i think Jolla's is Sailfish) have been fun to install, run, customise, or a nightmare... I'm not interested in dual-boot config. Break it remake it is my motto! Are particular phones easier to install lots of OSs on? Do you ruin your phone forever once you do it? Must it be unlocked? How does it compare to PCs, the only thing i have experienced so far? I'm not after an 'answer' but rather all sorts of ideas and experiences! Thanks! (NB willing to cope with languages and maths i don't know)
I bought a OnePlus One because of some of these concerns. It runs Android and Cyanogen. It allows far more privacy control when it comes to apps and I also use Firefox on it. It's very stable and I didn't need to break it. It comes directly from OnePlus, so it comes unlocked and has no carrier bloatware that you can't remove. You can pair the phone with an external keyboard via Bluetooth.
posted by quince at 4:34 PM on August 24, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by quince at 4:34 PM on August 24, 2015 [3 favorites]
Cyanogen is the Android equivalent of the Linux community. The OnePlus is as open source as a phone can be.
posted by irisclara at 5:02 PM on August 24, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by irisclara at 5:02 PM on August 24, 2015 [1 favorite]
I don't know about OSs that can be installed on devices they weren't developed for—the one I follow (LuneOS, aka open webOS, etc.) is basically restricted to a couple of devices and not ready for prime-time. (The Nexus 4 is the main target device for it right now—in general it seems like Nexus devices are your best bet for this sort of thing.)
The other OSs that are on sale include BB10, Windows 10 Mobile, and Firefox OS. Of those, Blackberry 10 is supposedly getting replaced by a custom version of Android soon, Windows 10 Mobile is down to Microsoft devices, and Firefox OS is targeted at emerging markets. (There's also CyanogenMod, which is based on Android.)
In short: There aren't a ton of options out there. Your best bet is probably to get a Nexus phone and get involved with the people who customize Android/Cyanogen/etc.—that's the analogue to Linux on the desktop.
posted by Polycarp at 5:05 PM on August 24, 2015 [2 favorites]
The other OSs that are on sale include BB10, Windows 10 Mobile, and Firefox OS. Of those, Blackberry 10 is supposedly getting replaced by a custom version of Android soon, Windows 10 Mobile is down to Microsoft devices, and Firefox OS is targeted at emerging markets. (There's also CyanogenMod, which is based on Android.)
In short: There aren't a ton of options out there. Your best bet is probably to get a Nexus phone and get involved with the people who customize Android/Cyanogen/etc.—that's the analogue to Linux on the desktop.
posted by Polycarp at 5:05 PM on August 24, 2015 [2 favorites]
Are particular phones easier to install lots of OSs on? Do you ruin your phone forever once you do it? Must it be unlocked?
Many phones will only allow you to install OS's that are signed by the manufacturer. If you get around this (or have a phone that does not have this restriction), you normally can restore the phone's original OS, though of course this will wipe whatever contents you have on it.
I think probably the biggest difference between the mobile world and the PC world is that there's a lot more undocumented and incompatible components in the mobile world. Another significant difference is that the obsolescence cycle is faster - a 4 year old phone is a lot older than a 4 year old computer.
My recommendation is to decide what OS(s) you want to install and then from there, when you're ready to buy, choose hardware that will work well. Right now it looks like the Nexus 7 works with both Ubuntu Touch and Sailfish, but if you're not planning on doing this for a couple years, the landscape will probably be pretty different.
Any chance of phones with the old 9 buttons?
What are those?
Has anyone made their own mobile? it's not hard but i'm lazy
Maybe I'm just no good at phonesmithery, but it seems to me (I haven't made a phone, but did make my own hand held GPS) that making a phone would actually be extremely hard.
posted by aubilenon at 5:06 PM on August 24, 2015 [1 favorite]
Many phones will only allow you to install OS's that are signed by the manufacturer. If you get around this (or have a phone that does not have this restriction), you normally can restore the phone's original OS, though of course this will wipe whatever contents you have on it.
I think probably the biggest difference between the mobile world and the PC world is that there's a lot more undocumented and incompatible components in the mobile world. Another significant difference is that the obsolescence cycle is faster - a 4 year old phone is a lot older than a 4 year old computer.
My recommendation is to decide what OS(s) you want to install and then from there, when you're ready to buy, choose hardware that will work well. Right now it looks like the Nexus 7 works with both Ubuntu Touch and Sailfish, but if you're not planning on doing this for a couple years, the landscape will probably be pretty different.
Any chance of phones with the old 9 buttons?
What are those?
Has anyone made their own mobile? it's not hard but i'm lazy
Maybe I'm just no good at phonesmithery, but it seems to me (I haven't made a phone, but did make my own hand held GPS) that making a phone would actually be extremely hard.
posted by aubilenon at 5:06 PM on August 24, 2015 [1 favorite]
Check out the Replicant website and see if it's what you're after.
posted by Bangaioh at 5:40 PM on August 24, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Bangaioh at 5:40 PM on August 24, 2015 [1 favorite]
Well, there was a time when I really liked Maemo. Now that it has morphed into Sailfish, I have not really enjoyed it (I ran it on my Nexus 7 tablet for a while), not least because of the lack of apps. The Nokia Internet Tablets and the N900 had a small, but mostly complete, app catalog.
Given your requirement for customizability and the importance of at least a complete, if not deep, catalog of apps, you really want an Android phone. Your best bets would be either a Nexus or OnePlus or possibly one of the Xiaomi phones. You want something with an unlockable boot loader and good developer support that is reasonably easy to root.
If you are willing to put in the time, you can customize Android phones quite heavily, especially with root. Even without root a surprising amount of stuff can be changed thanks to Android's intent system allowing you to choose which apps are used for most anything the phone does, including which launcher and dialer you use. (You do need root to mess with the notification bar, though) An unlocked boot loader allows you to also fully replace the OS if a different one is released that will run on your hardware.
posted by wierdo at 10:19 PM on August 24, 2015 [1 favorite]
Given your requirement for customizability and the importance of at least a complete, if not deep, catalog of apps, you really want an Android phone. Your best bets would be either a Nexus or OnePlus or possibly one of the Xiaomi phones. You want something with an unlockable boot loader and good developer support that is reasonably easy to root.
If you are willing to put in the time, you can customize Android phones quite heavily, especially with root. Even without root a surprising amount of stuff can be changed thanks to Android's intent system allowing you to choose which apps are used for most anything the phone does, including which launcher and dialer you use. (You do need root to mess with the notification bar, though) An unlocked boot loader allows you to also fully replace the OS if a different one is released that will run on your hardware.
posted by wierdo at 10:19 PM on August 24, 2015 [1 favorite]
Seeing as how google has basically given up on the idea of a cheap, decent nexus(and nexus phones have always had garbage battery life, always, since before the name nexus even existed with the G1) and the nexus 6 is just silly, the whole "phone with a ton of OS options" torch has basically been passed to the oneplus one.
People have sailfish, firefox OS, and probably a lot of other stuff running on it. There's android builds that vary from tons of features to keep your laws off my body 100% OSS only stuff.
It's also a decently specced phone with excellent battery life.
From what i've seen it's not a device that's easy to brick, either. Flash it all you want, most of the people who bought them are nerds who play around with them a lot in that sense so i'm sure if there was a weakness there it would have been big news.
There's issues with some of them having bad touch screens or other weird hardware problems, but in my opinion as someone whose owned several google nexus devices... i'd much rather have potentially flaky hardware than a phone that's pretty much useless because it only lasts half a day.
Like, there's still lots of dev activity around the nexus 4 and 5, but they suck to own as phones. I sold mine on because of the crappy battery, and everyone i know still soldiering on with one either complains about it or quietly finds somewhere to plug it in everywhere they go(or has one of those mobile battery banks with them ALWAYS).
Unfortunately, that's as close as you get to "open" for a phone. There's no build-your-own-phone kit(yet! they're working on it!). If you want my advice though, don't get a phone to do this with. Or get a phone, but use another phone as your phone-y phone every day and just use your flashing stuff/messing around phone on wifi. I switched back to iphone because i just wanted a phone that worked, while allowing me to do smartphone things, that i not only didn't have to tweak to make it work how i wanted but wasn't tempted to tweak(...much, i still jailbreak and mod things occasionally).
It's really damn annoying when your silly modded phone decides to crash or be weird right when you get an Important Call, or are stuck somewhere at night and trying to use GPS but it's broken in the rom you have flashed, or blocked in some byzantine way by security settings your forgot to fix, or...
posted by emptythought at 1:13 AM on August 25, 2015 [1 favorite]
People have sailfish, firefox OS, and probably a lot of other stuff running on it. There's android builds that vary from tons of features to keep your laws off my body 100% OSS only stuff.
It's also a decently specced phone with excellent battery life.
From what i've seen it's not a device that's easy to brick, either. Flash it all you want, most of the people who bought them are nerds who play around with them a lot in that sense so i'm sure if there was a weakness there it would have been big news.
There's issues with some of them having bad touch screens or other weird hardware problems, but in my opinion as someone whose owned several google nexus devices... i'd much rather have potentially flaky hardware than a phone that's pretty much useless because it only lasts half a day.
Like, there's still lots of dev activity around the nexus 4 and 5, but they suck to own as phones. I sold mine on because of the crappy battery, and everyone i know still soldiering on with one either complains about it or quietly finds somewhere to plug it in everywhere they go(or has one of those mobile battery banks with them ALWAYS).
Unfortunately, that's as close as you get to "open" for a phone. There's no build-your-own-phone kit(yet! they're working on it!). If you want my advice though, don't get a phone to do this with. Or get a phone, but use another phone as your phone-y phone every day and just use your flashing stuff/messing around phone on wifi. I switched back to iphone because i just wanted a phone that worked, while allowing me to do smartphone things, that i not only didn't have to tweak to make it work how i wanted but wasn't tempted to tweak(...much, i still jailbreak and mod things occasionally).
It's really damn annoying when your silly modded phone decides to crash or be weird right when you get an Important Call, or are stuck somewhere at night and trying to use GPS but it's broken in the rom you have flashed, or blocked in some byzantine way by security settings your forgot to fix, or...
posted by emptythought at 1:13 AM on August 25, 2015 [1 favorite]
fwiw, I have a Nexus 4 and I really like it. I also have a Nexus 7 tablet that I really like. Both are rooted but neither is running Cyanogen. Stock Android is good enough, especially once you install Gravity Box.
If you like to tinker, install Cyanogen on any supported device and flash nightlies. I used to on my Nook Color. It was fun, and let me explore the capabilities of the limited hardware. There are also Cyanogen forums for physically modifying the hardware of phones and tablets, but as aubilenon said, it's a pain in the ass.
Seriously, just go to XDA Developers and read some of the OS development threads. Some devices have non-Android development, but, of course, very limited apps. There are several forks of Android being used and all kinds of device-specific goodies. Some are very stable, some are more experimental. Just see what's out there.
posted by irisclara at 12:30 PM on August 25, 2015 [1 favorite]
If you like to tinker, install Cyanogen on any supported device and flash nightlies. I used to on my Nook Color. It was fun, and let me explore the capabilities of the limited hardware. There are also Cyanogen forums for physically modifying the hardware of phones and tablets, but as aubilenon said, it's a pain in the ass.
Seriously, just go to XDA Developers and read some of the OS development threads. Some devices have non-Android development, but, of course, very limited apps. There are several forks of Android being used and all kinds of device-specific goodies. Some are very stable, some are more experimental. Just see what's out there.
posted by irisclara at 12:30 PM on August 25, 2015 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: thanks everyone for so many interesting answers, there is much more than i ever imagined out there, this is fascinating! Hope to read many more:)
posted by maiamaia at 2:22 PM on August 30, 2015
posted by maiamaia at 2:22 PM on August 30, 2015
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