Ask HN: What does your mobile phone setup look like?
I recently left Apples ecosystem and switched over to Arch Linux, Migadu for E-Mail, rsync.net for backups and my own server for CardDav, CalDav and media streaming. I also switched from Apple Music to Bandcamp and enjoy listening to Indie bands througu FLAC files.
My setup is actually now much easier and faster to use. It took me 1 month of setting everything up, but I love it.
My only "problem" is now my mobile device. I still have an iPhone X but would like to replicate the same "ownership" feeling I have on the desktop.
I was giing through Android phones which are:
* rootable
* have a SD card
* have a headphone jack
The only phone I found was the Sony Experia 1 iii. Bow I wonder what other geeks are using?
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 37.7 ms ] threadYou can consider the idea of not using a phone at all, which may be the most aligned with what seem to be your values regarding tech. If you don't, then look into phones on which you can install LineageOS or even PINEPHONEs.
Mental Outlaw[1] has some helpful videos on YouTube on some of these topics.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThsXFPC-_60
Me too.
Since the early Motorola and Sony-Ericsson smartphones, what made a smartphone smart was that it would communicate with a PC over infrared and later USB, allowing external storage (if not also removable internal memorysticks) and filehandling using the manufacturers' PC software as well as serving as a general purpose virtual modem so you could directly call in to your ISP (like AOL) from a PC using only your cellular signal.
Even on a phone which had a monochrome screen and was too weak to browse the internet or get email itself.
This is of course before "data plans" existed.
So they had not yet introduced the nomenclature of "tethering", where the former ability of the carrier's smartphones to connect over USB would after that be subject to additional charges or disavowed altogether. Before that connecting over USB was not tethering, connecting over USB was normal.
And as years went by when it arrived even the 2G location coverage remained well behind what was available previously dial uppable. Most people didn't realize good analog cellphone modems ran at about twice the 56K speed of landlines, which actually worked pretty good. Broadband wasn't really that hot back then itself, nor as ubiquitous as now.
If you went to a place where they still only had a dialup landline, your smartphone could often be twice as fast.
So if you wanted you could still get a battery-powered computer online with only a battery-powered phone just about anywhere even while 2G and 3G people were still restricted to big cities.
And no smartphone failed to have a removable battery which the user can change quickly & easily.
With Apples and touchscreeens in general people tended to accept a less-flexible and also less-cost-effective approach to electronics. With more of the anti-reuse-&-recycling approach baked in, which can truly be made to sell more electronics than superior engineering sometimes.
People do get the advantage of having a much more powerful hand-held device, but other than being hand-held it's not really enough for businesspeople who need to run traditional Windows programs anyway. For that a laptop with a SIM card slot is good.
I also find that with so many other people on their phones so much, there should theoretically be far less need for me to be on mine, so have consciously cut back to the point of insignificance by comparison.
The waste/reward ratio each year is just so much worse than what I had become accustomed to it's truly less satisfying than ever.
Plus when I'm mobile I don't want to be sporadically immobilized by too much information when I should probably be moving more steadily toward my destination instead.
The time I don't spend touching a screen could give me an unfair advantage starting my next company, or maybe even make the difference whether it would be possible or not.
Without actually trying to set an example myself, that was pointed out to some of our chemists, and before long I noticed some curtailment among them which could be a good sign of someone who could be a more worthwhile recruit in the future.
It seems so much smarter this way.
It all works wonderfully well. At some point, I might upgrade to iPhone 13 or 14 (whichever one they just announced), though I don't really need to. For e-mail, I just use the default Mail app. The battery life on this thing, after ~4 years, is surprisingly great. The Settings app has a menu that tells me my battery holds up to ~89% charge. Good enough I think.
What I really like about the AirPods is I can really easily switch between my MacBook and my iPhone. And the one time I misplaced them (leaving them in the office), I was able to quickly figure out where they were using the Find my app.
If you want a pocket device that truly gives you the same feeling as your desktop, and is immensely practical at the expense of not having mobile phone access, I can fully endorse the GPD Micro PC. Since I got mine, the phone only gets used for phone calls, navigation, and photography. I generally keep the phone on hotspot when I go out so the Micro PC has connectivity.
It let me put my own library of Blu-Rays I ripped myself, as well as music I purchased over the years (many CDs I ripped myself), and more recently purchased through Bandcamp. Having it easily accessible from anywhere is good enough for me.
For mobile apps, I prioritize apps that are published on F-Droid, and will fallback on closed-source apps if nothing fit my requirements.
Some day I'll be forced into a smart phone, but it hasn't happened yet. When it does, I hope that phone is running Genode or Fuchsia.
For cloud services I use: Migadu (email), Nextcloud (Caldav, Carddav, Photos/files sync), Spotify. Most of my instant messaging is thru Signal, I think Matrix is too "out there" for my friends and family.