xman | # 31 | 2020-02-11, 12:36 | Report

I understand your point and it's a very good one. I will say though that your can set up calendar sync fairly easy for a maemo users .

You just need caldav compatible calendar.

I have a share cal on my own cloud server, which you can easily setup these days with a vm pre-setup.

And yes this is one tiny hole plug for what seem to be many cracks for you

Cheers

x

justmemory | # 32 | 2020-02-11, 12:57 | Report

Thanks for the tip

I know about caldav and setting own server... And you know this calendar thing is just a small fragment of the problem (I have to convince family members - who are way too far from the phrase "techie" - to use this or that; which they are not familiar with... It is always challenging...)... There are so many aspects as you said: many cracks...

From theoretical aspect it is quite a bit of a question for me: I would like to be with my family instead of solving problems (heavily time consuming...) that are existing because I do not want to use mainstream/Google/Apple/whatever apps/services. Freedom in tech world or free time in the real world...?
There are solutions such as microg or aptoide/F-Droid but these are limited too... For now, I hope

Kroll | # 33 | 2020-02-11, 13:12 | Report

My daily driver is Asus ZenFone Max Pro M1. Excellent device with a battery which lasts 2 days and a price of $160.
Before I bought it in last december I used Meizu M5 Note (no comment here) and Nokia N9 as a second phone for a work calls.

I love my N9, but it is almost useless nowadays in terms of smartphone tasks.

biketool | # 34 | 2020-02-11, 13:21 | Report

Since LineageOS leadership seems to be mostly concerned with good Google relations they are interested in getting people to dl the Gplay apk and install it; LineageOS for microG is a minor fork with the major benefit of being designed from install to spoof Gplay services and never installing Gplay so be sure to follow and get the correct OS for your privacy.
https://lineage.microg.org
The fork of LineageOS from the microG project
https://microg.org/
Paid Protonmail has a google compatible calendar which is supposed to go free this year sometime, I have not tried this with my N900, you can get the email app APK or if paid use encrypted pop3.
Lineageos with microG includes fdroid store with most apps you will need.
If you are not concerned with tight security Aurora store app lets you get annon APKs direct from the Google store that you can't live without.
MicroG spoofs location and most other(excluding push) Gplay functions.
this link can also help shine up LineageOS
https://old.reddit.com/r/privacy/com...ageos_in_2019/
LineageOS with microG is still just an Android fork and you are still stuck with super sketchy hardware and bin-blob drivers which seem designed to serve governments and corporations not you. This is why I (recoverably)neutered that Android phone's cellular capability after putting the best in a bad situation OS onto it.
There are the root level ad blocking, VPN, script blocking, and other things you can do to get the best and most you respecting experience out of the hardware we have to work with.
Hoping that the next GNU Linux handheld is finally a true user device with proper hardware/drivers and a large enough ecosystem of programs and perhaps wine-like containers and compatibility to bridge the gaps of things we need in a mobile comm and computing device.

Flynx | # 35 | 2020-02-13, 04:11 | Report

If I bought something today, SFOS on the Pro1 seems like the best option. However, having tried Sailfish once already, I am skeptical.

Can you sell me on it?

I haven't used it since version 1. I tried to download a virtual machine of version 3 so I could try it out, but that required running a binary and I stopped there. Why can't I just download a VM image or ISO to try?

Wikiwide | # 36 | 2020-02-13, 05:01 | Report

To try out Sailfish OS in a Virtual Machine, you could try installing Sailfish OS application SDK. It requires Oracle VirtualBox version 4.1.18 or higher pre-installed on the host machine, see https://sailfishos.org/wiki/Application_SDK .

I am currently trying to sell myself on it :-) Storeman is a touch confusing, I am sure that zypper (command-line) sees repositories and applications which Storeman (GUI) doesn't see. I am slowly trying to move things over from Nokia N900 to Fxtec Pro1 - such as, SIP accounts. Going well, so far!

Thank you. Best wishes.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Per aspera ad astra...

velox | # 37 | 2020-02-13, 07:49 | Report

I've been lurking here for a long while before creating an account, but apparently that has been >10 years now, as well. That's something like a thousand internet years, so I might be in the target audience for this thread. Soooo, let's go.


Daily Drivers:

N800
N900 (first phone I actually used, hated cell phones before that)
[an android phone provided by work, galaxy s2, I think]
Jolla Phone
Jolla Phone
Xperia X (Sailfish OS)

Plus a bunch of devices to play with/learn (and develop, since I at some point started to build some applications for SFOS):

- Harmattan: N9
- SFOS: Yet another Jolla Phone, Intex Aqua Fish with Jolla C Software, Jolla Tablet, Gemini PDA, Xperia XA2
- Android: Rooted Tolino with a huge SD-Card for reading, another XA2 used for keeping in touch with more or less current android systems.

cheers!

MartinK | # 38 | 2020-02-13, 19:54 | Report

So for me the smartphone story started with the Neo FreeRunner I got from school to work on my bachelors thesis & this is where modRana first ran on a mobile devices, forked from a FreeRunner navigation app called "Rana". Later on I got a N900, which I still have in working order and occasionally use for modRana testing.

After the N900 I used N950 for a while & ported modRana to MeeGo Harmattan, followed by Nokia N9 I got from the Maemo Coding Competition.

The Sailfish OS ear started for me by pre-ordering the Jolla 1, which I used for quite a while, followed by Jolla C. I also pre-ordered the Jolla Tablet, but was not quick enough to be in the super early batch that actually shipped. But a friend of mine was quick enough and I bought the Jolla Tablet from him later on and used it for a while. At the moment it has a broken USB connector (again, after a previous repair), bringing back memories about the fragile N900 USB connectors that thankfully did not impact my N900, at least so far.

I started the Sailfish X ear with an Xperia X & then with a second one when the first one turned out to be incompatible with high speed pavement impact. Since then I bought a second hand Xperia X with Sailfish OS also to a non power users family member to see how usable is Sailfish OS for regular users. Looking good as far as I can tell.

I still use Xperia X with Sailfish OS as my primary mobile device even though I've already got the [s]Longcat[/s] Xperia 10+, I have not yet flashed it with Sailfish OS partially due to lack of time & due to waiting a bit till the hardware support stabilizes a bit.

As a secondary device I use the Galaxy Tab S6 with Android, mainly for drawing using the built-in S Pen functionality. I've also got the official keyboard cover for it, which has been working quite nicely. It would still rather get something comparable with Sailfish OS or Fedora, even for the standard Linux drawing apps (Krita, Mypaint) but as far as I can tell, nothing like this is available at the moment. At least the Tab S6 has a bootloader that can be unlocked, so I guess there is chance of a decent OS might be ported in the future.

As for my future plans, I definitely plan to get the Pine Phone - I have good experience with their Pine 64 SBCs and the price (~150$) is IMHO really good for such a nice device. I'm also aware of the Pro1, but find it just bit too expensive & bit bulky given that I mostly lug a 10 inch tablet with a rather nice keyboard with me.

Still, it's really nice to see all the new & reasonably open mobile devices! It's a shame a smooth transition from the FreeRunner/N900 to these devices was not possible & many people had to switch to less open yet more usable modern devices, at least in the interim. Still, giving all the buzz around all these devices & all the community mobile OS porting initiatives gives me hope nothing was really lost, just quite a bit of people patiently waiting for the right time. Which is apparently now.

xman | # 39 | 2020-02-13, 21:00 | Report

Really loving all these device history and usage stories.

x

ric9K | # 40 | 2020-02-13, 21:18 | Report

Me, N900 monomaniac.
I feel like a fish into it. Comfortable, warm, known environment, fluid feeling of use...
Lazy and afraid to dive into a fresh-new-cold-unknown-something-else. Rearrange everything, loose habits, convert things...

Maybe a Pro1, once, for a better camera and for the ability to watch videos decently. And a bit more speed with a filesystem, calendar and contacts getting really huge after so many time. But still, can doubty blobs and backdoors be excluded on a Pro1 (as well on a n900 btw...)?