Give me a little push…

Heh, fair; I didn’t want to be too presumptive (though I probably tend to exercise too much caution in that area, generally).

So I’ve ran Phosh on devices with a more reasonable amount of RAM since I had a OnePlus 6 I’d been using until AT&T decided to kneecap a perfectly usable device and block it from their network (I also bought the Pinephone and Pinephone Pro and’ve run it on those devices, too, but they, obviously, didn’t quite have the same power as a OP6; I’ve also got a Surface Pro that I threw Phosh on for work though I think it’s still less powerful than the OP6? But it’s also not ARM and the hardware’s different so I don’t know if that’d reasonably make it different from the other devices).

The point of which is to say I’ve ran Phosh on a variety of devices though, to be fair, my OP6’s battery ballooned sometime last year so it’s always possible I’m missing out on improvements which were made recently that might’ve impacted things.

All that said, this is one of the smoothest experiences I’ve had, – full stop – ever, with Phosh.

One is the speed’s great; I haven’t run a flagship Android device for a while (my current device is a OnePlus Nord N20) but I’m not really missing out on anything. There’s, like, half a second for Linux app’s to load where you briefly get the logo and the spinner but, compared to all of the aforementioned devices, that’s a breeze. Again, I haven’t run the latest Phosh updates (just due to not having a phone to run them on) but I remember things always kind of felt…fragile. Like, – if I used it too absentmindedly – things would come undone and something would crash quickly.

I remember really struggling with highlighting text in Firefox and being able to easily expand the highlight, etc. Basically feel “native” (in the sense of “genuinely part of the system and intentional”), now. I remember I’d have to long press and then lift my finger in time or something weird or, otherwise, the popup menu wouldn’t show up properly; now, it just works. I think I remember reading in the Matrix chatroom they have that they made modifications to Firefox to get things to work better with either the OS or the hardware so those improvements may be thanks to FuriLabs.

I haven’t tried every app. out there but, from the Linux side, things just…work.

You’ll still benefit from having run your Linux on your own before (for example, 2 websites I was trying to login to wouldn’t let me click on the password textbox after I’d put in my username, for some bizarre reason; I switched to the Terminal keyboard and used the tab key to get to the next textbox. Gnome Updates said it had an update and yet trying to install it resulted in it immediately switching to the No Updates status (though this has always been my experience with Gnome’s updates manager; I’ve always much preferred Mint’s); so I dropped into the terminal and just apt-get–ted my way there); things like that were pretty rare but, also, I’m still so blown away by using a system that runs so smoothly that…I don’t really care. So I had to know enough about web browsing to know that I could tab from one textbox to another? I was able to check the weather in Gnome Weather on my phone. I was able to launch Emacs to edit an application’s .desktop file to hide it from the launch on my phone (probably a feature they’ll want to add so you can just do that with a long press or something but, still, trivial in light of everything else). I could launch Tuba to browse the Fediverse in a native GTK app. on my phone.

Even stuff I thought might bother me in the long run I find myself just not caring, now. Like I knew I wouldn’t be able to use any kind of Swype feature (which I, normally, use all the time) but I find I just don’t care in the face of the fact that I can reasonably use Phosh without worry and kind of have everything I might want (Monophony works great with YouTube Music and is a native GTK app.; I can play YouTube through Firefox just fine (and the media controls even work so I can pause and fast-forward and -backwards) from the dropdown; I always thought Gnome Podcasts was a pretty great podcast app.; I was able to sync. the calendar just fine and it’ll show event reminders on the lock screen). Not entirely related (but I can’t remember where I was going to mention it, now) but the Settings, now, work with everything. On all the other devices, I’d always run into edge-cases where it was obvious this was just Gnome Settings added on so things didn’t always work with features of Phosh but FuriLabs have made sure everything feels like an integrated system.

Which leads (well, it did before I added the note about Settings) to the other major requirement that needed to be filled for me to use this and that’s being able to run Android app.s. Again, pretty flawlessly; FuriOS uses a fork of Waydroid (largely to make tweaks specific to the phone’s hardware and OS) (one of the developers used to work on Droidian) and it’s works really well. You still have to make sure not to open the keyboard until it’s fully started up but I have mine set to startup on boot and, once I wait the 5 or so seconds, I’m pretty much set and it’s smooth sailing, from there.

It is using MicroG and the Aurora Store so that may cause some issues. Google Voice claims it can’t load accounts (not sure why) and GMail complained about needing to run Google Services. And my bank and credit card app.s claim that they’ve detected a vulnerability and crashed themselves to protect me but, seeing as my bank complains when I use any browser other than Chrome or Firefox (just because they’re not Chrome or Firefox) and manages to log me out right after I initially logged in because it thinks the session has expired, I suspect it just doesn’t like that it’s not stock Android (or maybe notices the Google Services missing and doesn’t want to use MicroG); I’ll just make some progressive web app.s for those. The Voice one is disappointing as I was able to run it in Waydroid after I installed MicroG myself but I don’t want to futz with the version FuriLabs set up in case it messes up the performance of their Android environment.

Otherwise, I’ve had pretty excellent luck with every other app. All of my utility app.s installed (and run) just fine. Still on Tumblr as a lot of people I’ve known for a decade, by now, are still on there and that works like I were running it on my Nord N20. Just…great. There may be other edge cases (I tried DoorDash but Aurora freezes up, every time) which is why I wanted to mention it and the MicroG but, honestly, there’s enough working (and working reliably) that I think I can live with it (and I can always make a prog. web app. for DoorDash, if I really need to use it; I’ll live). It crashed once but that’s when my bank app. kept crashing itself (and I kept trying to make it work, anyway) so I think that has to do with it moreso.

And the battery’s great. It does charge faster than average (I think someone said 11W, in the Matrix chatroom) but, obviously, slower than the 25W of fastcharge. Lasts the whole day though you will probably need to charge it overnight. That said, I’ve also been using it pretty much nonstop and installing and setting stuff up and that likely won’t be the case during your average work day.

In terms of network, sadly I can’t say much about it; I am in the U. S. and I’ve got AT&T (which I have heard some people have trouble with but I think some got it working?) but I’m not testing it as AT&T disabled my SIM when they cut off the OP6. With COVID infections being at the levels they still are (and the husband having RA run in his family), I can’t afford to go into an AT&T store and that’s what I’d had to do when they disabled my SIM last time. So I’m not taking the risk of trying to swap phones. That said, they list which bands the phone works with on their website and I’m pretty certain the bands for all carriers are, now, supported. I just can’t test it, sadly. I did hear that T-Mobile is working pretty flawlessly from the Matrix chatroom, though (in case you use that).

And they’re still making improvements, as well; I think every month they usually drop updates and you can report bugs you find for them to improve. From what I’d read, the updates and fixes they’ve done over the last year/year-and-a-half resulted in the performance I’ve seeing, now.

I still would do what I’ve told others and caution that you’ll probably run into bugs and there’s probably going to be fixes that’ll need to be addressed over time but, honestly, most of everything I’d need is there. The banking stuff sucks but I’m holding onto my old phone so I can scan checks that way. The Google Voice thing would’ve been a dealbreaker last year but I’ve moved over to Signal and barely texted, to begin with, so not as big of a deal. I expect I’ll be able to install Slack without much trouble through the Android environment so I can keep abreast of work (I’m a contractor so most of my actual work occurs on a different device; I just need to get notifications from my parent company). Google Maps doesn’t work (unsurprising: Google Services) but there’s gotta be other map app.s out there with the number of people trying to get away from Google (Gnome Maps didn’t cut it, for me, since I needed to look up transit times and locations based off of where I was but working from home and rarely going out has taken that concern to a lower priority). I have heard that calls and (regular) texting generally work, from the Matrix chatroom, so, though I can’t report from experience, there is that.

There’s the usual downsides (it’s Halium, no longer has a removable battery or a headphone jack (though it does come with USB-C headphones to make up for that fact)) but I’ve ran Phosh on so many devices because I just desperately want to get off of Android. It’s good enough that I think I finally can, honestly.