Why this post ?

I’ve been using a Linux phone for fun for a few months now, and this is all the annoyance that prevent me from being daily-drivable (And some other small thing that I found here and there)

I am using a Redmi Note 9S, I’ve been mainly on GNOME Mobile because I love GNOME tech, and I am building apps for GNOME too (Which are mobile friendly 🥳)

I also tried Phosh and other DE but I always come back to GNOME. I am using PostmarketOS. There are some striked things, which are the things that got fixed when GNOME 48 was released on PMOS! I might edit this post in the future to say what have been fixed (or do another one, we’ll see)

State of Mobile Linux and missing apps:

  • no good Bitwarden client
    • GoldWarden just crash and seems abandonned
    • eventhe web app is not responsive…
  • Finamp could work well but have no arm build
  • No discord app:
    • we have Dissent, which is decent, but login in is aweful and no voice chat support (we can’t even see the online status)
  • no jellyfin player app:
    • Delfin is decent but seems.abandonned… 😟
  • GS Connect works, but needs a tweak and UI is not good on small screen
  • No lemmy apps
  • waydroid don’t have internet by default, we need to run a command everytime we launch it to add a route.
  • No good Youtube client (newpipe is bad for the moment and Pipeline just doesn’t work OOB
  • no tutanota app (no arm build)

State of GNOME Shell

  • Saving dialog in.text editor.is not good
  • Somewhat laggy compared to Phosh (Not anymore since GNOME 48 🎉 )
  • OSK is bad, it needs to be replaceable easily
    • we could have multiple keyboard installed and switch between them
    • No recent emoji view 😭️
    • Since GNOME 48 it doesn’t even adapt to the locale now… (I have AZERTY set in the setting but the keyboard is now qwerty)
  • Quick setting should be smaller, android style round icon instead, to fit more on small screen (same goes for Phosh)
  • We need a OLED theme for GNOME shell mobile
  • Accent color doesn’t work in the quick settings (Gnome mobile shell use gome 46 as of 21 feb 2025) (Fixed since GNOME 48! 🎉 )
  • we need a way to bring up the OSK like on Phosh (holding the botto bar for a sec for example, maybe itcould be customizable too?)
  • no app icon in the overview of running app, and sometime its hard to know what app is running, especially when havng multiple instance of the same app
  • would be cool to be able to uninstall app from the app grid (phosh got this in 0.45 iirc)
  • The power menu when holding the power button just open the quick sretting menu, we need somethng like phosh with a real menu to reboot/turn off the phone
  • Some apps don’t close correctly and just crash, i will add them here when.I encounter them:
    • GNOME Solitaire, after clicking on the topbar menus (Fixed in GNOME 48?)
  • auto rotate doesn’t work (but it does on Phosh)
  • No pattern unlock

State of Phosh

  • what is wrong with the emoji keyboard?? it’s bad
  • gestures are bad, they need to take the same.gesture as gnome shell mobile!!
  • We NEED to press the unlock button after typing our code (would be neat to have the code automatically unlock the phone when we enter the same amount of characters as our passcode)
  • Haven’t used it intensively, especially because of the bad gesture

State of apps

  • GNOME Mines needs to be ported to libadwaita and better support smallscreen
  • timers in gnome clock are bad (it’s just one beep and if the sound is off, it doesn’t alert me)
    • alarms doesn’t turn off when clicking or swiping the notification… we need to unlock the phone… and the buttons to turn off are way too small…
  • gnome calculator bring up the keyboard, which is weird, and it goes on top of the actual app keyboard (Doesn’t go on top anymore, but still shows up…)
  • gnome software have bad UI when clicking on the size of an app to get the details

The obvious but we know this already

  • Camera support is rudimental, needs works, and I can’t wait.for it to become better!
  • No fingerprint sensors support

Device specific : Redmi Note 9S

  • camera support (same as above)
  • charging indicator doesn’t work and battery reporting is hit or miss (go up and down)
  • No fingerprint sensors support
  • top speaker don’t work
  • no vibrations

Questions

if you have question about x or y app or any feature that you’d want feel free to tell me in the comments ! :)

or even If I missed things feel free to correct me!

p.s. This list has been made on the linux phone and I’m sorry for the bad english or misspelling of words!

    • Krafting@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      1·
      4 days ago

      Someone else mentionned Valent and I need to give it a try. Newduct, you mean NewPipe? Couldn’t find newduct anywhere

      For Lemmy, lots of these apps are archived or not easily downloadable, However I didn’t know about interstallar, I tried it on android and didn’t really liked it but I might give it a shot here. (i’m also the creator of Reddy that is mentionned on the page 🥳)

  • Yaky@slrpnk.netEnglish
    15·
    15 days ago

    I just want to say I appreciate that you made a level-headed list of current issues.

    Many of the comments about mobile Linux devolve into entitlement and unrealistic demands, which is rather discouraging.

    • Krafting@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      6·
      15 days ago

      I hope my demands aren’t that high, Some of them would be fixed easily, other would be fixed by upstream devs (looking at you Bitwarden, Tuta and Finamp) Some of them would be a bit harder (the pattern unlock for exemple) But I am not a big phone user though, but I still need it in my daily life.

  • TabbsTheBat@pawb.socialEnglish
    9·
    15 days ago

    The main thing stopping me from using linux on a phone is the fact that the ID thingy that’s needed for banking doesn’t have an app

  • 1peter10@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    8·
    15 days ago

    Just chiming in regarding apps (because https://linuxphoneapps.org/ is my hobby, where I still have to add a bunch of apps I assume are created by you – if that’s you, thanks for the apps!):

    no good Bitwarden client GoldWarden just crash and seems abandonned

    Have you tried https://codeberg.org/Chfkch/bitritter ?

    (I am a KeePass user, so my first hand experience is not comparable to real-world use)

    GS Connect works, but needs a tweak and UI is not good on small screen

    I’d suggest https://valent.andyholmes.ca/

    No lemmy apps

    Yeah, the state of Lemmy apps is not great. I’ve tried a bunch, and aside from the Lemmur fork (that seems abandonned), only Nimlem felt like it had potential.

    For the rest: I don’t really use Discord, YouTube and don’t have a Jellyfin instance, so … can’t suggest much here.

    Regarding Phosh and GNOME Shell Mobile:

    we need a way to bring up the OSK like on Phosh (holding the botto bar for a sec for example, maybe itcould be customizable too?)

    IIRC, double tapping the white bottom bar thing should do that. IMHO, like with gestures, I just would love to see more consistency between GNOME Shell Mobile and Phosh where possible.

    We NEED to press the unlock button after typing our code (would be neat to have the code automatically unlock the phone when we enter the same amount of characters as our passcode)

    I disagree here, IMHO, the iOS-style 6-digit thing on GNOME Mobile is worse (I usually have longer passcodes). Having to press the unlock button can even be seen as a security feature ;-)

    • Krafting@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      3·
      15 days ago

      Hey thank you for your answer ! I didn’t know about most of this stuff ! (Yes I am the creator of net.krafting.* apps on flathub, feel free to add them on linuxphoneapps.org if you have the time ! ;D

      I will definitely try Valent, I might try bitritter, but without a package or flatpak easily installable it’s not perfect yet. EDIT: I’ve read too fast and it is available in the Alpine testing repos and thus on pmOS!

      And for Lemmy apps, well they all seems abandonned and innactive yeah… we’ll see in the future

      For GNOME shell you’re totally right, double tapping bring up the OSK, I didn’t know that thank you!!

      The passcode doesn’t have to be 6-digit only, we could store the number of char somewhere if the user wants this feature!

      • 1peter10@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        2·
        10 days ago

        The passcode doesn’t have to be 6-digit only, we could store the number of char somewhere if the user wants this feature!

        That is a good point, having this configurable would certainly be a nice change for everyone.

        One more thing regarding Phosh:

        what is wrong with the emoji keyboard?? it’s bad

        Now, there’s not just Squeekboard (which is the default on postmarketOS), but we also have other keyboards that you can try:

        and some people have managed to get Sxmo’s wvkbd to run with Phosh (see https://github.com/WHO53/wvkbd-phosh-osk for an example, I have tried another approach back in the day (but failed).

        • Krafting@lemmy.worldOP
          1·
          10 days ago

          for the keyboard (and most stuff), I try to use all the default things because it is what matters, you shouldn’t need to install a better one imo.

          But I’ll definitely give them a try later!

          The fact that you can change the keyboard in Phosh is a big plus that GNOME doesn’t have sadly…

      • Björn Tantau@swg-empire.deEnglish
        3·
        15 days ago

        Nah, i ran it through an OpenSUSE Tumbleweed Live image. I actually wanted to install it with KDE but Gnome was the only installation medium with a usable OSK because I couldn’t be bothered to hook up a keyboard.

  • ZeroOne@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    13 days ago

    I would also like to add that they usually don’t have a good battery life & no easy to install methods for android phones

    • Krafting@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      3·
      15 days ago

      Same as the Desktop App. the WebUI is not responsive, it works and it’s how I’ve been getting my passwords other than GSConnect, but it’s a chore to use on mobile form-factor…

      • cevn@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        15 days ago

        Oh ok, now I get what you mean by not respnsive, that makes sense. At least you have everything mostly working haha. I wish there was a good linux mobile discord app as well.

        • Krafting@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
          2·
          15 days ago

          yeah, they redesigned the whole app but it’s still not responsive… what a bunch of… bad programmers

          • cevn@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            15 days ago

            A browser plug in to mobilize the page might make linux phone transition easier. Maybe just a collection of user csv changes or something.