I was looking at a pixel fold running grapheneOS. Google is making changes that I dislike and realistically cannot avoid so why jump ship from my existing walled garden into one that’s just now starting to from, with even worse privacy and a business model totally dependent on violating as much of your privacy as possible?

The future of graphene and other third party roms is uncertain but I needed to upgrade my phone. My screen was cracked but usable but once I remove it to replace the battery I won’t be able to reinstall the single piece of glass and by that point I’m halfway to a new phone anyway.

For now, I’m okay with my air, but I know me and Apple are on not going to be together long term. I’m pulling off the cloud and breaking up dependancies one by one so, but as far as phones go, there isn’t a viable option quite yet. It’s definitely coming but it’s not here yet.

We need to break free from both Apple AND Google. Borrowing from Google to make another rom but still being dependent on them to keep your project alive and supported is no longer an option. We need a clean break away from them.

I can foresee a phone-like pocket computer running Linux that doesn’t have cellular capabilities at all. American cell phone companies weren’t crazy about supporting windows phone a many even blocked them from joining their networks. We are starting to see the same shit with Linux phones now. But most people don’t need data everywhere. There’s wifi where people like me actually use it. And so I can see a market for a voip service for phones that lets you use them like mobile landlines. For simple texts, a network of Lora packet radios would suffice and reticulum seems to be up the task of serving that need.

Costs are increasing and our dependance on these devices are changing so not every problem we have with Linux phones will need to be solved by the time that such devices get off the ground. We have options for tomorrow.

But today, the iPhone air was fine for me.