Anyone want to bet Cellular Providers will start blocking or tack on additional network fees for non-Apple/Google phones?
this post was submitted on 04 May 2026
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Fine. Wifi calling is good enough for me. VoIP never went away
Support for a device on each cellular provider isn't automatic. There is are certification and approval steps that cost them money upfront.
Charging fees is unlikely to recuperate their network engineer costs so from a consumer perspective it'll look like blocking but that's not the reality. It's that the device wouldn't be in their supported device list.
Yeah. They don't need to block them, they just won't work, and they won't support them.
Those prices. Ouch.
If you don't want to pay a wild premium, you have to contend with a device that is built by Google... and running an OS that is mostly built by Google.
The forks are great and all, but dependency on Google can't be the solution to the problem forever.
The flx1s listed in the article is selling for $500. That seems fair to me. The more popular offerings in the article are definitely not giving sufficient value for my money.
I can't believe I didn't click on that one... I did not expect to see that combination of relatively low price and high specs. $500 and 8GB RAM.
The price of the Librem 5 ($800 with 3GB RAM) must have broken my brain
The price of the Librem 5 ($800 with 3GB RAM) must have broken my brain
I think some of the big players like Librem and Pine tend to use zealot pricing, where they're counting on those on the extreme end of linux and privacy to pay for the idea and simply disregard the substandard experience.
I do understand that not monetizing the user/customer costs more but outfits like FuriLabs shows that you can end up with more than a paperweight for less money.
AFAIK Librem claims they use separate verified suppliers and builders (compared to more common Android manufacturers, for example). Kind of a zealot thing too though.
And PinePhone (original) at $200 is not that expensive if you think of it as a compact version of a Linux platform like Raspberry Pi. Raspberry Pi + charger + battery + touch display + 4G modem + GPS unit + microphone + speaker will probably run close to $200 too.
I cannot get past USB2 and displaylink on the FLX1S.
You can install phone Linuxes to many cheap devices:
https://docs.sailfishos.org/Support/Supported_Devices/
https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices
Buy pre-installed:
https://buy.jolla-devices.com/product/sony-xperia-10-iii-sailfish-os/
There's not really a reason to be upset with a phone running a privacy focused version of Android. Android, at heart, is Linux with some runtime stuff on top. The runtime stuff has open source versions that Google is involved with, but its still open source. There's also independent reimplementations of some of the proprietary Google stuff.
The thing is, there's really only 2 mobile platforms with any sort of application support: iOS and Android. iOS will probably never have open source versions. If you go outside those 2 platforms, you end up being very limited. You can talk to Amazon, Mozilla, Canonical, Microsoft, Palm, BlackBerry, and others about what that world looks like. So, if you want to have any application support and therefore any traction, the best bet is to take something that's already mostly open source, reimplement the non open source bits, and make sure what's left doesn't depend on Google (though most have a way to use Google services, often is a restricted way, if you need that). That's what /e/OS and GrapheneOS do.
I bought a CMF1 phone and flashed /e/os on it. Mostly just to run it through the ringer and see how well it works and if it really can be a daily driver. So far, so good. Phone was on sale for 125€ during the last Black Friday. Surprisingly good phone for that price. Been using it with the various privacy focused messengers for voice calls. Haven't stuck a SIM card into it yet. Eventually I'll try my banking apps, which might be the sticking point as I'm not sure I can get those outside the Google App Store.
Work in progress, I guess. But no problems so far.
Eventually I’ll try my banking apps, which might be the sticking point as I’m not sure I can get those outside the Google App Store.
If it has a full compliant web browser, you'd still have the bank's desktop website available, yes? Though its possible the bank's website may not be written with context awareness so usability may be cumbersome, but at least you'd still have access to the information.
My bank has a separate Push-Tan app that you use as 2fa for sending money for payments (i’m in the EU). While I’m sure there’s some workaround for the luddites and geezers (or us privacy respectin folk), I haven’t gotten that far yet. But I’ll report back when I do!
The bigger problem for me personally is that my bank uses the app to verify certain transactions and there doesn't seem to be a way around that. I'm planning on moving to GrapheneOS on my daily phone soon, my solution will be to have my old iPhone run nothing but my banking apps. It sucks but privacy sometimes involves sacrifices.
As long as the transaction doesn't require biometrics, I wonder if you could have a traditional smartphone (iphone/android) located physically somewhere else, and a self hosted VPN that would allow you to VPN and remote control the traditional smartphone remotely. So you could run the real bank app on real smartphone hardware (no emulation), and not have to carry it having all access through your Linux phone with a remote control client.
The downside is you'd be responsible for the burden for securing this solution, as your banking app would be one of the most critically security data concerns.
My banking app took that burden onto itself. It detected the remote access app and didn't even start!
Writing this from my Fairphone 5 running postmarketOS (Linux).
Biggest downside right now is no phone calls, but that's being worked on.
That's quite a big downside for a phone.
I haven't wanted phone/sms service for over a decade. If I could have data only, I'd sign up in a heartbeat.
or is it? 😏
It's kind of feasible now to use a small Linux laptop or tablet, plus a cellular modem or wifi hotspot, giving up on smartphones altogether.
Not perfect but possible. There is pros and cons to going thus route.
They throw funny-words like bricks but a nice overview nonetheless.