One of the many things keeping me from investing in a proper smartphone is the severe lack of control for the end user; you either have to sign up with Apple or Google if you want to use any apps, or you sideload all of your apps from an outside source (which can be risky if you don’t know what you’re downloading). I want a phone that functions like all of my other devices, and when Android was announced in what feels like an eternity ago I thought it was a novel idea to carry around a Linux powered phone. Of course, Android is just Creepy Uncle Google’s competitor against iOS, a version of Linux turned evil by those who claimed not to at one point. If there was a smartphone that offered the same level of customization without rooting/jailbreaking I would of have jumped on the smartphone bandwagon an eternity ago… and now something interesting this way comes.
I’ve been following Pine64 for awhile now, and so far the PinePhone seems to be the most viable option. It doesn’t offer much for the built in camera, but I wouldn’t really be using a phone for a camera when I prefer using kick ass cameras, but I do admire the idea of having physical kill switches for the microphone and camera functions. Of course, the best part for me is being able to swap out a MicroSD card with any Linux OS of my choice! By default it comes with Manjaro, and powered by KDE Plasma for the interface. I’m not ready to drop the cash on this project just yet though… I like the idea, but it’s still in the beta phase. I’ll be keeping an eye on things, and if it meets my standards in reviews I’ll snag one before it rolls out of beta. I would like a phone that I could just update via a main repository (and any other swag) like under typical desktop Linux.
That said… I am in need of a watch! and the smartwatch business never really interested me for a lot of the same reasons that persist with smartphones and most tablets: having to sign up for shit. FitBit, Apple, and others all track your steps and other analytical data that your device is capable of picking up. I’m well aware that the PineWatch isn’t as sophisticated as such other devices, but for what I want a smartwatch is going to be overkill. Give me something that tells time, tracks steps, and lets me program the shit out of it! The watch itself is a decent $26 at the time of writing about this, and if you want to do extra level tinkering, you can also purchase the devkit version containing a regular watch and an unsealed version for you to perform mad science experiments upon. For now I don’t think I don’t think I’ll be doing anything outside of swapping firmware depending on what version of infinitime the watch is running. I’ve also been hearing good things about WaspOS, as well.
I’ll do a follow up once the latter device is in my possession. 😀