We can say that for any kind of drivers needed to run a mobile phone.\ Manufacturers of components are less and less providing any documentation, just throw a binary blob and say “put it in your Android build”.
Comment on Framework won’t be just a laptop company anymore
Telodzrum@lemmy.world 6 months agoAny Linux phone is DOA for the foreseeable future because of the cellular radios.
smileyhead@discuss.tchncs.de 6 months ago
priapus@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
They didn’t say Linux phone though, it could still be android with a custom ROM.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Eh, Pinephone and Librem 5 made it work, but there’s still a fair amount of software limitations here, and I didn’t think Framework should be a software company. But the radios themselves probably aren’t the blocker you make them out to be.
Telodzrum@lemmy.world 6 months ago
They absolutely did not make it work. Go read any of the reviews and the complete unreliability of the cellular functions of both devices are chief among the criticisms.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
My understanding is that those issues are due to suspend to save battery life, which isn’t directly related to the radios. A more appropriate SOC (i.e. one designed for mobile use) would probably be more reliable with the same radios they selected when going on standby.
tal@lemmy.today 6 months ago
You can get laptops that have 5G radios that you can use for data with Linux.
As I understand it, there’s no support for voice/SMSes at the radio level, but in theory, if you were willing to tolerate it and your cell service provider offers support, you could do WiFi calling.
Could also get service from a random other VoIP provider, use that over the data connection.
I think that a larger downside is that Android software is designed for a touch screen and low power usage across the board, and GNU/Linux software generally isn’t.
Car@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
I imagine the lack of voice support presents some compliance issues with emergency calls.
tal@lemmy.today 6 months ago
Mmmm. I dunno. You’re talking about location availability?
Last month, I had to call 911 when some random druggie lit what I thought was a building on fire across the street from my car (it turned out to just be a bonfire in the parking lot; figured that out while running over). I didn’t know the cross-street for my location, and asked the dispatcher if she could just send the fire department to the location she got from my cell phone via E911. She had no idea what I was talking about, needed me to manually provide location.
So I’m not totally sure, at least in the US, what the compliance requirements are for availability of location information.
Car@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
More referring to selling a device classified as a mobile phone that might not be able to connect to emergency services without any tinkering. My google-fu is failing me now, but I’m trying to see what the actual requirements are, if they exist at all, to sell a mobile phone. All I’m seeing is that the radio shall connect to any available base stations during an emergency call regardless of subscriber status.
bluewing@lemm.ee 6 months ago
E911 is a thing in some places and not in others depending on what each county dispatch wants to do and pay for. It does require some call center upgrades as I recall when I was working EMS and fire. It was kind of sketchy when I was working. But, everything is a bit sketchy when working in a very rural area in public safety.