i'm going to make a radical claim:

the "phone" has basically ceased to exist.

these devices we call phones? they're pocket computers that just happen to have cellular connectivity. they should be treated as such - which means open specs, unlockable booting, replaceable operating systems.

if you need to blob the cellular bit for regulatory approval, fine, do that, but agree a standard interface to it (like AT commands for old modems, or the interface to the Pi's GPU capabilities) that all OSes can use on all cellular devices. but there's no excuse for locking down any of the rest of the device, is there?

@thamesynne

Agreed in every respect and: I've been calling the damn things "pocket computers" for years and "pocket telegraphs" during the SMS era.

cc @modulux

@thamesynne 💯

@thamesynne I swear I remember that on some devices they DID support AT commands to the radio, but I'm drawing a blank on whether or not that continued beyond the sunset of CDMA devices.

Once you get beyond any hardware specific drivers, everything speaks to the RIL, as far as I know...
https://wladimir-tm4pda.github.io/porting/telephony.html

@thamesynne Except it's going the other way: now you don't even get to have your own computer to yourself. At least not with Windows. Or at least not without serious hacking which you can also do on phones...

@thamesynne If I don't lock down the device, I can't force everyone to use my rent-seeking app store

@thamesynne this, but also: they have basically become devices that should (in my opinion) be anything but phones.
I am still dreaming of a pocket computer that does not have any speakers or microphones.

@thamesynne I love saying "Your iPhone is a PC", gets the conversation flowing to people and makes them more open the idea from what I've noticed.

Also, my laptop is a phone, it has a sim card tray and I can make calls with it :P

@thamesynne i want a Linux phone that has a brainslugged dumbphone attached

@thamesynne rooted android phone with microg and fdroid

@vxo @thamesynne the cell modems used in the pinephone/pinephone pro definitely still have AT command interfaces, so I assume most of the other cell modems do as well

@thamesynne Not even an hour ago I was checking out Phosh/Mobian, after having entered a small rabbit hole when watching a video about the Juno tablet, which then led me to the PinePhone Pro.

The rabbit hole was interrupted by work, so I'm still going back to it, but once again I am reminded that those pocket computers can indeed be much more open than it currently is.

I would, however, love it if the PinePhone Pro would get a discount in Europe like the one currently offered for the US...

In any case, fully agreed on that take!

@jordan They can't anyway: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/07/technology/google-app-store-epic-games-anticompetitive.html

@thamesynne

@djsundog @thamesynne oh yes. this is adorable. https://pine64.org/documentation/PinePhone_Pro/Modem/

@vxo @djsundog I always thought Pinephones would probably be good at dialing into BBSes. I really should get a compatible SIM card for mine.

@thamesynne

@thamesynne Actually, I believe we should bring back phones. Those pocket computers are too big for horse riding, and too small for ssh and web...

@pavel i wouldn't have said they were too big for horse riding. but surely the bigger problem is getting them to stay in the saddle?

@thamesynne it's worth noting that AT commands are already how the phone's CPU talks to the, uh, other CPU that runs the radio stuff

this is directly visible on the pinephone, which exposes that to developers, but from discussion with people who've been part of commercial phone development we know that it's how things work behind the scenes on all smartphones

@thamesynne so the thing you're asking for would be easy, mostly a matter of turning off the bootloader locking and letting the free software people go to town. the only reason not to do it is that Apple and Google claim it would endanger user security, which is something they have a very strong commercial incentive to believe, so maybe taking their word for it isn't the greatest idea.