Most people only know about Android and iOS. See my guide on Android to see how I have used Android without Google Play or Google Services.
This guide is about alternatives to Android and iOS.
Pine64 is an interesting new company that rolls out products that are geared towards tinkers and developers. The hardware is as open as possible within realistic constraints. The end-result is usually cool items that would normally be considered to be in the beta testing phase. If you are not interested in tinkering, do not look to Pine64 until their software is more polished.
They have lots more interesting projects, but I am only highlighting their mobile products here.
I tried Ubuntu Touch and Mobian with it.
I tried Ubuntu Touch and Mobian with it.
I flashed Mobian to the eMMC with
JumpDrive
and bmaptool and a local file.
Infinitime is software that can run on the PineTime. Documentation GitHub Releases
I ordered my Librem 5 is 2018. I am still waiting on it. I have given them lots of slack as they are developing hardware and software that will be a major improvement forward in mobile computing.
Ubuntu Touch maintained by UBports Foundation is an alternative mobile operating system that runs on the most popular GNU/Linux distribution Ubuntu.
I used this OS as my daily driver for about 1 year using the Bq Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition. It was an interesting experience. I would not recommend it for everyday use.
The best part about it was the command line app was a real Ubuntu terminal in your pocket. Swiping directionally on the screen was arrow keys and tapping was tab. You had to remount the filesystem as read-write in order to do most things which was officially not recommended. If you upgraded packages through apt, the system would not work so you had to limit yourself to only installing packages.
Many of the available apps were "Web apps" and were essentially a web browser that could only go to one page. You could also replicate this functionality most of the time by opening a browser and visiting the same address. I wish the app store would allow you to filter these web apps out as I never wanted to use them.
There are some really cool native apps that have no equivalent elsewhere.
Overall, not enough app development happened in the ecosystem to meet most people's workloads. Using Ubuntu Touch is a compromise.