Linux phones are still behind android and iPhone, but the gap shrank a surprising amount while I wasn’t looking. These are damn near usable day to day phones now! But there are still a few things that need done and I was wondering what everyone’s thoughts on these were:
1 - tap to pay. I don’t see how this can practically be done. Like, at all.
2 - android auto/apple CarPlay emulation. A Linux phones could theoretically emulate one of these protocols and display a separate session on the head unit of a car. But I dont see any kind of project out there that already does this in an open-source kind of way. The closest I can find are some shady dongles on amazon that give wireless CarPlay to head units that normally require USB cables. It can be done, but I don't see it being done in our community.
3 - voice assistants. wether done on device or phoning into our home servers and having requests processed there, this should be doable and integrated with convenient shortcuts. Home assistant has some things like this, and there’s good-old Mycroft blowing around out there still. Siri is used every day by plenty of people and she sucks. If that’s the benchmark I think our community can easily meet that.
I started looking at Linux phones again because I loathe what apple is doing to this UI now and android has some interesting foldables but now that google is forcing Gemini into everything and you can’t turn it off, killing third party ROMS, and getting somehow even MORE invasive, that whole ecosystem seems like it’s about to march right off a cliff so its not an option anymore for me.
Phone projection for navigation has been significantly better than any built-in navigation on any car I’ve ever driven. The vehicle screens are typically larger than a phone screen so that’s a really nice feature to me.
Yeah! CarPlay has been amazing to use for navigation. I wouldn’t consider a car that didn’t have something like this.
With that being said, I could be against getting a Linux phone and just leaving an old Android or iPhone in the car for CarPlay use.
I find car play awful. So I guess there is that. Half the time it does something stupid or the screen gets strange or a bunch of other problems like forcing my nav map when I want a different one.
What I want is true screen casting with touch feedback. That's it.
Yeah, I agree that it could be improved upon, but it is easier than pairing Bluetooth since I can just plug in. Plus having the navigation on the car screen is easier to see than a phone mounted to the dash.
Once the Bluetooth is paired the one time, there is nothing to do though. Get in car, last thing I streamed is now streaming automatically.
Built-in car navigation is an useless addition. Just know your city, for car's sake!
If I was only going around my own city, I wouldn't be in the car.