The quest to find alternatives to replace my phone, or the functionality it provides, with an alternative system NOT provided by either Apple or Google is not going well.
I have been trying to read up about some of the alternative phone OSs, the likes of postmarketOS, GrapheneOS, Plasma, Mobian etc. but it appears that some considerable technical knowledge is required to install and keep them working. Even when they are ‘working’ there are many facilities missing or with limited functionality – I don’t think I have the ability or patience to make it work for me at the moment.
Looking up all the OSs mentioned above, and any more I could find, there was little support for more than a handful of handsets, the most promising appears to be postmarketOS and Mobian. Unfortunately I have a drawer full of old phones – none of which are supported.
The only example of a fully functioning handset I can find is Librem5, but at £950 is a bit out of my price range.
I had great hopes for Fairphone, I like what they are doing. There is lots of good talk on their web site but the only non-Google Android option is for Murena ‘/e/OS’. My research on that turned up some aspects that do not appear to be fully open source but I will investigate in more detail when I have the time.