I agree, and I desperately want a Linux phone, but the really problem with Linux phones gaining traction is that is the developers are DEVELOPERS.
“I make $200,000 a year… how much should a good smartphone cost… how about $700? It’s a bargain!”
I get that making hardware is expensive, but asking people to jump into something with a learning curve and real sacrifices at a premium price is just guaranteeing it stays niche - especially when asking an audience that by and large has to have an Android as a backup for some apps anyway.
And this is coming from someone with no fewer than 16 machines running various Linux distros in his house. You can’t ask someone to spend that much on a secondary phone to play with until they get comfortable enough with it to switch completely. You just can’t. It’s barely working for the Linux OS, and that’s free.
Tbh people do buy iPhones which and they’d still buy them if they cost $2k. People just buy them on contract over the span of years
I’m sure it’s very difficult to compete with the established duopoly of Apple and Google.
How are you supposed to make a product cheap against those enormous economies of scale, all while knowing very few people will want it or buy it when it doesn’t have any apps for reasons of that same duopoly?
Linux phones absolutely are a niche project with sacrifices, as you said, and the only people who can bear the cost of entry at the moment will be a niche market of engineers and tinkerers.
It would be nice to get the price down to that of the consumer market, but the whole experience is still not even ready for consumers.
