Depends, if it can do everything that termux does without some kind of security features that will make it unusable it can prolong device life and phones have a lot of different things in them including great cameras!
this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2025
42 points (100.0% liked)
Android
18617 readers
136 users here now
The new home of /r/Android on Lemmy and the Fediverse!
Android news, reviews, tips, and discussions about rooting, tutorials, and apps.
πUniversal Link: [email protected]
π‘Content Philosophy:
Content which benefits the community (news, rumours, and discussions) is generally allowed and is valued over content which benefits only the individual (technical questions, help buying/selling, rants, self-promotion, etc.) which will be removed if it's in violation of the rules.
Support, technical, or app related questions belong in: [email protected]
For fresh communities, lemmy apps, and instance updates: [email protected]
π¬Matrix Chat
π°Our communities below
Rules
-
Stay on topic: All posts should be related to the Android OS or ecosystem.
-
No support questions, recommendation requests, rants, or bug reports: Posts must benefit the community rather than the individual. Please post to [email protected].
-
Describe images/videos, no memes: Please include a text description when sharing images or videos. Post memes to [email protected].
-
No self-promotion spam: Active community members can post their apps if they answer any questions in the comments. Please do not post links to your own website, YouTube, blog content, or communities.
-
No reposts or rehosted content: Share only the original source of an article, unless it's not available in English or requires logging in (like Twitter). Avoid reposting the same topic from other sources.
-
No editorializing titles: You can add the author or website's name if helpful, but keep article titles unchanged.
-
No piracy or unverified APKs: Do not share links or direct people to pirated content or unverified APKs, which may contain malicious code.
-
No unauthorized polls, bots, or giveaways: Do not create polls, use bots, or organize giveaways without first contacting mods for approval.
-
No offensive or low-effort content: Don't post offensive or unhelpful content. Keep it civil and friendly!
-
No affiliate links: Posting affiliate links is not allowed.
Quick Links
Our Communities
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
Lemmy App List
Chat and More
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Well right now it's still just a VM and whilst you have root access you can't access anything on your phone as it appears to be sandboxed. Not sure about camera access.
But yeah, in theory you could use an old Android phone instead of buying a raspberry pi, for any little side project. Ideally Google adds a way to enable the VM at boot as right now you can't do that.
The problem with phones is just the battery. The battery is probably not getting bypassed when charging, so when you just leave it running for a long time without looking at it, that might be a safety issue. But I'm also just guessing, I don't know if it's really that dangerous.
It's still not ideal but you can at least set a charge limit and set it really low like 50% which is about where those batteries degrade the least.
But yeah using a lithium ion battery as a capacitor ain't great. BMS is just gonna charge it some, let it drain, charge it some, let it drain, repeat over and over again. There's a reason store phones tend to become spicy pillows so much after a while of being on display always on always running some animation.
This is already what happens when you leave it plugged in to charge overnight, except it uses very little power so the battery only gets topped off a handful of times.
The heat caused by the busy CPU would also be a rather big problem for the battery.
A VM running a fully-fledged operating system should never, ever have root access to its host device...
Well if ika1988 says so.
That was not about root access, but full access to hardware features.
Well right now itβs still just a VM and whilst you have root access you canβt access anything on your phone as it appears to be sandboxed.
This is what they said. I misunderstood and I'll own that, but I read this as them wanting host filesystem access. Which is an obvious no-no for VMs.
Well, yeah. Obviously.
Linux desktop on Android have been attempted many times with variable success, and it goes way beyond command line, see UserLAnd
It brings all Linux desktop apps to your phone, and all you need is Bluetooth mouse.
Do you need to edit an audio file? Try looking on Play Store, every audio editor has ads and subscription and offers only cropping and equalizer. But what if you need cross-fade? Open your Linux VM - bam! Audacity! All the audio editing tools you can ever need, and ten times more that you'll never use!
Do you need to make a meme? Go download some shitty meme maker from Play Store, that will only let you add text to ten preset images. Or get a photo editor that has twenty sepia effects but won't let you combine two images. But a simple sudo apt-get install gimp command in your Linux VM, and you get a pixel-perfect image editor with transparency support, layer support, and a thousand brushes, and you can even plug a graphics tablet into your Android tablet and have stylus pressure making brush strokes of different width, or just use an Android tablet with stylus support, the pressure works there too.
Do you want some more esoteric thing like sqlite3 database viewer? Well, Linux VM is your only choice.
It becomes even more important if you want to buy a cheap Android tablet and ise it as a kiosk for some business. Run the backend server on your Linux VM, run the frontend in the Android web browser, and you don't need to buy an expensive POS terminal.
Play Store... Don't forget that Google can take your apps away. I bought PicSay Pro for making memes over a decade ago and now it's no longer available. Of course I dumped it to apk for manual transfer to other devices but how long before "unknown" app installation is taken away?
I'd like access to serial port over USB for running 3D printers and robots off of devices that would otherwise be e-waste, but it's hit-or-miss and the battery charging problem that was already mentioned here.
I know that not everyone is interested in this but I'd use it as another method to play PC games on my Android devices. Right now, JoiPlay and a few source ports I'm aware of are the only apps that I've been able to get PC games working successfully with on any of my Android devices. I've tried both Winlator and Limbo Port but I have not yet gotten a single game working correctly in either of them. Granted, I have no idea how to properly configure them, so I might just not be using them correctly.
Install podman, run containers
Does it have Wayland
Not graphical apps yet.