I've just written another post somewhere in this thread about discovering a nice feature in KDE Plasma, and remembered my recent search for a way to output HDMI from my old iPhone without ridiculous compression, and all this Linux phone talk stated to make me have crazy thoughts about how much I want Plasma Mobile. I was all set to write "just give me Plasma Mobile on something the size of an iPhone 13 Mini, and I don't care how much doesn't work". I used a 1st Gen iPhone SE, years past where it was sensible. I can suffer.

I started to list my few, basic must-haves - aware that everyone has a different list - but my own short list got embarrassingly long, very quickly. I thought I had simple requirements!

Obvious basics which surely aren't too much to ask: email, calendar, reminder and note syncing, password manager with TOTP generator, instant messaging (willingly to compromise and have only Signal or WhatsApp), route navigation, basic browsing, half-decent camera, ...

Phone calls - so I probably need 4G and 5G...

Oh - plus uncountable other small apps or utilities that hardly seem worth mentioning: calculator, file browser, compass, voice memos, ...

And then I thought about the ever-growing list of big, ugly Apps that I could live without, but really do make my life easier. Banking apps (sigh - I hate how many of these virtually require an app), the app to unlock my apartment block door, Outlook, Teams, ...

And then I started having sensible, disappointing thoughts. Maybe I'd rather just keep the iPhone 13 Mini. I just got a new battery (and bonus screen) installed by Apple on the weekend...

But seriously, when that starts to be unusable... if I have to carry something obnoxiously large, it better run mainstream Linux and turn into a desktop when I plug a USB-C dock into it!