I can’t quite remember the GPS situation. I believe I had something working, but I think it might have been something from the UT store, uNav. However I can’t speak to GMaps since I do my best to avoid Google apps.

I got really close to daily driving it. I had most of the stuff I wanted in waydroid on a pixel 3a. I just need to get the android notifications bridged out from android to dbus to postal and I’d make the switch

Wow, this is really cool. Literarily just debt cards without the cards, or Apple/Google pay without the proprietary software. Also the option to pay friends like venmo. Open standard, open software and no reason other than capitalism to not use it.

I wonder if Taler could follow an implementation path like Apple/Google pay, I’m not sure how those services even work (is Apple/Google considered a bank? A payment processor?), yet they have point of sale integration which everyone everywhere had to pay to upgrade their systems to support.

The problems you describe are due to capitalism: profit motivated commerce. The open source business model has a focus that monetizes the human actions that are a value-add, such as continued development of targeted features, tech support and other things it makes sense to pay for specialized knowledge, but the tangibles are still open for all to modify, audit or use as they want.