>I thought there was a robust android emulator for linux such that I could run android apps - and call an Uber or whatever - from desktop linux ...
There are some but not really great and it will become impossible very soon with remote attestation and play integrity. Already Uber is one of the few apps that have the hardware attestation keys for grapheneos manually added.
In my experience, Waydroid works very well actually. The question is whether it wouldn't just be simpler and better to use AOSP (or Graphene) as the OS for these phones. In principle, a "Linux phone" sounds great, until you realize that there are close to zero Linux programs that are actually usable on a small touch display. The Android project already has done the hard work of adapting Linux to mobile devices and FOSS apps are plentiful and polished. The problem with the common variety of Android phones is control by Google, not the underlying tech.
Fair enough, but how many of these are as polished as their Android counterparts? How many are still actively maintained and will be for the foreseeable future? Android already is "Linux for mobile devices" and has all the features people expect from a phone. Reinventing the wheel on the software side seems counterproductive when what we need is simply more hardware to run Android on. I wish Furi collaborated with Graphene or Lineage and released a proper FLOSS Android device instead of going the "desktop Linux" route.
Wait, many people are complaining that PC applications and websites are designed with a touch screen / mobile in mind... Think about the UI, huge spacing, etc. So which is it?
There are some but not really great and it will become impossible very soon with remote attestation and play integrity. Already Uber is one of the few apps that have the hardware attestation keys for grapheneos manually added.