Linux Phones

This past week: RK3588's phone news: Liberux NEXX secures new funding after failed crowdfunding, dawndrums wraps up a major Divine D development phase; Wayland Protocols 1.46 brings experimental text input improvements, Flathub explores sustainable app maintenance that respects developers rather than exploiting them, postmarketOS seeks wallpaper votes for v25.12, Ubuntu Touch Q&A 179 delivers, a Phosh meetup happening Thursday in Bonn, some FOSDEM foreshadowing, and more. Enjoy!

This past week: Waydroid 1.6.0 adds native Android notification forwarding to the host, FEX makes running x86 Steam games on ARM phones remarkably easy, the farphone project shows how to repurpose smartphones as tiny web servers, postmarketOS calls for immutable Duranium testers, Fairphone 4 camera produces "90s-style" photos with mainline kernel, Ubuntu Touch working on move to Qt6, and a new mainlining community launches on the threadiverse. Enjoy!

The UBports team has officially released Ubuntu Touch 24.04-1.1 and Ubuntu Touch 20.04 OTA-11 as maintenance updates for supported devices.

The 24.04-1.1 update expands VoLTE support to additional hardware, including Fairphone 4 and the remaining Volla Phone 22 variants. Startup performance has been improved for users upgrading from the 20.04 series, reducing the first-boot delay.

Several long-standing issues have also been resolved, such as the media scanning daemon getting stuck at 100% CPU, notification badges not appearing for Phone and Messaging apps, and applications being unable to clear old notifications before posting new ones.

This past week: Plasma Mobile 6.5 released with big updates, Updates on the progress of Ubuntu Touch, SailfishOS and PureOS, Marathon OS debuts as a BlackBerry 10-inspired mobile Linux shell/distro, Valve's Steam Frame VR headset could boost mobile Linux through FEX and Waydroid, FOSDEM 2026 stands approved for postmarketOS and friends, and more. Enjoy!

Linux on mobile devices remains a niche effort in a world dominated by iOS and Android, but projects aiming to build a true alternative continue to move forward.

One of the newest of these is Marathon OS, a new mobile Linux system built around a Qt6-based Wayland compositor and a QML interface modeled directly on BlackBerry 10’s gesture navigation. The project inherits its core userspace from postmarketOS, which itself is built on Alpine Linux.

Hello all!

Due to the recent statements by Google (as well as their track record the last few years) I've decided I do not want to use Android as a phone operating system anymore. But Apple is just as bad, if not worse. So I've decided to build my own custom device.

I am working on building a phone using a single board computer, right now I'm using the raspberry pi 5. This is still a proof of concept, but I want to share my ideas with others, so like minded individuals can start messing around with this idea in their own homes to further this goal.

You can view more images of the device here, as well as the step by step instructions here (these are still very rough and incomplete) https://github.com/muhammadmanwar/cheaphone OR https://codeberg.org/muhammadmanwar/cheaphone

Right now it just runs raspberry pi OS, with a different desktop look and feel. Everything that normally works in a pi 5 works on this device, additionally I am experimenting with a Mobile Broadband modem, to allow the device to text and call, as well as access internet, like a normal phone off wifi

The total cost is around 200 dollars, not including the 3d printer to make the custom case.

This project is barely off the ground, and I've got a lot to learn before I can stop relying strictly on the raspberry pi 5, my end goal is to custom design SBCs, and release those designs for free alongside the plans for the device, so that interested parties can select their own System on a Chip to use for the device. I need to get into designing boards, I'm interested in trying Stephen Hawes' Lumen PnP (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlkTcxh-9gA) for that phase.

But that's for the future, for now, I'm hoping to get more people interested in the prototype so that I'm not the only one noodling around on this idea. I'd love some feedback, and if anyone was willing to put one together for testing, I would appreciate it greatly!

He will visit the great white north someday.

This was made for mobian with phosh. Not sure if it will work on other distros. You can always install a dct tool to decompile it and hand copy the opp-tables for the CPU and GPU or something for yours if this doesn't work.

This is also overclocked from 1.15 to 1.3 ghz on the CPU, and the GPU from the stock 4xx to 540 mghz. This was stable on my device even with the undervolt. This also adds some lower steps so the CPU can drop down to 200 mghz.

This overclock is a medium undervolt so it may or may not work. I highly recommend installing towboot, so you can boot the phone in mass storage mode in case it doesn't work. Back up your old .dtc file first so if it doesn't work, you can copy the old one back. It's in the boot partition under the allwinner folder a few folders in. You will see many files and one called sun50i-a64-pinephone-1.2.dts. You need to back up this file to your PC and rename the downloaded file to this by removing everything after the last dot.

On Linux I had to use the terminal to copy since it detects the boot directory of the pinephone as a root directory. File managers don't want to copy to it.

I couldn't change the memory clocks because that requires a lot of extra work. Mobian however comes with decent memory clocks around 540 mghz.

These overclocks help out the pinephone alot. Especially the GPU. It usually doesn't thermal throttle with this setup, and probably gets better battery life. Mobian is by far the distro I like the most I tried two or three. In addition to having the memory overclock out of the box, which the pine phone really needs, the phosh UI is fairly decent on the pinephone. I get a few days of standby battery life. I will release my own fork of mobian with the overclocks when I get it Inca more complete state. Currently working on implementing hardware acceleration for video decode. The pine phone only has a couple years of life left as networks in the U.S are moving away from 4G.

If you have any issues, chatGPT can probably help. I used it to find my way around the tools and files I needed to do this. I used an online hex convertor to create the voltage tables. The GPU performance with this is not terrible.

I played Minecraft java edition 1.7.10, with the lowest settings and 3 block render distance at 8-12 FPS. I can probably do some tweaks to improve this significantly. Installing a few mods like fast craft, lowering the resolution away from native, switching the java 8 from java 21. I just haven't had the chance yet. I did this by installing prism launcher. If anyone's is interested I will make a lightweight mod pack eventually with some tweaks to hopefully get this to 24 FPS and add a lot of cool little mods to add stuff. That is my goal. I might have to use 1 chunk render distance.

Feel free to hit me up or ask any questions if you feel like doing your own pinephone overclocking.

Developer @DarkAri@lemmy.blahaj.zone

This past week: KDE release Plasma 6.5, DeltaChat adds calling, camera support for all three cameras on the Fairphone 4 with postmarketOS, PureOS 11 becomes (alledgedly) daily driveable on the Librem 5, and Fairphone contributed more code to Linux 6.17 than Microsoft! Plus some reading material, a few videos to watch and more. Enjoy!

I'm in the market for a new phone, and I'd like it to be Linux. As I've been building a table of options, I thought I'd share it. It's a wide table; sorry about that.

Phone	Display "/nits	Size mm/g	Cameras	CPU GHz	Mem GB	Battery	USBC	Lnx	US	Avail	Price
Mecha Comet								✅	🚫	🚫	£649
FairPhone 5	6.46 OLED 1224x2700	161x76x9.6 212	50/50	QCM 6490 1.9	8/256 SD	4500r	3.0	✅	🚫	✅	€499
Furi FLX1s	6.7 LCD 720 x1600	170x76x8 201	20/13	Cortex 2.4	8/128	5000	2.0	✅	✅	🚫	$550
FairPhone 6 (Murena)	6.31 OLED 1116x2484	156x73x9.6 191	50/32	Snap 7sG3 1.8	8/256	4415	2.0	🚫	✅	✅	€599
Murena HIROH	6.67 AMOLED 1220x2712		108/32	Cortex 3.35	16/512	5000	??	?	✅	🚫	$900
PinePhone64	5.95 720 x1440	??	5/2	ARM 1.152	2/3	3000	??	✅	✅	??	??
Purism Librem 5	5.7 IPS 720 x1440	153x75x15.5 263	13/8	ARM 1.5	3/32 SD	4500	3.0	✅	✅	✅	$799
Purism Liberty Phone	5.7 IPS 720 ×1440	5.7	13/8	ARM 1.5GHz	4/128	4500 r	3.0 (v)	✅	✅	🚫	$1,999
Jolla	4.5 IPS 540 x960	131x68x9.9 141	8/2	Qualcomm 1.4	1/16 SD	2100 r	2.0	⭕	🚫	🚫	N/A
Volla								✅	🚫	✅	Varies
Liberux NEXX								✅	🚫	🚫	~€1000
F(x)tec PRO¹ X								?	🚫	🚫	£649
Murena CMF Phone 1	6.67 SAMOLED 1080x2400	194x77x8 197	50/16	Cortex 2.5	8/128	5000	?	?	✅	✅	$419
Murena Teracube 2s	6.1 IPS 720x1560	155x73x10 190	20/8	MediaTek 2.35	4/64 SD	4000r	2 (¬PD)	🚫	✅	✅	$340
Xiaomi Poco X3	6.67 1080x2400		13/64	Qualcomm 2.3	6/64	5160		✅	✅	🚫	$320

It's very "me" oriented: it's biased toward US markets ('cause that's where I am); it summarizes several features such as the CPU, display, and camera (all of which get spec'd out ad nauseum in marketing) which I'm too lazy to standardize; and it's biased toward device availability. Since there isn't a huge selection of options, the minute details hold less relevance.

I welcome updates, clarifications, and corrections; I expect to keep this table up to date until at least such time as I acquire a Linux phone -- even if I am forced into using a de-Googled Android in the meantime. Given Google's shenanigans of late, I am going to factor "Linux-ability" of the de-Googled phones, in the hopes that after Google screws over the forks, we'll still have the option of installing some future more compatible mobile Linux distribution.

I've also considered making a public Cryptopad spreadsheet, but I kind of hate working with SPAs.

Minutia

• There are many more potential specs for Display, but not all vendors include all specs: nits, refresh rate, touch sample rates, colors, contrast, and protective glass. This can all be useful information, but not all vendors provide all specs, and it would blow up the table. Therefore, I include the most common information: diagonal size, technology (if provided), and dimensions.

• CPU specifics are restricted to the basics. Most specs list # of performance vs efficiency cores, multiple speed specs, and just a ton of information that wouldn't fit easily into a table; and not all vendors provide the same amount of data in anything like a standard format. So, I include the family and the fastest clock speed, because I'm not sure that even with all the other variables you could calculate an expected standby run time by knowing the slower clock speeds.

• Cameras are in megapixels, and are back/front resolutions. I do not care about video capture frame rates, modes or anything else about the camera. I have a real camera for photography.

• Mem is RAM/storage, and whether the phone takes SD cards

• Battery is in mAh, and an r suffix means replacable

• USBC is the supported version of USB-C on the device; (v) means I confirmed it supports 3.0's video-over-USB; 2.0 never does, but sometimes 3.0 doesn't, either.

• Lnx in this context doesn't mean "you can boot it," but "you can make calls" -- IE, what most people would consider daily driving. A smart phone is considered functional if

  • Calls can be placed and received
  • The screen works
  • The WiFi works
  • The speakers work
  • The USB connection works (you can charge the phone)

  In particular, VoLTE is becoming mandatory on many networks in the US, and several EU phones apparently don't support it on US networks (if at all?). Wireless charging appears to require chip support which nobody has implemented Linux drivers for. None of these phones have wireless charging, and if they did, the impression I got was that it wouldn't work under Linux anyway. Regardless, while some people might have that as a minimum requirement, I do not consider it in the "daily driver" category.

  Murena phones come with /e/OS; some are available with Ubuntu Touch.

• US is whether or not it works on US networks, AFAICT

• Avail is whether you can get your hands on one right now. Several of these are pre-order.

• I did not convert Price to dollars, despite this being a US-centric table, because exchange rates are highly variable. A couple of phones I may not flesh out; the Pine64 has embarassing hardware, and I'm fairly certain by now the the Jolla doesn't work in the US; since my goal is to get a phone for me, I'm not spending time filling in data for a phone which can't work.

Therefore, while I'm not including all de- Googled phones, I'm including some -- especially if Linux support seems to be coming along. I'm also considering only contemporary technology, because even if the battery is replaceable, I'd really not buy myself into having to upgrade soon. Murena, in particular, sells several Pixels (5, 7, 8) with /e/OS.

Phone notes

• FairPhone 5
  The one phone Murena skipped importing into the US was the FairPhone 5, despite a promising post in 2023 claiming it was coming. It's the one most interesting, and would probably be at the top of my list. The 6 doesn't bring a lot to the table and is both larger and more expensive.

• The Jolla Phone
  Jolla no longer makes this phone, and the specs are quite old.

  Jolla phones ran Sailfish, which is neither Android nor Linux, but which apparently was pretty nice. I have no knowledge of whether it was what privacy wonks would consider "secure", but it isn't open source and you can not trust anything that isn't open source.

• Volla phones
  None of the Volla phones have ever been imported into the US, and I've seen commentary that they both work on US networks, and don't. Volla phones are quite nice, specs-wise, and it's a shame we can't get them in the states.

  The Ubuntu Touch website lists the Quintus and 22 as fully functional.

• F(x)tec PRO¹ X
  Another phone with a physical keyboard which looks both fantastic and also perpetually in development with no clear indication of when, or if, it'll ever be released. The name is absurd and makes me skeptical of the entire project.

• Murena Teracube 2s
  The bootloader on the Teracube is locked, which precludes installing Linux.

• Xiaomi Poco X3
  Something of a dark horse, and a phone dating back to 2020, the Xiaomi shows as having every feature functioning under Ubuntu Touch. Unfortunately, the phone does not support VoLTE under Ubuntu Touch, which hinders its use in the US. The phone hardware itself does.

  Nobody has this phone in stock, though, so "Availability" is negative, although I suppose it could be found on eBay or something. The non-replacable battery makes buying it used a sketchy proposition.

OC by @Sxan@piefed.zip