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Ask HN: What is the actual state of Linux phones?

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Re: Ask HN: What is the actual state of Linux phones?

#21

Post by [deleted] »

SilverbeardUnix wrote: post #20
cy6erlion wrote: post #18

I think instead of a particular phone or brand what we need are open standards for a mobile platform. - RISCV processor - Standard Logic board - Standard Screen - Standard Battery - Standard Wifi & Bluetooth modem - Probably ditch cellular and use something like LoRa - Standard OS (Linux) - Standard package manager Edit: Imagine a phone that you can just swap and mix components from different manufacturers. You could…

I don't agree with any of this outside of having a standard screen and networking modem. The rest of this is why I think Linux phones are being held back.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What is the actual state of Linux phones?

#22

Post by gdevillers »

The pinephone hardware feels like a prototype due to the old A20 cpu (heat problems, poor battery life).

The lesser-known SHIFT6mq has an actual mobile chip and apparently works correctly as a phone under postmarketOS (only GPS, NFC and Camera missing): https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/SHIFT_SHIFT6mq_(shift-axo.... There are pointers on the wiki to hack on the camera if you want to help the cause.

The Fairphone 5 is another good candidate for hacking: calls and camera are not working: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Fairphone_5_(fairphone-fp...

Re: Ask HN: What is the actual state of Linux phones?

#24

Post by RandomBacon »

mcflubbins wrote: post #14
wilsonnb3 wrote: post #3

You can currently buy a Librem 5, PinePhone, or Furi FLX1. I’m not aware of any others at the moment.

Librem 5 looked promising but last I looked into it, the company seemed kinda sus: https://youtu.be/wKegmu0V75s?si=dyM-FP6JBP_6emm9

Librem-5-sitting-in-my-closet owner here.

I haven't watched that video, but I've seen the comments from unhappy people over the years.

I don't know if we'll ever get the full story, but I imagine it was either that or go insolvent. I'm guessing they tied up all the preorder money, and the delays put them between a rock and a hard place.

They handled it poorly, but I think they're on top of everything now.

Re: Ask HN: What is the actual state of Linux phones?

#25

Post by chainingsolid »

whitehexagon wrote: post #7

Pine64 announced recently that they drop the PinePhone Pro, but hope to continue with the PinePhone for 2 more years. To be honest there is not much of a community left when I last checked, and I dont remember when the PP was last in stock, only the convergence? package. But there are a great series of tutorials from Lupyuen where he gets Apache Nuttx running on the PP. He fills in a lot of the missing documentation…

To be fair, when I bought my Pinephone, I got the convergence one despite being unsure if I'd be able to use it as a daily driver. The price diff isn't much and well, I would rather have the slightly better specs. And I would assume most made the same choice. So I doubt there's much pressure to stock the lower spec model PP.

Re: Ask HN: What is the actual state of Linux phones?

#26

Post by okanat »

AOSP is still the better OS. It is fully open source. It has a much better protection model. It is production ready and optimized. It has a working build system. It supports reliable updates.

I find the idea of Linux phones pointless. Instead of trying to create an app ecosystem that will never compete against proprietary-ecosystem optimized and well-isolated one, we can leverage it. I wouldn't want an OS where the banking app can peek into my browser. Desktop OSes are still like that and that's crap OS design in 2025. It has been crap since 90s. Linux being popular has significantly hindered OS innovation in open source world.

If you would like to help, I think helping projects like LineageOS or GrapheneOS is better. You can also try joining reverse engineered driver efforts for open source drivers like Freedreno. You can help porting device-specific kernel drivers to mainline. So we can boot whatever kernels we want on normal Android phones with Mesa OpenGL.

"A lot of C experience" doesn't really tell anything. Have you worked with cross-language systems? How much you know about ABIs? How about interface definition languages (IDLs)? Have you actually written a production driver for Linux systems? Have you implemented any system-level service that got deployed a number of nodes? You need to join somewhere and improve things marginally.

Re: Ask HN: What is the actual state of Linux phones?

#27

Post by chainingsolid »

cy6erlion wrote: post #18

I think instead of a particular phone or brand what we need are open standards for a mobile platform. - RISCV processor - Standard Logic board - Standard Screen - Standard Battery - Standard Wifi & Bluetooth modem - Probably ditch cellular and use something like LoRa - Standard OS (Linux) - Standard package manager Edit: Imagine a phone that you can just swap and mix components from different manufacturers. You could…

While I'd love to see a successful ATX for phones (It's number 1 reason my desktop is x86, 2nd is Steam library).

1) The form factor really fights this.

2) Something needs to change with ARM, cause modular hardware would require device independent ISOs, and that only seams to exist for x86.... IDK about RISCV

Re: Ask HN: What is the actual state of Linux phones?

#28

Post by dinisil298 »

I had a pinephone pro that I got to pretty good working state on postmarketos. The phone was still a bit under powered but after lots of tinkering it could do most everything I wanted it to. Battery life was the biggest issue, I could get about 5 hours max out of it. It would also get a bit hot at times which while not a huge problem was annoying. Problem is I dropped it on a run and broke it right before they announced they are discontinuing it. So I'm trying to find a new one, but the options don't look super great. If you are willing to use an old downstream (android) kernel, then there are quite a few options, of which i like the FLX1 best. But that makes running some up to data apps harder. I'm having a hard time finding good options mainline options though. The pinephone is too underpowered for daily use. The latest shiftphone and fairphone seem promising but full mainline support still isn't quite there and they pretty pricey too compared to the ppp.

Re: Ask HN: What is the actual state of Linux phones?

#29

Post by katcher »

okanat wrote: post #26

AOSP is still the better OS. It is fully open source. It has a much better protection model. It is production ready and optimized. It has a working build system. It supports reliable updates. I find the idea of Linux phones pointless. Instead of trying to create an app ecosystem that will never compete against proprietary-ecosystem optimized and well-isolated one, we can leverage it. I wouldn't want an OS where the b…

The Linux kernel runs AOSP. Linux has nothing to do with the design decisions that you mentioned.

Re: Ask HN: What is the actual state of Linux phones?

#30

Post by duskwuff »

cy6erlion wrote: post #18

I think instead of a particular phone or brand what we need are open standards for a mobile platform. - RISCV processor - Standard Logic board - Standard Screen - Standard Battery - Standard Wifi & Bluetooth modem - Probably ditch cellular and use something like LoRa - Standard OS (Linux) - Standard package manager Edit: Imagine a phone that you can just swap and mix components from different manufacturers. You could…

> - Probably ditch cellular and use something like LoRa

This is absolutely a non-starter. LoRa is an extremely low bandwidth protocol - in a best-case scenario (e.g. two nearby devices communicating on an uncontended frequency), it's in the realm of 50 kbit/sec. It's designed for low-rate data like remote telemetry, not real-time communications.

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