Will Linux phones become a viable alternative to the Android/iOS duopoly?

by Amos Batto (2026-10-05), License: CC BY 4.0, Download: PDF, ODT

1. The SoC dilemma: feeble but lengthy lived vs mighty but abbreviated lived
2. The RK3588S changes the equivalent for Linux phones
3. The new choice of Linux phones using a Qualcomm IoT SoC
4. The issue of using an Android kernel in a Linux phone
5. Linux phones according to Android volition rotate into additional viable because of longer support
6. Why application was a important difficulty for the Librem 5
7. The achievement of Phosh notwithstanding its constricted funding
8. Adoption of mobile interfaces by Linux distros
9. PINE64's attempt to get about the disbursal of evolving software
10. The waning enthusiasm for Linux phones
11. Jolla shows that there is motionless petition for Linux phones
12. The mobile industry is shutting downward the AOSP alternative
13. Three types of Linux phones are now possible
14. The genuine obstacle holding rear Linux phones is the companies

Five years ago, Linux phones looked akin they were poised to rotate into a viable substitute to the Android/iOS duopoly that has an metal grip on the mobile phone industry. Sadly, following a concise flash of action and community involvement alongside the publish of the Purism Librem 5 and the PINE64 PinePhone in 2020, the Linux phone market has mostly stagnated. This stagnation occurred partially since of the problems at Purism and PINE64, but additionally since the accessible Linux SoC’s weren’t up to the project of operating a contemporary smartphone, and the hardware industry wasn’t providing any fine alternatives alongside fine free/open origin drivers. In addition, Plasma Mobile and Phosh were motionless inchoate mobile interfaces at the time, and there wasn’t a fine distro choice to run these interfaces on Android kernels alongside a normal unified mobile SoC. The mediocre achievement of the PinePhone and Librem 5 and the problems alongside the PinePhone Pro and the Librem 5 refunds sapped people’s enthusiasm and willingness to obtain a chance on the next Linux phone.

Fortunately, all of these conditions are changing, and I accept that there is now the possible that Linux could eventually rotate into a viable substitute to Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS in the mobile space, fair akin desktop Linux has rotate into a viable substitute to Windows and Mac OSX on the PC complete the final three decades. This isn’t to say that mobile Linux volition basically difficulty the endeavor of Google or Apple, but the conditions are ripe for a small market to appear for Linux phones, akin to the way that group can currently buy Linux PCs from a figure of small companies, specified as TUXEDO, System76, Purism, Slimbook, ThinkPenguin, Ubuntushop.biz, Entroware, Star Labs, Juno, Laptop alongside Linux, Linux Certified, ArkPC, etc.

It isn’t unattainable that among the big phone brands power market a few models of phones alongside mobile Linux in the future, fair akin Lenovo and Dell currently market a few PC models alongside Linux preinstalled in several constricted markets. Motorola fair announced that it volition commencement marketing several high-end phone models alongside GrapheneOS in 2027, which indicates that Google volition authorize the big phone makers to market alternatives, likely since it fears anti-trust regulation. As the mobile industry increasingly shuts downward the capability to unlock the bootloaders of Android phones, additional group volition be looking for an substitute to AOSP derivatives, and mobile Linux could provision that alternative.

Five years ago, it looked akin mobile Linux had eventually arrived. The Purism Librem 5 and PINE64 PinePhone had fair been released, and equal a big tech reviewer akin Linus Tech Tips was trying them out. Mrwhosetheboss’s video, “Are Linux Smartphones concerning to KILL Android?,” anywhere he held up the Librem 5, got 7.8 myriad views on YouTube. The Librem 5 had been ported to Mobian and postmarketOS, and the PinePhone had been ported to 20 distinct Linux distributions. There was a expanding figure of phone models that could run Jolla’s Sailfish OS and Ubuntu Touch on top of Android kernels, and many group were evaluation postmarketOS on their old phones. Plasma Mobile and Phosh were advancing accelerated as mobile interfaces. KDE had adopted Kirigami and GNOME was adopting Adwaita, so the two KDE and GNOME apps could rotate into adaptive between desktop and mobile interfaces. The Waydroid project was making it imaginable to run Android apps inner a Linux container. The forthcoming seemed brilliant for mobile Linux, but that forthcoming never seemed to arrive. It is value examining what held rear mobile Linux to comprehend how those conditions can be conquer in the future.

There has been awesome agreement of experimentation alongside distinct mobile functioning systems according to a Linux kernel complete the final 25 years since the archetypal mobile Linux devices were released—the Sharp Zaurus, the G.Mate Yopy and the Motorola A760. I figure 29 distinct varieties of business mobile Linux that have existed complete the years, and there are likely many additional that I missed. There have been many distinct waves of mobile Linux, which at the period looked akin they power rotate into the next big thing, including EZX, MotoMagx, Maemo, LiMo, Moblin, Meego, Tizen, Firefox OS, webOS, Ubuntu Touch and Sailfish OS. For years Motorola experimented alongside distinct Linux varieties that were according to the idea of using Java apps accessible in a community store, so Google’s Android was barely unique, but it was the sensation of mobile Linux which succeeded. Today, all of them are frequently lumped together under the tag of “Linux” as a distinct category from Android, but Tizen and Firefox OS are fair as distinct architecturally as Android from a norm desktop Linux distro.

The mobile Linux functioning systems live on, although they are small apparent today. Much of the MeeGo code that Nokia created for the N9, continues to be developed by the small Finnish company, the Jolla Group, which is formerly again marketing phones alongside its Sailfish OS. Firefox OS, which was abandoned by Mozilla Foundation in 2016, was reborn in 2017 as proprietary KaiOS for low-end phones without contact screens, but that market is gradually disappearing as Android now reaches equal the cheapest segments of the mobile phone market. Ubuntu Touch, which was abandoned by Canonical in 2017, lives on as a community-based project under the volunteers at UBports. Even, webOS and Tizen motionless exist, although they are no longer used as mobile functioning systems. webOS runs LG TVs and Tizen is used in Samsung TVs.

Although it doesn’t create many headlines in the tech press, a small Linux phone market motionless exists. Purism, PINE64, FuriLabs, Jolla, Jolla-Devices, Volla and PrivacyPortal (plus Brax in the future) all market phones alongside several sensation of Linux preinstalled. The figure of group purchasing Linux phones today is small than in 2020-22 whenever PINE64 was launching the PinePhone and PinePhone Pro, but there are really additional companies marketing Linux phones than there was 5 years ago. There are fine reasons to accept that many of the problems that plagued Linux phones in the former are going to be conquer in the future.

The SoC dilemma: feeble but lengthy lived vs mighty but abbreviated lived

In the past, the accessible hardware choices constricted the viability of Linux phones. Systems-on-a-Chip (SoC’s) which assistance Linux are mostly used in single-board-computers (SBC’s), TV setup boxes, net of things (IoT) devices and embedded microprocessors in manufacturing and automotive applications, anywhere the cost points are lower, so their achievement is mostly weaker and they are small energy productive than the representative mobile SoC designed for smartphones, since they are fabbed on older procedure nodes. However, they recommendation long-term support, since they are used in applications that have lengthy merchandise existence cycles. For example, automobiles merge dozens of SoC’s and they typically takes 3 to 5 years fair to scheme and need to be capable to run for the next 20 years. In contrast, the mobile SoC’s alongside Android assistance are extremely powerful, but they are lone produced for 1 to 3 years.

If the designers of Linux phones desire to be capable to run a Linux kernel (as opposed to an Android kernel), most of their options recommendation small handling power, mediocre energy effectiveness and mediocre thermals. If they desire to evade proprietary blobs as much as possible, they either have to choose an older SoC which the community has been worked on for years to metal out the bugs in the free/open origin drivers (e.g., the Allwinner A64 in the PinePhone), or they have to expend years patching the Linux kernel to correctly assistance a newer SoC (as Purism did alongside the NXP i.MX 8M Quad in the Librem 5). If they decide that it is too much difficulty to dispatch their patches to mainline Linux, afterward it volition be harder to assistance their hardware in the future, since they volition have to keep applying those identical patches to all new Linux kernel release. Purism chose to upstream their changes to mainline Linux, whereas the volunteers operating on the PinePhone’s kernel mostly didn’t.

The chipmakers akin NXP, Rockchip, Allwinner, Amlogic and Broadcom who create SoC’s alongside Linux assistance merely don’t create adequate income to validate using a leading-edge procedure node in their chips. Even idea they can market a Linux SoC for 10 to 15 years, they motionless won’t market adequate to recoup the additional $400 – $600 million that it would disbursal to use a 3nm process, and the expenses keep going up alongside all new generation of procedure node. It is enormously costly to scheme a part at the cutting border of the silicon industry. Silicon Analysts estimates that fabbing a wafer at TSMC expenses an average of $19,500 at a 3nm node, but lone $3000 at a 28nm node. Most Linux SoC’s are low-priced chips alongside extremely lean margins, so they have to market millions of them to create much profit. Some Linux SoC makers akin NXP concentration on specialty markets, so they they have higher margins, but they lean not to market many of them, so the profits are motionless limited.

Another way that chipmakers decrease their expenses is by using older generations of Cortex cores, which have lesser licensing fees from ARM, and by using many of low-power Cortex-A5 sequence cores, fairly than the higher-power Cortex-A7 and Cortex-X sequence cores, which have higher licensing fees. NXP was plainly employing these disbursal cutting strategies alongside its i.MX 9 sequence processors. The most mighty part in the sequence is the i.MX 95, which contains six Cortex-A55 cores, whenever it would have made additional awareness to use two Cortex-A78 cores for improved achievement and four Cortex-A55 cores for low power. The i.MX 95 was fabbed on a 16nm FinFET node, which is a minor regression compared to Samsung’s 14nm node used in the former i.MX 8M Plus processor. Another example of this disbursal cutting was the decision by Broadcom to use older Cortex cores and larger procedure nodes in its BCM2836 (40nm, 4x Cortex-A7), BCM2837 (40nm, 4x Cortex-A53), BCM2711 (28nm, 4x Cortex-A72) and BCM2712 (16nm, 4x Cortex-A76), notwithstanding knowing that millions of these chips would be sold (e.g. in the Raspberry Pi 2, 3, 4 and 5, respectively). Even Nvidia, which is the world’s richest chipmaker because of the AI boom, appears to be avoiding the expenses of using a leading-edge procedure node in its Tegra SoC. It canceled its planned Tegra Atlan sequence which was announced in April 2021, and motionless hasn’t released its Tegra Thor series, which was announced in September 2022. Its Tegra Orin sequence which was announced in March 2018 is now getting lengthy in the tooth using an 8nm node.

In contrast, the smartphone market, which sold 1.25 milliard units in 2025, has enormous volumes, and phone makers are consenting to pay much higher prices for processors, particularly for higher-end models, which allows Qualcomm, MediaTek, Apple, Samsung, Google, Xiaomi and Huawei to create the enormous funding in designing mobile SoC’s for an costly 3nm procedure node. Integrated mobile SoC’s specified as the Qualcomm Snapdragon and MediaTek Dimensity have so much volume, that they can create a gain notwithstanding the fact that they mostly are lone produced for 2 to 3 years. The flagship models (e.g. the Snapdragon 8 sequence and Dimensity 9000 series) endure most of their market following the archetypal year, so SoC makers have to accusation much higher prices to shield the enormous expenses of using a leading-edge procedure node.

In addition, the unified mobile SoC’s that run Android merge many additional functions, specified as WiFi, Bluetooth, cellular modem, GPS/GNSS, audio DAC, accusation controller and USB-C controller, which necessitate distinct chips on Linux phones akin the PinePhone and Librem 5. This makes the circuit boards for these phones much additional costly to design, since they can’t fair obtain a norm citation scheme from Qualcomm or MediaTek and tweak it. They have to tradition scheme their circuit boards, which requires two to three times additional components than the circuit commission for a representative smartphone. The Librem 5 contains 74 unified circuits (IC’s) and its 4 circuit boards have a total of 1267 components, making it the most complex phone always created. The six chips (i.MX 8M Quad, RS9116, BM818, Teseo-LIV3F, WM8962 and bq25895) that the Librem 5 uses in location of an unified mobile SoC inhabit a total of 1483.2 mm2, which is 10 times the area of a Snapdragon 8. Purism had to use components as small as 0201 and use 10 layers to cram everything into the Librem 5’s chief circuit board, which had to go through approximately a dozen iterations to get right. Even a minimal Linux phone akin the PinePhone, which was designed to be as cost-effective as possible, has 24 ICs and a total of 627 components on its circuit board, making it additional complex than most Android smartphones, which typically have 300 to 400 components.

Adding all these additional components makes Linux phones additional costly to scheme and produce, but it additionally makes them suck additional power, since it takes additional energy to run fractional a dozen chips at larger node sizes than one unified mobile SoC fabbed on a ≤4nm node, which has been optimized for energy efficiency. It is difficult to coordinate all the additional chips in Linux phones to get them to act lesser power modes and sleep modes to conserve their batteries. Add in an SoC alongside an older node size between 28 and 8 nm that hasn’t been optimized for power division usage, and there is no way that Linux phones can equivalent the power division existence of Android phones.

The RK3588S changes the equivalent for Linux phones

Many of the Linux SoC makers have decided that they shouldn’t equal annoy construction chips alongside the CPU and GPU achievement needed for a contemporary computing device. NXP, Amlogic and Broadcom merely aren’t curious in construction rivalrous SoC’s. However, Rockchip basically changed the prospects for making a decent Linux phone whenever it released the RK3588 and its lower-power RK3588S type in 2022. With four 2.4Ghz Cortex-A76 cores and four 1.8GHz Cortex-A55 cores and a Mali-G610 MC4 graphics, there eventually was a Linux SoC on the market alongside adequate handling power in an SoC to create an satisfactory Linux smartphone.

The Liberux NEXX and the Dawndrums Divine D. are two Linux phones currently being designed alongside the RK3588S. Purism fair announced on its forum that its next gen phone “is actively being designed,” which won’t be according to the i.MX phase akin the Librem 5 and Liberty, so it is likely to be according to the RK3588S as well.

Of course, the RK3588S’s achievement isn’t going to power anyone used to an Android phone. The RK3588 and RK3588S are fabbed on a 8nm procedure node, which is four generations rearward today’s province of the art at 2nm. Today’s low-end Snapdragon 4 Gen 4 fabbed at 4nm has 25% improved sole center CPU achievement than the RK3588. (See the array of SoC’s below.) The RK3588S has akin achievement to the RK3588 complete abbreviated bursts, but its achievement is 10%-15% small complete periods longer than 30 seconds. By the period the Linux phones according to the RK3588S hit the market in a brace years time, they volition have considerably worse achievement than all Android smartphone on the market, but this difference likely won’t be a limiting aspect for most group who aren’t 3D gaming or shooting high-resolution video. At a certain point, additional handling power has diminishing utility, and the RK3588S crosses that threshold for most people.

Comparing available SoC’s for Linux phones
SoC	Process (nm)	Specs	Geekbench_6		Phones
			single	multi
Allwinner A64	40	4x 1.2GHz Cortex-A53, Mali-400 MP2	109	278	PinePhone
NXP i.MX 8M Quad	28	4x 1.5Ghz Cortex-A53, GC7000 Lite	146	477	Librem 5, Liberty
NXP i.MX 8M Plus	14	4x 1.8Ghz Cortex-A53, GC7000 UltraLite			planned Librem 5 fir
NXP i.MX 95	16	6x 2.0GHz Cortex-A55, Mali-G310	350	1300
Rockchip RK3399	28	2x 1.8GHz Cortex-A72, 4x 1.4GHz Cortex-A53, Mali-T860	278	708	PinePhone Pro
Rockchip RK3566	22	4x 2.0GHz Cortex-A55, Mali-G52 MP2	140	450	rumored PinePhone 2
Rockchip RK3588S	8	4x 2.4GHz Cortex-A76, 4x 1.8GHz Cortex-A55, Mali-G610 MP4	730	2250	Liberux NEXX, Dawndrums Divine D., apt Librem 5 v2
UNISOC Tiger T606	12	2x 1.6Ghz Cortex-A75, 6x 1.6Ghz Cortex-A55, Mali-G57 MP1	375	1350	Jolla C2
MediaTek Dimensity 900	6	2x 2.4GHz Cortex-A78, 6x 2.0GHz Cortex-A55, Mali-G68 MP4	1003	2423	Furilabs FLX1/s/s+
MediaTek Dimensity 6300	6	2x 2.4GHz Cortex-A76, 6x 2.0GHz Cortex-A55, Mali-G57 MC2	780	1940	Brax BraX3
MediaTek Dimensity 7050	6	2x 2.6GHz Cortex-A78, 6x 2.0GHz Cortex-A55, Mali-G68 MC4	970	2330	Volla Phone Quintus
MediaTek Dimensity 7100	4	4x 2.4GHz Cortex-A78, 4x 2.0GHz Cortex-A55, Mali-G610 MC2	995	2900	Jolla Phone (2026)
MediaTek Dimensity 7300	4	4x 2.5GHz Cortex-A78, 4x 2.0GHz Cortex-A55, Mali-G615 MC2	1040	3000	Volla Phone Plinius
Qualcomm QCM4490	4	2x 2.4GHz Cortex-A78, 6x 2.0GHz Cortex-A55, Adreno 613	900	2318
Qualcomm QCM6490	6	4x 2.7GHz Cortex-A78, 4x 1.95GHz Cortex-A55, Adreno 643L	950	2850	Fairphone 5, SHIFTphone 8
Qualcomm QCM8850	4	1x 3.2GHz Gold-Plus, 4x 2.8Ghz Gold, 3x 2.0GHz Silver, Adreno 740	1100	3300
Qualcomm Snapdragon 4 gen 4	4	2x 2.3GHz Cortex-A78, 6x 2.0GHz Cortex-A55, Adreno 613	920	2210
Qualcomm Snapdragon 6 gen 4	4	1x 2.3GHz Cortex-A720, 3x 2.2GHz Cortex-A720, 4x 1.8GHz Cortex-A520, Adreno 810	994	3082
Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 gen 4	4	1x 2.8GHz Cortex-A720, 4x 2.4GHz Cortex-A720, 3×1.84GHz Cortex-A520, Adreno 722	1150	3700
Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 gen 5 Elite	3	2x 3.8GHz Oryon Prime, 6x 3.32GHz Oryon Performance, Adreno 829 or 840	2400	8700

Where the older procedure tech volition be important is in conditions of their energy consumption. A phone sporting the RK3588S volition run hotter and have worse power division existence than phones using unified mobile SoC’s from Qualcomm, MediaTek, UNISOC, etc. The difficulty is to dissipate the additional heat. The PinePhone’s SoC and cellular modem get extremely hot since they do not have a fine warmth spreader. The Librem 5’s SoC is joined alongside thermal paste to the rear dish of the LCD, which avoids overheating the SoC, but causes the touchscreen and aluminum example to rotate into hot to the touch. A Linux phone alongside the RK3358S volition need several benevolent of warmth dissipation, but it is improbable that a Linux phone creator can oversee to contain a vapor chamber, since those have to be specially designed and would be extremely costly for a phone of constricted production. The RK3588S volition need throttling to fit inside the power and thermal letter cover of a phone.

At first, the mainline Linux assistance for the RK3588 was extremely limited. Rockchip never published the records for the part on its opensource.rock-chips.com site, and Rockchip took downward that location at the end of 2025. On December 21, 2024, Jeff Geerling, the most influential reviewer in the Raspberry Pi substitute space, reported on X:

I was told Rockchip no longer considers RK3588 to be an ‘open source’ chip. In practice, that method Rockchip no longer contributes RK3588 code to open-source projects and they additionally decided not to market RK3588 immediately to SBC vendors.

On the another hand, Rockchip is motionless updating its community kernel code for the RK3588 at Github. Collabora has been toiling distant for years to add mainline Linux assistance for the RK3588, and Collabora lists Rockchip as one of its partners, so Rockchip hasn’t totally abandoned the Linux community. Collabora lately added mainline Linux assistance for the video grasp component and MIPI CSI2 interface in the RK3588. Now Collabora is operating alongside Ideas on Board and Rockchip to create an new image indication processor (ISP) driver for all the RK35xx chips. Collabora has gotten the hardware video decoder working for VP8, VP9, H.264 and H.265, and is now operating on the hardware video encoder for H.264.

There are fine prospects that Collabora volition eventually get all the RK3588S’s hardware supported alongside mainline Linux drivers, and until then, the RK3588S has adequate handling power in the GPU and CPU to procedure and encode images and video in software, so a phone built on the RK3588S can obtain photos and fire video akin a normal smartphone, although it volition be slower and use additional energy. In contrast, former phones using a Linux kernel merely didn’t have adequate handling power to recommendation decent cameras. Taking photos on the PinePhone is painfully slow, and the Millipixels app on the Librem 5 pauses for 3 to 4 seconds following taking all photo. Because the Librem 5’s i.MX 8M Quad processor lacks an ISP, audio DSP and hardware video encoder, it takes approximately 10 times as lengthy to procedure and encode a 720p video on the Librem 5 as the dimension of the video, and it’s concerning 50 times longer on the PinePhone, because of its antiquated Allwinner A64 processor and considerably slower RAM and eMMC.

Aside from the RK3588S, there aren’t many another options on the market to create a fine Linux phone. The closest choice is Nvidia’s Tegra Orin NX or Orin Nano Super, which lone merge Cortex-A78 cores. They deficiency low-power Cortex-A55 cores and they aren’t extremely energy efficient. They athletics newer tech than the Cortex-A76 cores in the RK3588S, but the Tegra Orin was fabbed on a 8nm node fair akin the RK3588S and the Tegra Orin’s lesser clock charge limits its single-core performance. The Tegra Orin is additionally much worse in conditions of application freedom, requiring proprietary blobs in the first bootloader, the secondary bootloader, Boot Configuration Table, USB firmware, HDMI/DisplayPort configuration, ARM Trusted Firmware and the GPU userspace driver. Many Linux users can disregard the blobs in the Linux equipment tree, but it harder to disregard Nvidia’s GPU blob in the userspace.

Another choice is the Allwinner A733 at 12nm, which offers small achievement alongside dual 2.0Ghz Cortex-A76 cores and six 1.79GHz Cortex-A55 low-power cores. Allwinner stopped collaborating alongside the Linux community years ago, and has frequently violated the GPL 2.0 licence by not publishing its Linux origin code, so the A733 likely won’t be a viable option, although Allwinner has made several comments concerning intending to collaborate alongside the community in the future. Another choice is the NXP i.MX 95, which does have mainline Linux support, but its achievement on a 16nm node alongside six low-power Cortex-A55 cores is mediocre and not a fine value for the money.

The PinePhone 2 was expected to use the additional cost-effective Rockchip RK3566, which is fabbed on an older 22nm node. However, so many unpaid developers abandoned PINE64 in 2022, that it is improbable that the Hong Kong-based business volition be launching any new models in the foreseeable future. The manufacturing of PINE64’s Linux devices are currently on hold because of the elevated RAM and eMMC prices caused by the AI boom, but part of the logic is that PINE64 can’t lift prices on many of its devices, which are lone half-functional, since many of the community groups, who worked on the PinePhone, are no longer evolving the application to assistance PINE64’s newer devices.

Another logic the RK3588 is the preferred choice is since Rockchip is promising to provision a successor chip, the RK3668 alongside four Cortex-A730 cores and six Cortex-A530 cores at a 5 or 6 nm node in 2027, so it have to be imaginable to keep upgrading the phone in the future. Purism invested heavily in supporting the 28nm i.MX 8M Quad in the Librem 5, thinking that it would be imaginable to upgrade to a forthcoming 14nm type of the SoC, but NXP decided to eliminate fractional the cores in the GPU and eliminate DisplayPort assistance in the 14nm i.MX 8M Plus, so Purism couldn’t upgrade its phone in the identical processor family. Given that the disbursal of fabbing on smaller procedure nodes keeps rising, it is improbable that any of the another chipmakers volition initiate a new part to difficulty the RK3588’s achievement in the near future.

The new choice of Linux phones using a Qualcomm IoT SoC

In the past, the lone way to create a phone operating on a Linux kernel was to scheme a complex equipment containing many distinct chips. Historically Qualcomm didn’t annoy making mighty processors for its SoC’s that supported Linux. However, there has been expanding petition for additional mighty Internet of Things processors that can grip AI and many of depiction handling from multiple video feeds. Unlike short-lived smartphones and tablets, IoT devices have lengthy merchandise lives, so they are improved suited to use Linux, fairly than Android which is much harder to assistance complete time. In March 2023, Qualcomm dramatically improved the prospects for Linux phones alongside the announcement that its upcoming 6nm QCM6490 processor alongside an unified cellular modem would assistance four functioning systems (Android, Linux, Ubuntu and Windows IoT Enterprise).

Then, the San Diego-based business announced its new Product Longevity Program, which would the two market and provision application assistance for the QCM6490 until July 2036. Both the FairPhone 5 and SHIFTphone 8 were designed about the QCM6490, because of the ecological benefits to its lengthy support, and that lengthy assistance is exactly what Linux phones additionally need, since it takes so lengthy to bring a Linux phone to market and it needs to market for many years to recoup the elevated funding in a merchandise that has constricted annual sales. The Fairphone 5 alongside the QCM6490 (1x 2.7Ghz Cortex-A78, 3x 2.4GHz Cortex-A78, 4x 1.9Ghz Cortex-A55) was criticized for its mediocre benchmarks and mediocre power division existence compared to another Android phones. However, the QCM6490 offers considerably improved CPU and GPU achievement and improved energy effectiveness than the RK3588S.

The consequent QCM4490 and QCM8850, which are fabbed on a newer 4nm node, recommendation lesser and higher power options than the QCM6490. The QCM4490 (2x 2.4GHz Cortex-A78, 6x 2.0GHz Cortex-A55) has nearly as fine single-core achievement as the QCM6490 and is additional energy efficient, but its assistance ends in April 2030, which is too abbreviated for a Linux phone. The QCM8850 likely could be downclocked to fit inside the power letter cover of a Linux phone, but its assistance ends in April 2033, so the longer-lived QCM6490 is likely the improved choice for a Linux phone.

The advantage of using one of these IoT processors, which Qualcomm has rebranded as “Dragonwing“, is that they create it considerably easier to scheme a phone and bring it to market, since they merge so much functionality in one chip, which reduces the complexity of the phone’s circuit board. Qualcomm provides citation designs that can be customized, so designing a Linux phone alongside a Dragonwing processor have to be much easier and necessitate small circuit commission iterations and small testing.

A business alongside constricted resources could agreement alongside SHIFT or Fairphone to create their phones and afterward instal Linux, akin to the way that the two Murena and iodé market Fairphones and SHIFTphones and instal their AOSP variants focused on privacy on the phones. Not lone would this evade the period and disbursal of designing the hardware, but it would authorize the Linux phone to be marketed for its ecological and ethical benefits. Fairphone or SHIFT could additionally be contracted to provision the warranty assistance for the phone.

Qualcomm provides free/open origin drivers for its Snapdragon and Dragonwing processors, and complete period many of these processors volition be partially supported in mainline Linux. However, the Qualcomm drivers depend on many proprietary blobs. The Adreno A660 GPU uses a blob to accelerate the 3D graphics. The audio digital indication processor (aDSP) uses a blob to grip audio decoding and processing. A compute blob is used by the DSP and NPU for tasks akin device learning. The VPU needs a blob to do the hardware video decoding and encoding. The Inline Packet Accelerator (IPA) uses a blob to speed up its network routing. These blobs authorize the SoC to run cooler and be additional energy efficient, but tasks akin audio processing, video encoding/decoding and compute can be handled in application by the CPU and/or GPU in command to evade using these blobs.

While these blobs are optional, the blobs to run the WiFi, Bluetooth and cellular modem would not be optional on a phone which needs those functions. None of those blobs are required in the userspace, but the lone way to evade them is to use distinct WiFi/Bluetooth and cellular modem chips. Adding those chips to the phone’s circuit commission would add important additional disbursal and complexity and create the phone small energy efficient.

On the another hand, adding those additional chips would additionally create it imaginable to use a hardware slay toggle to close downward the phone’s wireless communications, which would be a important marketing item for the phone. However, the category of client who wants to be capable to cut the power to the WiFi/Bluetooth and cellular modem volition additionally likely be concerned concerning the three blobs needed to footwear the Qualcomm QCM chips, particularly the one which runs the hypervisor and the TrustZone that handles encryption. Although the RK3566, RK3588 and i.MX 95 additionally necessitate a blob to boot, it is a small document from Synopsys DesignWare that merely trains the DDR RAM’s recollection timing, whereas the Qualcomm blobs to footwear the QCM4490, QCM6490 and QCM8850 are much additional extensive.

The issue of using an Android kernel in a Linux phone

What made the motion of mobile Linux from 2020 – 2022 alongside the publish of the Librem 5, PinePhone and PinePhone Pro so breathtaking was that these were phones that ran on a Linux kernel. In contrast, most another Linux phones run their Linux stack on top of libhybris, which loads Android libraries and drivers and translates calls to libc and musl, so they can activity alongside Android’s Bionic. The advantage of using an Android kernel is that it allows Linux phones to use a contemporary unified mobile SoC akin a Qualcomm Snapdragon or MediaTek Dimensity alongside fine achievement and energy efficiency, so Linux phones can vie alongside Android phones.

The issue is that a Linux phone that runs on an Android kernel volition considerably shorten the lifespan of the phone. Historically Google lone supported all Android kernel for 4 years alongside safety updates, and it was necessary to do at smallest one Android upgrade to get those 4 years of support, since Google normally lone supports all Android publish for 3.5 years.

It is a safety hazard to use an Android phone that is no longer getting safety updates, since there is so much Android malware in the world, including in Google’s authoritative Play Store. A lot of hackers are focused on attacking Android, since it is so extensively used on devices that transport precious individual information. AV-TEST counts 37.62 myriad distinct pieces of Android malware and 30.38 myriad possibly unwanted applications (PUA’s) that do things that users may not desire specified as collecting their individual data. In contrast, AV-TEST counts 5.29 myriad pieces of malware and 58,128 PUA’s in Linux, and most of it is rarely installed, since most Linux users lone instal application from the repository of their distro, anywhere free/open origin application (FOSS) predominates and bundle maintainers would endure reputational damage for including malware.

Companies akin Qualcomm and MediaTek typically lone market their SoC’s for smartphones for 2 to 3 years, and most of the petition for the high-end Snapdragon and Dimensity models dries up following the archetypal year, so historically they lone provided Android updates for 1-3 years and safety updates for 2 to 4 years. They normally didn’t annoy upgrading the kernel and the drivers and the proprietary blobs that they provided were designed to function alongside a particular kernel and couldn’t be upgraded. Historically Google lone supported three years of kernels in all Android version, so that constricted most phones to being used alongside a maximum of three Android versions.

In difference to the 2-4 years of application assistance for Android phones, Purism advertised that the Librem 5 would get “lifetime updates that really broaden your phone’s life.” Likewise, PINE64 promised that it would market the PinePhone and its replacement parts for “at smallest 5 years.” These two Linux phones can be supported for far longer than any Android equipment on the market. They use free/open origin drivers and Linux kernels that can keep being upgraded, since they doesn’t depend on proprietary blobs that are lone compatible alongside a particular kernel version. While they do merge proprietary firmware, they are not reliant on the SoC manufacturer to provision new blobs that authorize the use of latest versions of the kernel.

The issue alongside the abbreviated lifespan of Android kernels is that Linux phones typically obtain longer to create and bring to market, and afterward they are sold for additional years than most Android phones. Given all the challenges alongside using Linux SoC’s, it isn’t amazing that FuriLabs decided to use a accepted smartphone scheme sporting a MediaTek Dimensity 900 processor for its FLX1 phone, which started shipping in July 2024. The phone’s functioning system, FuriOS, is according to the Droidian project, which runs a mobile Debian stack alongside Wayland + wlroots + GTK + GNOME libraries + Phosh on top of an Android kernel using libhybris. Unlike the Librem 5 and the PinePhone, the FLX1 has the handling power to grip all the tasks that group anticipate of a contemporary smartphone.

The issue is that the Dimensity 900 was released in May 2021 alongside Android 11 using the android11-5.4 kernel. Google stopped supporting this kernel on January 1, 2026, and Linux stopped providing updates for the 5.4 kernel on December 3, 2025. MediaTek doesn’t publish major-version kernel upgrades for its processors (although that may alter in the future), and the drivers that MediaTek provides for the Dimensity 900 contains proprietary blobs that can’t be upgraded to assistance newer kernels, so the FLX1, and its successors, the FLX1s and FLX1s+, are stuck alongside an outdated kernel for Android 11 that isn’t getting safety patches and bug fixes. Since these phones use Andromeda, which is a tradition fork of Waydroid, to run Android apps inner FuriOS, they are possibly exposed to a lot of Android malware. Waydroid has weakened the app sandbox and SELinux safety in norm Android, and it is according to outdated AOSP 13, which stopped getting safety updates in March 2026. Given the safety implications, it is questionable whether FuriLabs should motionless be marketing the FLX1s+ using an unsupported kernel.

The Jolla C2 Community Phone, which currently sells for €369, shares akin safety concerns. The C2, which started shipping in September 2024, is according to the UNISOC Tiger T606 processor, which was announced in September 2021. The C2 is operating a tradition kernel named “5.4.233-android12-9-g9c3a5d5b97e3.” Presumably, the Finnish business took Linux 5.4.233, which was released on 25 Feb 2023, and added Google’s Android 12 kernel modifications, so it is basically using the identical unsupported kernel as the FLX1/s/s+, which hasn’t received any safety updates from Google since January 1, 2026. Jolla hasn’t equal bothered to update the kernel to 5.4.302, which was the last care release from Linux for the 5.4 kernel on December 3, 2025. Jolla has not released the origin code for the C2’s kernel, so that Jolla’s so-called “Community Phone” can’t be upgraded by the community. Even if the community could upgrade the kernel to its final care release, if is crucial to keep in intellect that Linux 5.4.302 had 1539 unfixed CVE’s (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) whenever released, and new crucial CVE’s for Linux are established on average every 2.5 days.

Like the FuriLabs FLX1/s/s+, the Jolla C2 additionally can run Android apps, which may merge malware, but it uses Jolla’s proprietary AppSupport (aka AlienDalvik), which runs AOSP inner an LXC receptacle akin Waydroid. With AppSupport, the Android apps have better integration into the presenter functioning scheme than Waydroid. Presumably Jolla is operating a additional latest type of AOSP than Waydroid, since Jolla licenses the use of AppSupport to another companies, so it likely is applying Google’s safety updates for AOSP, but not for the supported kernel on the C2 phone.

All the Linux phones operating Android kernels, specified as the Volla phones alongside Ubuntu Touch and the new Jolla Phone (2026) operating Sailfish OS, volition visage this identical issue that their lifespans are cut abbreviated by their Android kernels that can lone get a important type upgrade from the SoC manufacturer because of their proprietary blobs lone being compatible alongside one important type of the kernel. Unfortunately, all these phones are using MediaTek processors, which either have small or no mainline Linux support, so their lifespan can’t be extended by switching to a mainline Linux kernel.

Linux phones according to Android volition rotate into additional viable because of longer support

Nonetheless, the planned obsolescence of the Android phone market has started to change. Google wanted its Android functioning scheme to improved vie alongside Apple’s iOS. Apple promises at smallest 5 years of assistance for its phones and typically provides complete 6 years. Unlike the another Android phone makers, Google’s endeavor example doesn’t depend on planned obsolescence. The additional group that Google can convince to use its functioning system, the additional data Google can collect for its targeted advertising, so extending the existence of Android phones is a way to diagram additional users to its platform.

In addition, the COVID-19 epidemic caused group to buy small new phones, and afterward the consequent provision sequence crunch caused phone prices to increase because of the additional costly components. The earth average marketing cost of Apple’s iPhone risen from $724 to $903 between 2020 and 2024. Global smartphone revenue crumbled in 2020 and have never restored to their pre-pandemic levels. In command to convince group to open their wallets for additional costly phones, consumers needed to be convinced that they would final longer.

In August 2020, Samsung announced that its S, Note and Z sequence phones starting alongside the S10 would all get three years of OS updates and safety updates, fair akin Google had been providing for its Pixels, since the brand was archetypal launched in 2016. At the period whenever Samsung made this guideline change, the smartphone industry had fair informed the worst decrease in its history, alongside component revenue dropping 23% YoY in the second fourth of 2020. In October 2021, Google announced that it would considerably extended the lifespan of its Pixel devices, promising 3 years of OS updates and 5 years of safety updates, commencement alongside the Pixel 6. Samsung couldn’t authorize its Galaxy devices to usurped as the finest Android brand. In February 2022, Samsung announced that it would surpass Google alongside a promise of four years of OS updates and 5 years of safety patches for its flagship models, starting alongside the Galaxy S21, Z3 and Tab8.

This set off a competition between the two firms to see which one could provision the longest application assistance for its mobile devices. Google decided to leapfrog Samsung again and set a new norm that would finest Apple’s assistance policy. In October 2023, Google pledged that the Pixel 8 sequence would get 7 years of OS updates and safety updates, affirmative “Pixel Feature Drops” and “AI innovation from Google”. Google’s notice that it would assistance the Pixel 8 into 2030 sent daze waves through the mobile industry. Samsung was resolute to not be outdone by Google, and announced in January 2024 that its new Galaxy S24 and S24 Ultra would additionally get 7 years of OS updates and safety updates. In 2025, Samsung extended the application assistance to six years for all its new Galaxy models, including its low-end Galaxy A06 4G, which expenses around $125.

In October 2024 during its Snapdragon Summit, Qualcomm commented that it would be offering 8 years of OS upgrades and safety updates for its high-end mobile processors, and in February 2025, it formally announced that its new 7, 8 and 8 Elite processors released that twelvemonth would all get this unprecedented flat of support. Just as important, Qualcomm promised that its high-end Snapdragon processors would additionally get two kernel upgrades, so they would be using kernels that are officially supported by new Android releases. MediaTek couldn’t let Qualcomm border the high-end mobile processor market for the next generation of flagship phones. On May 27, 2025, MediaTek posted that its Dimensity 8400 and 9400 chips would additionally get 8 years of support.

Traditionally all new Android type lone supports three years of kernels, but in 2024 Google added a fourth twelvemonth alongside Android 15 (android12-5.10 to android15-6.6) and a fifth twelvemonth alongside Android 16 (android12-5.10 to android16-6.12) and a sixth twelvemonth alongside Android 17 (android12-5.10 to android17-6.18). However, these additional years of assistance in Android are apt a impermanent fix that Google implemented until it can move the chipmakers into its Longevity Google Requirements Freeze (LGRF) program which Google began in October 2024. Under this program, chipmakers are expected to upgrade their kernels all 3 years in command to be capable to assistance their SoC’s in the lengthy term. After the Linux kernel maintainers announced that they would be reducing their assistance of their LTS kernels from 6 to 2 years, Google announced in July 2024 that it would provision safety updates to its kernels for 4 years, so that suggests that forthcoming Android releases volition go rear to lone supporting 3 years of kernels.

Qualcomm has promised to provision two kernel updates for its elevated end processors, but Qualcomm has stated nothing concerning its lower-tier processors, apart from for its announcement rear in December 2020 that all of its Snapdragon processors would get three years of OS updates and 4 years of safety updates. Other SoC manufacturers have been likewise mum on the assistance for their lower-tier processors. In all likelihood, most smartphones alongside mid-range and low-end processors volition lone get 4 years of support, which method that all the existing Linux phones from Volla, FuriLabs, Jolla and Brax volition likely visage the identical issue of using unsupported Android kernels that can’t be upgraded.

New Linux phones, however, can be designed in the forthcoming to get 8 years of assistance if they use a higher-end Snapdragon or Dimensity processor. Even if designing a tradition phone akin the FLX1, which took three years to bring to market, since it has three hardware slay switches for the microphone, cameras and cellular modem and it required a lot of application dev work, the Linux phone should motionless be viable since it volition motionless have 5 additional years of application assistance and can be sold for at smallest 3 years.

If designing a additional cost-effective phone, however, that doesn’t need video out, the Snapdragon 7 and Dimensity 8400 are processors designed for high mid-range phones, and they motionless get the 8 years of assistance (if the phone creator is consenting to pay Qualcomm or MediaTek for the extended support). This volition be the most appealing choice for Volla, Jolla, FuriLabs and Brax, which all market mid-range phones.

If a Snapdragon part is selected, there is a decent chance that the part volition eventually acquire several mainline Linux support, so the phone can have a second existence following the authoritative assistance ends, although its functions requiring binary blobs likely won’t activity alongside the upgraded mainline Linux kernel. What is so frustrating is that many of the makers of Linux phones are selecting MediaTek processors complete Snapdragon processors, so there is small anticipation for that second life.

Why application was a important difficulty for the Librem 5

When Purism announced the Librem 5 in August 2017, the California-based business wasn’t fair facing a important obstacle in using a new SoC, that hadn’t yet been released, which would considerably delay the phone. Purism, however, faced an equal bigger difficulty in the application to instal on the phone.

Purism had observed how trying to create mobile Linux had humbled larger companies alongside far additional resources, and it tried to evade their mistakes. Motorola developed fractional a dozen distinct varieties of Linux, but couldn’t unify and straightforward its betterment efforts, and eventually adopted Android which commoditized its phones, so it had to be sold off to Google and eventually Lenovo in command to survive. Palm took too lengthy evolving webOS and ran out of prosperity as Android ate its market, so it had to market itself off to HP in 2010 in command to survive. Likewise, Nokia took too lengthy evolving MeeGo as its endeavor crumbled because of Android, so it turned to Microsoft in 2010 to provision Windows Mobile for its phones, which lone hastened the demolition of the Finnish company. The Mozilla Foundation developed an complete functioning scheme according to web standards, but established that it didn’t have the resources to equivalent Google’s Android, and abandoned the betterment of Firefox OS for smartphones in December 2015, although it continued betterment for TVs and Internet of Things for another 10 months. Canonical attempted to unify the desktop and mobile spaces alongside its Unity8 interface and create Ubuntu Touch as a mobile OS alongside fine convergence for the desktop. However, it proved to be a costly endeavor alongside constricted business interest, and Canonical’s CEO, Mark Shuttleworth, announced that the business would forsake the betterment of Ubuntu Touch in April 2017.

This tragic former has taught Linux hardware vendors that they should do as small application betterment as possible, apart from code to create their hardware activity and several distro maintenance. However, avoiding application dev activity was not viable scheme in 2017 for the benevolent of phone that Purism was attempting to create.

All the accessible mobile Linux interfaces in 2017 had important drawbacks, including Sailfish OS’s Silica, Firefox OS’s Gaia, KDE’s Plasma Mobile, UBports’ Unity8→Lomiri, Maemo Leste’s Hildon, LuneOS’s Luna Next and Nemo Mobile’s Glacier UI. Jolla had spent years polishing its Sailfish OS, but Purism’s goal of 100% liberated application disqualified Jolla’s proprietary Silica interface, as fine as Samsung’s Tizen, whose problematic Flora License grants a patent licence lone to “Tizen certified platforms”. Nemo Mobile and Plasma Mobile were motionless incomplete and would have required a lot of dev activity on Purism’s part to provision all the missing parts. LG had turned webOS into an functioning scheme for astute TVs/projectors and automobiles, and replacing LG’s proprietary bits would have taken fairly a bit of work. Firefox OS and Ubuntu Touch were complete systems, but the two of them would have required a huge dedication on Purism’s part to keep their application in the lengthy term. Firefox OS’s code was abandoned, and the volunteers at UBports didn’t have the manpower to keep its huge codebase. All of the accessible interfaces were according to a distinct mobile stack, whereas Purism wanted to unify alongside the application stack in desktop Linux, since one of its announced goals was that the Librem 5 could be used alongside the important distros, including Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, SUSE and Arch.

Purism initially leaned toward adopting Plasma Mobile for its Librem 5 phone, but that would have required maintaining the two a GNOME-based stack on the desktop and a distinct KDE-based mobile stack in its PureOS distribution. At that item in time, Plasma Mobile was motionless an inchoate system, that would have required a huge amount of dev activity to get prepared for a business merchandise launch. Plasma Mobile was according to many things that were incapatible alongside a desktop stack, specified as oFono telephony and the Halium Project, which was additionally used by LG’s webOS and UBport’s Ubuntu Touch, in command to run the scheme on top of libhybris alongside a Android kernel and drivers.

Purism was already operating alongside GTK and GNOME in PureOS, and it marketed the Librem 5 as a phone aligned alongside the ideals of the Free Software Foundation, which sponsored GNOME, so it made awareness for Purism to favor an interface according to GTK and the GNOME ecosystem. However, the lone accessible GTK-based interface was Hildon, which was hopelessly outdated, and would have required a lot of activity to upgrade from GTK 2 to GTK 3.

In the end, Purism decided that it would be easier to create a new mobile interface, which it called Phosh (phone + shell), as a thin overlay on top of GTK affirmative GNOME middleware, than do dev activity on among the existing mobile interfaces. By basing Phosh on the norm desktop stack consisting of Linux + Wayland + wlroots + GTK + GNOME and adding code to approximately 20 GNOME applications to create them adaptive, Purism was capable to obtain advantage of all the company assistance provided by IBM/Red Hat, SUSE, Canonical and Google for this stack. Purism had to present code upstream to Linux, wlroots, ModemManager, GTK/GNOME and Matrix to assistance its mobile functioning system, but afterward it could depend on those projects to keep the code in the future. This was arguably a improved scheme than assisting create Plasma Mobile, which has minimal company support, and was focused at the period on evolving a distinct stack than KDE’s desktop Plasma. Purism started working on its libhandy library in mid-2018 to add to norm GTK3/GNOME desktop applications to create them adaptive for a smaller mobile interface. Then the Purism developers worked alongside the GNOME community to develop libadwaita in 2020, so GTK4/GNOME could rotate into adaptive between mobile and desktop screens.

As detailed in my article, “The strategic advantages of Phosh for mobile Linux,” unifying alongside an existing desktop stack and getting the broader community to clasp its application to assistance keep it was arguably the finest scheme to decrease the long-term care costs, particularly for a small business akin Purism that has constricted resources.

Unfortunately, evolving a new mobile interface engaged higher expenses upfront, and Purism ran into financial problems during the earth COVID-19 pandemic. In first March of 2020, Purism stopped paying refunds to customers who cancelled their preorders, telling customers that they would have to delay till the phone started shipping in command to get their refunds. Between February and May of 2020, 5 of the 14 developers operating on the Librem 5 discontinue the project, and there was a noticeable autumn in the figure of application commits by the Purism workforce who stayed, indicating that Purism likely wasn’t paying them.

Purism was caught in a desperate situation. If it publically admitted in first 2020 that it was having financial problems, all of the orders for its products would have dried up and the business would apt have gone bankrupt. If it paid out all the refund requests, it additionally would have apt gone bankrupt, which would have harmed everyone who had put downward $599 – $799 to pre-order the Librem 5. Purism held off on paying refunds, which likely allowed the business to last and eventually commencement delivering its phones in November 2020. However, it didn’t appear to have the finances on hand to industry all the pre-ordered phones, since the industry of the Librem 5 was done in small batches until it was caught by COVID’s earth provision sequence shortages and couldn’t procure the i.MX 8M Quad processors for 6 months during 2021.

Purism never repaid the refunds for the canceled Librem 5 orders. Angry customers waiting for their refunds publically denounced the business on community forums, which blackened the company’s community position and suppressed revenue of the Librem 5. The first reviews for the phone noted the mediocre power division existence and the fact that crucial functionality was motionless not implemented, specified as the cameras, VoLTE assistance in the modem and the capability to suspend. In command to recoup its elevated betterment costs, Purism kept raising the phone’s price, until it reached an eye-watering $1299 in March 2022, which additional suppressed revenue of the phone.

Instead of refunds, Purism offered customers who had canceled their orders credit affirmative 20% extra to buy another merchandise from Purism. Customers who received the Librem 5 were capable to resell it for additional than they paid, but many customers who had canceled their orders refused to do that on principal. In a letter to Louis Rossmann in August 2023, Purism admitted that it motionless had 600 cancelled Librem 5 orders, which it motionless didn’t have the finances to refund.

The achievement of Phosh notwithstanding its constricted funding

Despite all the disagreement surrounding the California-based company, its scheme of making a sustainable mobile OS by unifying alongside a famous desktop stack alongside fine company assistance and upstreaming its code so it would be maintained complete the lengthy term has proven to be correct. Of the 469k lines of code in the application projects that Purism initiated for the Librem 5, 98.7% of that code is now controlled by external organizations. GNOME adopted libhandy, Calls and Chat (i.e. chatty) as authoritative projects. In delayed 2020, the Purism developers started worked alongside the GNOME community to develop libadwaita to rotate into the canonical implementation of GNOME’s individual interface guidelines (HIG). Not lone did this create GNOME’s GTK4 applications adaptive between the desktop and mobile environoments, but it gained features akin in-app notifications, customizable animations and speed/fluidity improvements. GNOME has continued evolving its GNOME Shell on mobile based Mutter, which is its unified display server, compositor and opening manager. In contrast, Phosh uses wlroots (a Wayland compositor archive created by Sway) and its phoc (a Wayland compositor), which are lighter importance than Mutter. However, GNOME has helped advance Phosh by hosting its code and documentation at GNOME World to foster its development.

As Purism has cut its prosperity for code development, Phosh’s betterment has increasingly moved exterior the company. FreeDesktop.org adopted feedbackd, which is a D-Bus activated daemon that provides haptic, ocular and audio feedback in reply to events. In February 2025, the non-profit affiliation Phosh.mobi e.V. was created in Germany to guide the betterment of Phosh as an autonomous entity. Three of the nine founding members of Phosh.mobi were erstwhile or current Purism employees/contractors, including Guido Gunther, who is Phosh’s chief developer.

Over the final five years, the amount of code in the projects that Purism created for the Librem 5 has grown by 74.9%, and much of that new code is being written by group who are no longer employed or contracted by Purism. The lone code projects motionless controlled by Purism are gtherm, haegtesse and wys, which are DBus daemons for thermals, transfering modem audio and bringing up PulseAudio during calls, respectively. Together, these projects lone portray 6173 lines or 1.3% of the total code.

Lines of code complete the final 5 years in projects started by Purism for the Librem 5
Project	2021-12-15	% of total	2026-09-16	% of total	Growth
libhandy	47,730	17.8%	48,110	10.3%	0.8%
libadwaita	51,270	19.1%	128,067	27.3%	149.8%
chatty	49,661	18.5%	49,534	10.6%	-0.3%
calls	20,745	7.7%	28,964	6.2%	39.6%
libcall-ui	4,426	1.6%	5,093	1.1%	15.1%
phoc	15,277	5.7%	38,599	8.2%	152.7%
phosh	48,301	18.0%	96,357	20.5%	99.5%
phosh-mobile-settings			26,724	5.7%
phosh-tour			4,135	0.9%
squeekboard	17,993	6.7%	26,773	5.7%	48.8%
feedbackd	5,970	2.2%	9,768	2.1%	63.6%
feedbackd-device-themes	603	0.2%	940	0.2%	55.9%
gtherm	1,734	0.6%	1,763	0.4%	1.7%
haegtesse	2,105	0.8%	2,044	0.4%	-2.9%
wys	2,442	0.9%	2,366	0.5%	-3.1%
Total	268,257	100.0%	469,237	100.0%	74.9%
Code adopted by external organizations
GNOME	173,832	64.8%	259,768	55.4%	49.4%
Phosh.mobi			192,588	41.0%
FreeDesktop.org			10,708	2.3%
Total external	173,832	64.8%	463,064	98.7%	166.4%

In a survey that PINE64 took of 3079 PinePhone users in January 2022, 39.3% selected Phosh as their favorite interface, compared to 15.5% for Sxmo/Sxmo, 15.0% for Plasma Mobile and 6.7% for Lomiri (formerly Unity8). Despite Phosh lone starting its betterment in April 2018, additional users preferred it complete Lomiri and Plasma Mobile, which have been under betterment since March 2013 and July 2015, respectively. Purism’s scheme of using the existing infrastructure and applications from GNOME allowed the small business to create a usable interface faster than another competing interfaces.

It is amazing that Phosh became the most famous mobile Linux interface, considering that the Qt toolkit and KDE had specified a caput commencement complete GTK and GNOME in supporting mobile environments. Qt Quick was introduced alongside Qt 5.1 in June 2013 to create Qt controls adaptive for small screens, and Qt Mobile was introduced in December 2013 to create them cross-platform, and KDE’s Kirigami archive for adaptive applications was introduced in March 2016. GTK didn’t acquire akin abilities until 2019 alongside libhandy and GNOME didn’t have an answer to Kirigami until libadwaita was introduced in 2021.

Phosh has several glaring limitations. Its default Squeekboard keyboard is essential and kludgy. Only in 2025 did Phosh acquire an substitute keyboard alongside term correction and term completion, affirmative the capability to choose from multiple characters by lengthy pressing a key. The desktop manner in Phosh to output video to an external detect or projector has a extremely constricted interface. Phosh has no camera app, and most installations depend on Megapixels developed by Martijn Braam for the PinePhone or its Millipixels fork developed by Purism for the Librem 5. Millipixels lone gained essential assistance for auto-focus and the capability to fire video in January 2023.

Phosh doesn’t have the three buttons at the base or the rub gestures from Android that most group are used to. Plasma Mobile’s interface is much nearer to the acquainted Android interface, and it is nicer visually. Phosh’s interface is much simplier. It doesn’t use scheme navigation buttons and has small configuration options than Plasma Mobile. A rub from the base displays Phosh’s Overview screen anywhere apps can be opened or closed. A rub from the top displays a Quick-Setting panel, notifications, and buttons in the top corners to fastener or rotate off the phone.

Phosh became the additional famous interface, partially since Purism was paying developers to activity on it, so it was additional stable, whereas Plasma Mobile was additional prone to booths and crashes. Plasma relies on hardware acceleration from the GPU to speed up its interface, which isn’t supported by the drivers for the A64 and i.MX 8M Quad in the PinePhone and Librem 5, whereas Phosh is faster and additional receptive fair using application rendering. Phosh additionally requires small RAM, although it does run additional backdrop processes that use additional CPU.

Adoption of mobile interfaces by Linux distros

Phosh succeeded since its near adherence to a average desktop stack made it easier to bundle and allocate in distinct distros. Phosh was archetypal adopted by postmarketOS (now Nura) in September 2018, fair a two months following Purism archetypal debuted it. The near ties between the Phosh developers and Debian helped get Phosh packaged into Debian in February 2020, anywhere it became the basis of the new Mobian distro. Phosh allowed Debian, Arch, Manjaro, Fedora, OpenSUSE and NixOS to rotate into mobile distros for the archetypal time, which in rotate encouraged Linux use developers to commencement evaluation their application in a mobile interface to see how it functioned on smaller screens. Because Phosh didn’t remain secluded in one Linux distro, it attracted additional volunteers to assistance create the application and activity on porting it.

Over time, Plasma Mobile has followed Phosh’s example and increasingly unified alongside its Plasma desktop stack. Originally the Plasma Mobile stack was fairly distinct from the norm desktop Plasma stack, since Plasma Mobile was according to the oFono telephony archive and could be run either on the norm Linux kernel or on the Halium Project, which allows Plasma Mobile to run in an LXC receptacle on top of an Android kernel and drivers, and using libhybris to translate its Linux calls to libc into Android’s Bionic. Over period the KDE has jettisoned parts of Plasma Mobile to unify it alongside its desktop stack. In December 2020, KDE announced that it would get rid of Halium and lone run on a Linux kernel, since that alter would authorize Plasma Mobile to employ a traditional Linux userspace without blobs and upgrade their KWin composer. A twelvemonth afterward in December 2021, Plasma Mobile announced that it was switching from the oFono archive to ModemManager, since it was additional stable and improved maintained than oFono. Finally, in February 2026, Plasma Mobile announced it would be switching from the Maliit on-screen keyboard to the new Plasma Keyboard. Over time, KDE has unified Kirigami into additional of its norm applications, so it doesn’t need two distinct applications for Plasma and Plasma Mobile.

The unification of the mobile and desktop stacks made it easier for Plasma Mobile to prosecute Phosh’s example in getting packaged and unified into all the important Linux desktop distributions, so they could additionally be used on mobile devices. Nearly all important distro started evaluation its code on the PinePhone, which helped get additional group evaluation and contributing to Phosh and Plasma Mobile.

Despite the fact that these two interfaces have small developers than desktop GNOME and desktop Plasma, they have don’t need nearly as much manpower since they can piggy rear on the desktop stack and the convergent apps, so they can thrive alongside much small dev activity and care than big siloed codebases akin Ubuntu Touch, Firefox OS, Tizen, webOS, etc.

Sxmo (Simple X Mobile) has followed uncomplicated scheme of construction on top an existing deskop stack. It was created by Miles Alan, as a “collection of uncomplicated programs and casing scripts” on top of Sway and its wlroots library. It was archetypal released in February 2020, and quickly became the second most famous interface on the PinePhone because of its light-weight and uncomplicated design, which made it uncomplicated to customize. Sxmo has been unified into the mobile distros (postmarketOS, Mobian and DanctNIX), but the desktop distros haven’t adopted it, which has constricted its reach.

UBport’s Lomiri interface is faster and additional receptive and consumes small RAM than Phosh and Plasma Mobile, but it was initially secluded in Ubuntu Touch. Canonical spent years evolving its Unity8 interface, which is according to Qt Quick and used in Ubuntu Touch. The UBports community renamed the interface as Lomiri in February 2020. UBports has followed a akin scheme of trying to diagram additional group to its Lomiri interface by getting it unified into the important distros. UBports modified Ubuntu Touch and the Lomiri interface so they could run on either Halium or a norm Linux kernel, and switched to using additional standardized libraries that were easier to upgrade complete time. Nonetheless its small figure of volunteers has struggled to keep its huge codebase, and update it to new versions of Qt.

Despite the caput commencement of Plasma Mobile and Lomiri, they stayed secluded for longer in KDE Neon and Ubuntu Touch. In contrast, Phosh got adopted nearly immediately by postmarketOS, and formerly it got packaged by Debian in first 2020, most of the another important distros quickly adopted it. When postmarketOS was archetypal released in May 2017, it used Weston, which is Wayland’s citation compositor, but inside the first 100 days of its existence, postmarketOS adopted Plasma Mobile. However, postmarketOS chose to container its PinePhone Community Edition alongside Phosh because of its greater stability.

Unlike in the past, whenever mobile Linux interfaces were secluded in a few distros, many distros now assistance Phosh, Plasma Mobile and Lomiri. Because mobile Linux is no longer secluded and locked into silos controlled by ample companies, specified as Nokia, Samsung, LG, Mozilla and Canonical, it has a much greater chance of succeeding and attracted contributors than it did in the past. Because Phosh and Plasma Mobile and Sxmo are according to using existing application stacks that are maintained by exterior organizations, it is much small apt to be abandoned, as happened alongside Firefox OS, or to ossify and diminish into obscurity, as happened alongside Hildon.

PINE64’s attempt to get about the disbursal of evolving software

PINE64 was founded as a crowd-funding run in October 2015 by TL Lim and Johnson Jeng to create a sole commission device according to the Allwinner A64 processor. The business based in Hong Kong focuses on producing cost-effective Linux hardware devices. It gets about the elevated expenses of evolving application by fair producing the hardware and afterward invites the community to create the application for its devices. By allying alongside assorted distinct Linux distros, PINE64 initially had a awesome agreement of success.

PINE64 likely shipped over 100,000 PinePhones, which greatly stimulated the betterment of mobile Linux. The publish of the PinePhone led to the innovation of the Mobian (Mobile Debian) and DanctNIX (based on Arch ARM) distros and inspired the innovation of the Sxmo interface. The PinePhone helped Plasma Mobile decide that it lone needed to run on a Linux stack and pushed UBports to add assistance for operating on a Linux kernel. It additionally caused many of the important distros to activity on porting to a mobile equipment for the archetypal time.

PINE64 played an crucial assistance for the community by getting cheap hardware into people’s hands so they create application for that hardware, but it made the essential error of focusing on the distros, which lone plant if the hardware already has kernel assistance and fine free/open origin drivers. Drew DeVault, the guide developer of Sway and among the unpaid developers who worked on the PinePhone, observed that PINE64 was putting the cart before the horse, by assisting to backing the packaging activity in particular distos, fairly than archetypal paying developers to activity on the booting and controller development, that would have benefitted all the distros.

Because PINE64 chose hardware for the PinePhone that was mostly already supported by FOSS drivers, it was capable to diagram a ample figure of distros to activity on the phone. Volunteer developer Ondřej Jirman (aka “mega” or “megi”) created a custom Linux kernel for the PinePhone. Volunteers at UBports did the first activity on bringing up the hardware. Arnaud Ferraris (aka “a-wai”) at Mobian developed the telephony stack using the eg25-manager in userspace. Martijn Braam at postmarketOS worked on the camera. PINE64 initially released a sequence of five betterment batches of the PinePhone, which had distinct distros preinstalled (Ubuntu Touch, postmarketOS alongside Phosh, Manjaro alongside Phosh, Manjaro alongside Plasma Mobile and Mobian alongside Phosh). For all phone sold, PINE64 donated $10 to the distro which provided the software. After that, PINE64 planned to let the buyer choose which distro to assistance by selecting the distro’s logo to display on the rear dish of the PinePhone’s case.

Nonetheless, there were arguments among the distinct distros rearward the scenes complete the scheme of the hardware projects. PINE64’s founder, TL Lim, grew disappointed and decided to fair container PINE64’s devices alongside one distro and one interface preinstalled. Given the complexity of trying to activity alongside so many distinct distros, this wasn’t an unreasonable decision, but it had to be handled alongside attention to not alienate the another distros. Unfortunately, Lim chose to lone container PINE64 devices alongside Manjaro and Plasma Mobile preinstalled. PINE64’s own poll of PinePhone users showed that Phosh was the most famous interface, but it was controlled by Purism, a competitor to PINE64. Plasma Mobile wasn’t a bad choice, since it was a community-based interface that needed company support. Manjaro, however, was a extremely mediocre choice, since it wasn’t doing any application dev activity and has been extensively criticized for its bad custom of shipping application in betterment that is known to be broken, which creates additional activity and community backlash for the projects evolving the software.

Many of the crucial volunteers who worked on the PinePhone were burned out by the period that betterment on the PinePhone Pro started. They were disappointed by the inner arguments and the fact that PINE64 had shifted from sharing income alongside many distros to lone paying Manjaro, fairly than the group who were doing the necessary dev work. The PinePhone Pro’s hardware required fairly a bit of application dev activity to assistance it. In August 2022, Martijn Braam at postmarketOS publicly bankrupt up alongside PINE64 because of its bad decisions in favor of Manjaro. PINE64’s response unsuccessful to location Braam’s frustrations, and Drew DeVault posted that “PINE64 has let its community down.” Most of the unpaid developers stopped collaborating alongside PINE64, so the community-based business didn’t have the manpower to do the necessary application betterment for its new hardware. Most distros weren’t consenting to activity on a phone that couldn’t equal correctly boot. Thousands of group bought the PinePhone Pro following it was released in December 2021, expecting that eventually it would rotate into a functional device, but it motionless had important application problems whenever its revenue were cancelled in August 2025. The nonaccomplishment of the PinePhone Pro illustrates that PINE64 had its priorities backwards by focusing on one distro that chiefly does packaging work, fairly than focusing on the booting and kernel work.

Another of the problems was that PINE64 sent out its liberated hardware samples to the identical small figure of volunteers. By the period that the PinePhone Pro started its development, those volunteers were overwhelmed by all the new hardware that PINE64 was releasing, which all needed grave application dev activity to always be functional. With so many projects needing attention, the volunteers couldn’t concentration their energy on any one device, so all of them got neglected.

PINE64 charges specified low prices for its hardware, that it doesn’t have the necessary finances to pay for grave application dev work. However, its income sharing example alongside the distros was operating to convince gifted group connected alongside those distros to do the difficult activity of supporting its hardware. Then, PINE64 undermined its entire community betterment example by deciding that it would lone market its hardware alongside one distro and one interface preinstalled, and its decision to lone portion its income alongside that one distro. Then, PINE64 made matters worse by lone listening to Manjaro in how it designed its hardware, which alienated many of the volunteers from another distros that it needed to do the application dev work. Once the finest volunteers abandoned PINE64, the business hasn’t been capable to complete the betterment of the PinePhone Pro, PineNote, PineTab2 and many of its another projects, so the group who ordered these devices are improbable to always be capable to use them as completely functional devices.

Rather than sharing income alongside many distinct distros, PINE64 should have used any profits that it generated to pay developers to activity on the drivers and kernel assistance for the hardware. It could have taken a community-based method by observing who was making progress, and assisting to backing their work. Because the Allwinner A64 already had decent free/open origin drivers, volunteers were capable to inhabit in the gaps alongside the PinePhone. However, many of the kernel changes that they made never got upstreamed to mainline Linux, which PINE64 could have required if it were paying for that work.

PINE64 additionally could have directed its income sharing program to assistance backing betterment activity that would advantage all users of PinePhone, despite of which distro they chose, specified as Martijn Braam’s work on the Megapixels camera app or Biktorgj’s work on freeing the EG25-G modem firmware. Given that Phosh, Plasma Mobile, Lomiri and Sxmo/Swmo were being packaged in many distinct distros, it would have been improved to pay group to activity on evolving those mobile interfaces than giving prosperity to the distros. There are plentifulness of volunteers in the community who were consenting to activity on porting distros to the PinePhone, but there are far small group who are consenting to do difficult controller and application dev activity in their spare time.

The waning enthusiasm for Linux phones

After the first enthusiasm for the Librem 5, PinePhone and PinePhone Pro in 2020-21, there was a noticeable autumn in people’s involvement in Linux phones. The figure of posts concerning the Librem 5 and PinePhone on Reddit and the Purism and PINE64 forums reduced in 2022-25. The consequent announcements of new Linux phones, namely the F(x)tec Pro¹ X alongside Sailfish OS and Ubuntu Touch, the Volla phones alongside Ubuntu Touch, Furi Labs FLX1/s/s+, the Jolla C2 alongside Sailfish OS, Liberux NEXX, Commodore Callback 8020 and Mecha Comet, haven’t generated nearly as much community involvement and community involvement as the announcements of the Librem 5, PinePhone and PinePhone Pro. This difference is partially because of the fact that Purism and PINE64 were established companies that were already shipping Linux devices and they had community forums and Subreddits anywhere group could collect and conversation the upcoming devices.

Nonetheless, I doubtful that many of the group who bought the Librem 5 and PinePhone had a akin experiences to quarry which dampened their enthusiasm for Linux phones complete time. When the two of those phones archetypal arrived, they were fascinating devices for geeks akin me, who had been playing about alongside Linux for years on their desktop PCs. I had a blast flashing distinct distros on the PinePhone and I frequently downloaded the latest type of PureOS and reflashed my Librem 5. I ran benchmarks on the two phones and eagerly followed the dev activity to add assistance for the phones’ hardware. I had spent years waiting for the Librem 5, and following it arrived, I followed the betterment of Phosh and Adwaita by the Purism developers, akin I was rooting for my favorite sports team. I considered the betterment of Phosh and Plasma Mobile to be the most breathtaking item that was happening in the Linux world, and I enjoyed trying out new versions of the interfaces to see what was new in all release.

The archetypal twelvemonth following the Librem 5 and PinePhone were released were breathtaking times. I was so intrigued by the phones that I looked up all component on the Librem 5 and PinePhone schematics and documented them on the projects’ wikis. However, all period I flashed a new distro on the PinePhone to try it out, I lone played alongside the phone for a day or two, before it went rear in the drawer on my desk. I took the PinePhone distinct and admired how it was designed, but I never used the phone for extremely lengthy before I put it down. Its achievement was poor. It took a lengthy period to burden apps and there was a noticeable postpone in the interface. I additionally established it distracting to use the phone whenever the display was dimmed or the power division was low, since of the noticeable flicker on the screen. I considered pulling out the soldering metal to implement a fix that would speed up the Flash recollection storage, but I feared that I power accidentally ruin the board. I expected that PINE64 would matter an new type of the PinePhone that would fix the problems, but alternatively PINE64 dismissed the display flicker as a issue and hasn’t changed the eMMC’s voltage from 3.3 to 1.8 volts, which would have risen its sequential peruse speed from 55 to 125 MB/s. I was additionally annoyed that PINE64 provided no way to communicate alongside its hardware developers, so I wasn’t capable to get errors fixed that I established in the PinePhone schematics.

Unlike the Pinephone which I rarely used, I kept using the Librem 5, since its improved CPU and recollection achievement made its interface much additional receptive than the PinePhone. Nonetheless, the Librem 5’s display and aluminum example got hot, since Purism used thermal paste to associate the i.MX 8M Quad to the LCD’s backplate to dissipate the processor’s warmth through the display and aluminum frame. I frequently felt akin I was strolling about alongside a heater in my pocket. The power division drained fast, so I was continually having to accusation the Librem 5.

Eventually the Purism developers got the Librem 5’s camera to work, and I tried out all new type of the Millipixels app. It was fun playing alongside the camera and I learned a lot concerning how cameras activity trying to modify the settings to get a fine photo. However, the Librem 5 took a lengthy period to procedure all photo in application following taking a picture, since its i.MX 8M Quad processor lacked an depiction indication processor and hardware encoder in the VPU. It additionally took me way too lengthy fiddling alongside the Millipixels’ settings for me to depend on the camera. Whenever I wanted to create certain that I would get a decent photo, I pulled out my Xiaomi Redmi Note 7 operating LineageOS to obtain the photo. Eventually it was imaginable to fire video on the Librem 5 at a low resolution and example rate, but it took so lengthy to procedure the video and the norm was so limited, that I never bothered using it.

In the end, the PinePhone sat most of the period in a drawer in my desk, and the Librem 5 sat charging on my desk. They were fine amusement for the geek in me, but I didn’t use either of them as my chief phone. Many of the first adopters appear to have had akin experiences alongside their Linux phones. It was difficult to validate purchasing another Linux phone, whenever there was already one sitting unused in the drawer. Many group were unwilling to obtain a chance on another Linux phone following witnessing how the community developers abandoned PINE64 in 2022, and application betterment stalled for the PinePhone Pro and how Purism refused to refund cancelled orders for the Librem 5.

When Furi Labs announced its upcoming FLX1 in June 2024, it solved many of the problems alongside the Librem 5 and PinePhone. It contained a 6nm MediaTek Dimensity 900, which was mighty adequate fire video and run 3D games with Vulkan. It offers three hardware privacy switches and multi-booting to run multiple functioning systems on the phone. The phone’s application was developed by Bardia Moshiri, who is the guide developer of Droidian, which runs Phosh in a Debian-based distro on top of Halium alongside an Android kernel. It was according to well-supported projects and application which had already been developed, so its expenses would be low, but it had an informed developer to provision application support. In another words, it would evade the elevated expenses that troubled the Librem 5 and the deficiency of application assistance that bedeviled the PinePhone Pro. People study that the FLX1 and its following FLX1s and FLX1s+ variants activity well, but the Linux phone is not well-known and appears to have gotten a constricted figure of orders. The company’s forum has been icy and there has been constricted action on the Droidian forum, indicating that the phone has gained small traction in the Linux community.

Revision 1.1 of the Divine D. circuit commission arrived on Aug 10, 2026.

In January 2025, Liberux, a startup based in Madrid, Spain, announced its upcoming NEXX Linux phone according to the RK3588S alongside specs to create nerds salivate: 4×2.4GHz Cortex-A76, 4x Cortex-A55, Mali-G610 MP4 GPU, 32GB LPDDR4X RAM, 256GB eMMC, 5G modem and 3 hardware slay switches. In June 2025, Liberux started the crowdfunding for the phone, and a brace days afterward announced a standardized and open architecture that would authorize the RAM commission alongside an FPC connector to be upgraded up to 32GB, the eMMC commission alongside a norm socket to be upgraded up to 512GB, and the cellular modem alongside a tradition adapter commission to be replaced/upgraded. The cost varied between €790 and €1310, depending on the selected configuration. In addition, the NEXX would have two USB-C 3.1 ports to facilitate the phone being used a convergent desktop PC and an AW8737SCSR amplifier and a 3.5mm audio jack for improved analog audio.

The NEXX was a revolutionary design, promising to be the archetypal phone in former alongside two USB ports and the archetypal one alongside the RAM and eMMC on distinct boards, so it could be upgraded and connected akin a normal PC. Liberux was attempting to recommendation the archetypal really convergent smartphone that had the correct application and hardware to substitute a desktop PC, yet it barely generated any headlines in the tech press. It lone got 120 pre-orders in a month, which generated a tenth of the $1.7 myriad in crowdfunding that it needed. When its crowdfunding run failed, Liberux reported that it was negotiating alongside investors for lift the finances to build a prototype. However, its last post on the company’s Mastadon document was in November 2025 concerning “moving onward alongside new self-funding.” After 11 months of silence, it is looking increasingly doubtful that the NEXX volition always arrive to market.

There is additional anticipation for the Dawndrums Divine D. phone, which is being produced by a startup in Tunisia. The startup has continued to create dilatory advancement according to its Mastodon posts. They are now on the second revision of their chief commission and have produced a breakout board for debugging it. They are evolving their own distro known as DawnOS, which is according to Mobian and preparedness to assistance the two the Phosh and Plasma Mobile interfaces. They are asking for donations, but appear to be mostly oneself funded at this point. Like the NEXX, the Divine D. additionally promises to be an outstanding convergent phone, supporting up to 32GB RAM and offering a distinct HDMI harbor for video out. It additionally offers a LoRa (long-range radio) chip, and a pogo pin interface to add accessories to the phone.

Jolla shows that there is motionless petition for Linux phones

While the unsuccessful crowdfunding of the Liberux NEXX and the constricted revenue of the Furi Labs FLX1 would propose that there isn’t much anticipation for Linux phones, it is crucial to keep in intellect that these phones were poorly advertised and produced by unidentified startups that had no previous track record, so group were reluctant to command them. Bitter cognition alongside the Librem 5 refunds, the failures of the PinePhone Pro, and all the cancelled Linux mobile devices complete the years, specified as the Ubuntu Edge in 2013, the Firefox OS phones in 2015, the Jolla Tablet in 2015 and the Necunos NC_1 in 2019, has taught Linux enthusiasts to be careful concerning crowdfunding mobile devices.

However, there are reasons to accept that there is fairly a bit of pent-up petition for mobile Linux, and it lone requires the correct benevolent of promotion and a business alongside a dependable track document to unlock it. Ironically, the business demonstrating that group motionless desire to use Linux phones is small Jolla, which has somehow managed to last complete the years.

The Finnish engineers who used to activity on Nokia’s MeeGo founded their own business named Jolla Oy in 2011 to keep evolving that code as Sailfish OS. They took the FOSS parts of MeeGo and added their proprietary Silica interface according to Qt QML, which imitates the Swipe UI that Nokia had developed for Meego on the N900/N9. They additionally developed their own proprietary AlienDalvik to run Android apps inner Linux. Jolla deserves credit for evolving libhybris and assisting to keep much of the code developed by Nokia, including the oFono telephony archive and the Maliit virtual keyboard. Remarkably, the small Finnish business managed to last nearly going bankrupt in delayed 2015, whenever it cancelled its crowdfunded Jolla Tablet, which caused many of its customers who preordered to endure their money. It divided off its hardware operations into a distinct business named Jolla-Devices, which sells now Sony smartphones alongside Sailfish OS preinstalled to the European market, affirmative Volla Phones alongside Ubuntu Touch and Pixels alongside GrapheneOS.

After slaying off the first business in 2024, since it was bulk owned by Russian investors, who were politically toxic because of the war in Ukraine, Jolla reemerged under a new company named JollaBoys that bought the old company’s resources from Jolla Oy. The new Jolla business has returned to the endeavor of marketing hardware. Jolla announced its Jolla C2 Community Phone in May 2024, and started delivering them two months later, which helped reestablish the credibility of the company. When Jolla started taking preorders for its new Jolla Phone on December 5, 2025, it sold out its crowdfunding goal of 2000 phones inside the archetypal 48 hours and 5000 phones inside the archetypal week. People were pre-ordering the Jolla Phone without having seen any reviews of the phone and not equal knowing what processor it would contain. The phone, which initially disbursal $499 and now expenses was €679, was marketed as containing 12GB RAM, 256GB storage, a user-replaceable power division and a bodily privacy switch. Jolla’s promotion for the phone plainly struck a chord alongside European consumers, which proclaimed it to be a “Do It Together (DIT) Linux phone, shaped by the group who use it.” The Finnish business emphasized the independence of the phone from the remainder of the mobile phone industry, stating on the command page: “The Jolla Phone is not according to Big Tech technology. It is governed by European privacy thinking and a community-led model.”

Jolla has sold 15,000 units of its phone as of August 2026 fair by taking pre-orders for manufacturing batches from its web site, and it likely could have sold far additional units if it had paid for advertising, expanded beyond the European market, and kept the phone in stock, so customers didn’t have to delay months for the next manufacturing batch. Clearly, there is an untapped market of group who are dissatisfied alongside the reigning Android/iOS duopoly.

The mobile industry is shutting downward the AOSP alternative

Today the use of Linux is expanding on the desktop. Many group are installing Linux on their PCs, since they have rotate into disgusted by how Microsoft has turned Windows into an promotion phase for surveillance capitalism and a conveyance for AI slop. Rather than purchasing new PCs, a expanding figure of group have decided to instal Linux, since assistance for Windows 10 has ended and they can’t upgrade their old PCs to Windows 11 because of Microsoft’s arbitrary TPM restrictions.

Likewise, many group are likewise disenchanted alongside Android and iOS on their phones. More group have grown distrustful of the surveillance capitalism which undergirds the Android market and the restrictions and rising prices of Apple’s “walled garden” on the iPhone, yet the options to escape the smartphone duopoly keep shrinking. In the past, group who wanted to acquire several authority complete their digital lives could unlock the bootloader on their phone and instal an AOSP derivative specified as LineageOS, /e/OS, CalyxOS or GrapheneOS, nevertheless the mobile phone industry is increasingly shutting off this escape valve.

Every twelvemonth there are small Android phone models on the market which authorize the bootloader to be unlocked. The increase of Chinese brands, which now authority approximately 60% of the earth smartphone market, has driven many of the traditional phones brands out of the market which did authorize their bootloaders to be unlocked. Many of the phone brands that were mod-friendly, specified as LG, BQ, LeEco, WileyFox, Essential and Razer, are now gone from the market, and another mod-friendly brands akin Sony and HTC now have so few revenue that they are no longer applicable in the earth smartphone market. Huawei stopped allowing its bootloaders to be unlocked in 2018. In the final brace years, Samsung, ASUS and Realme all followed Huawei’s bad example and no longer authorize their bootloaders to be unlocked. Xiaomi, which rosy to fame as a mod-friendly brand, has lately implemented so many restrictions to obtain its unlock codes, that it is improbable that modders volition annoy porting tradition ROMs to forthcoming Xiaomi models.

As noted in my article on LineageOS statistics, the brands which have fine policies for bootloader unlocking has shrunk from 42.5% to concerning 7% of the earth smartphone market complete the final brace years. The brands which authorize their bootloaders to be unlocked (without important restrictions akin Xiaomi) lone sold concerning 87 myriad phones in 2025, including Lenovo/Motorola (60M), Google (12M), OnePlus (11.6M), Nothing (2M), GigaSet (>1M), Sony (400k), Fairphone (145k), SHIFT (10k), Teracube, Volla and Brax. Together those brands lone portray 7% of the 1245.5 million total smartphones sold in 2025.

However, that is an overestimate, since most phone models never get fine tradition ROMs made for them. A fine part of Motorola and Google phones are sold through carriers, and many carriers akin Verizon don’t authorize their phones to always be unlocked, equal if they are no longer under contract. MediaTek Dimensity and UNISOC Tiger processors have gained market portion in latest years, and those chipmakers don’t publish the origin code for their kernels akin Qualcomm does for its Snapdragon processors. A few brands that use MediaTek SoC’s, specified as Motorola, Xiaomi, Volla, Gigaset, TeraCube and Brax, do publish their kernel code, but that code for many another MediaTek phones volition never get published, nor volition tradition ROMs be made for them. UNISOC processors are basically dreary boxes for the modding community. The bootloaders of all phones alongside Apple A-series, Huawei Kirin and latest Samsung Exynos processors are locked, so the modding community is restricted to fair Qualcomm Snapdragon, Google Tensor and several MediaTek Dimensity processors. Motorola and Xiaomi have switched most of their prosperity example lines from Snapdragon to MediaTek Dimensity processors, so they are harder to mod.

Aside from the Motorola Moto G05, which was released in Jan 2025 and replaced 8 months afterward by the G06, there has not been a sole prosperity phone released by a important phone creator in 2025 or 2026 that has gained authoritative assistance by LineageOS. Gaining authoritative LineageOS assistance is important, since many of the another tradition ROMs are according to LineageOS and lone harbor to its officially supported models. Just looking at phone models alongside authoritative LineageOS assistance which authorize their bootloaders to be unlocked, lone concerning 20 myriad or 2% of smarphones sold all twelvemonth are fine for installing tradition ROMs.

Aside from the Motorola Moto G15 (released in December 2024), group are improbable to discover a new phone anywhere they can instal an authoritative LineageOS harbor for transaction in Africa, most of Latin America (except Mexico) and most of Asia (except India, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia). The lone choice to run a tradition ROM in most of the earth is to buy a used Motorola or Xiaomi phone from a brace years ago, specified as the Moto G (2024), Moto G32, Moto G34, Moto G84, POCO F5, POCO F5 Pro, POCO F6 Pro or Redmi Note 13 Pro. There are additional latest phones akin the Moto Edge 70, which have unofficial LineageOS ports, but it is a wager if they volition always be officially supported by LineageOS.

As Google has pushed phone makers to assistance their phones for longer, many companies have decided to collect additional individual data from their users for improved targeted promotion and for training synthetic intelligences. The smartphone industry is moving distant from a endeavor example according to planned obsolescence toward one according to surveillance capitalism, and the phone makers don’t desire their users to opt out of the system, so they have removed the choice to unlock the bootloader and made it harder to acquire base access. That way they can recoup the disbursal of providing additional years of assistance for their phones by monetizing their users’ data.

In addition, Google has made it harder to keep tradition ROMs, since it has moved additional and additional functionality from AOSP into its proprietary libraries and services (starting alongside Android 4.1 in 2012), and mostly abandoned the development of many of the free/open origin apps in AOSP in favor of its proprietary apps. Starting alongside AOSP 16 in 2025, Google stopped including the equipment trees and controller binaries for Pixel devices in AOSP, so ROM developers no longer had mark devices, anywhere they could effortlessly test out and modify the latest versions of AOSP on operating hardware. Now tradition ROM developers have to do achy test and error to create the equipment trees for Pixel phones fair akin all the another phone brands. Google additionally squashed the kernel’s commit history, which makes it extremely difficult for ROMs akin GrapheneOS to create their own tradition kernels, since they can’t effortlessly obtain new features, bug fixes and safety patches from Google’s kernels.

Given how the smartphone industry is locking downward their hardware and pushing endeavor models that are inimical to users’ privacy, there is risen chance for Linux phones to be marketed to group who desire to escape the Android/iOS duopoly and surveillance capitalism.

Three types of Linux phones are now possible

In the past, it was much harder to bring a Linux phone to market, but now there are three viable types of Linux phones that can be brought to market, and all of them have improved prospects than in the past. The archetypal category is the clean Linux phone which runs a Linux kernel, akin the Librem 5, Liberty, PinePhone and PinePhone Pro. These phones earlier didn’t have the handling power to recommendation the functionality that group anticipate in a smartphone. They frequently lacked components specified depiction indication processors, audio digital indication processors, hardware video encoders, Vulkan graphics, neural processors and encryption engines, or they lacked the FOSS drivers to assistance those components. The RK3588S and the upcoming RK3668, however, volition provision clean Linux phones the handling power to be viable alternatives to Android and iOS phones for the archetypal time.

The clean Linux phone is the riskiest category since it requires the most funding in engineering the hardware. Companies can’t fair modify a citation phone scheme from Qualcomm or MediaTek or call up a phone ODM and ask them to modify one of their existing designs. They have to activity alongside a scheme home or ODM that has several cognition alongside broadcast frequencies to tradition scheme a phone alongside 2 to 3 times additional components than a norm smartphone. This method many iterations of the circuit commission to get it right, and several kernel activity to use all those distinct chips. It volition obtain a lengthy period to get to market, which can guide to client complaints and reputational defeat if using crowdfunding to backing the dev work.

The advantage of the clean Linux method is that it allows for true hardware slay switches that cut the current to distinct components, fairly than the use of pins on an unified mobile SoC or application to rotate off the WiFi/Bluetooth, cellular modem and GPS/GNSS. The second advantage is the capability to choose components that have free/open origin drivers, which allows for greater application liberty and additional transparency to location safety and privacy concerns. The use of proprietary blobs in the drivers frequently prevents the kernel from being upgraded since the blobs are frequently lone compatible alongside a particular kernel type number, which allows the chipmakers to dictate the lifespan of devices. Another advantage of not using a citation scheme from an SoC creator or an ODM is the phone creator has complete authority complete the scheme and can publish the schematics and commission views for the circuit boards, so the hardware is as liberated as the software.

In the past, Qualcomm didn’t create mighty Internet of Things processors alongside Linux support, but now it is imaginable to build a fine Linux phone according to an Internet of Things processor, akin the QCM6490 or QCM8850 alongside an unified cellular modem. These Dragonwing processors are not as up-to-date as the latest Snapdragon processors, but most of them obtain 10 years or 15 years of application support, and many of them volition eventually get partial assistance in mainline Linux, so they can live on alongside community assistance following they are no longer supported by Qualcomm.

The third benevolent of Linux phone is built on an unified mobile SoC, which runs a norm Linux stack on top of an Android kernel using libhybris to translate glib calls to Android’s Bionic. This used to not be a fine choice since Android SoC’s were not supported lengthy adequate for the lengthy betterment cycles and lesser annual revenue of Linux phones, but now it is imaginable for the high-end processors that are getting 8 years of application assistance from Qualcomm and MediaTek.

This method is the most cost-effective way to bring a Linux phone to market, since many phone ODMs already have citation models accessible and are consenting to activity alongside phone sellers to tweak those models to their specifications. It is not unattainable to activity alongside an ODM to add privacy switches to a design, as Furi Labs demonstrated alongside its FLX1, but it takes longer to get a tradition scheme to market, so it is crucial to choose an SoC that gets 7 or 8 years of application support, so the phone volition bask a sensible lifespan.

It is no longer necessary for Linux phone companies to expend huge amounts of chief in evolving mobile Linux, since there are now three fine mobile interfaces—Phosh, Plasma Mobile and Lomiri—which recommendation a fairly complete complement of applications, so hardware companies don’t need to hazard bankruptcy evolving the application akin before. Because Phosh and now Plasma Mobile are according to a well-supported desktop stack and convergent applications, they volition necessitate much small activity to keep and it is easier and small costly to keep providing application updates for the phone. Companies offering Linux phones volition motionless need to employ developers to activity on things akin power administration and camera support, but they don’t have to bet the ranch akin Purism did alongside the Librem 5 or provision no application assistance as PINE64 did alongside the PinePhone and PinePhone Pro.

Different approaches to designing a Linux phone
Approach	SoC	CPU / GPU	Battery life	Support	HW dev	SW dev	Price (1-5)	Notes
Community Linux	RK3566	Bad	Bad	Forever	hard	none	1	software outsourced to the community, mediocre norm convergence
Expensive Linux	RK3588S	Sub-optimal	Poor	Forever	very hard	very hard	5	real hardware slay switches, convergence possible
Mid-range blobbed Linux	QCM6490	Good	Sub-optimal	till 2035	easy	hard	4	lots of blobs, convergence possible
Economic Android kernel	Snapdragon 4/6 Gen 4	OK	Good	4 years	easy	moderate	2	lots of blobs, no convergence
Mid-range Android kernel	Snapdragon 7 Gen 4	Good	Good	8 years	easy	moderate	3	lots of blobs, no convergence
Expensive Android kernel	Snapdragon 8 Gen 5	Stellar	OK	8 years	easy	moderate	5	lots of blobs, convergence possible

This decrease in application betterment costs, however, likely won’t outcome in additional cost-effective Linux phones. The shorter application assistance for the QMC4490 and the mid-range and low range Snapdragon and Dimensity processors rules out the making of an cost-effective Linux phone. It is imaginable to create an high mid-range Linux phone according to a Snapdragon 7 or Dimensity 8000 sequence processor, but it won’t assistance video out via DisplayPort Alt Mode complete USB-C, so it can’t be used as a convergent PC, which is a important marketing item for Linux phones. Given that the QMC6490 does assistance DisplayPort Alt Mode, it is likely the finest choice for making an high mid-range phone.

Companies akin Jolla, Furi Labs, Volla and Brax may choose to continue making mid-range Linux phones, but they volition apt endure from the identical issue as the FLX1 and C2, anywhere the Android kernel is unsupported and no longer getting safety updates, so it is improved to move up to a additional costly SoC that gets 8 years of support. Ideally, these companies volition halt using MediaTek processors, and choose Snapdragon processors that get partially supported in mainline Linux, so group can run a distro akin Nura on them following they are no longer supported.

The genuine obstacle holding rear Linux phones is the companies

Now that the accessible SoC’s and application are no longer holding rear the making of compelling Linux phones, the genuine obstacle to creating a viable Linux phone market are the companies to create and market those phones. There aren’t many companies alongside the cognition and enthusiasm to create Linux phones, which historically have misplaced money.

PINE64 lately announced that it is pausing manufacturing of most of its devices because of the elevated prices of RAM and eMMC. Essentially PINE64 is admitting that it can’t lift the cost of many of its products, since they don’t have the needed application support, so many group won’t pay elevated prices for them. It appears improbable at this item that PINE64 volition alter its endeavor example to pay for application developers to activity on the kernels for its hardware, nor is it repairing its association alongside the distributions and unpaid developers who have abandoned the company, so it is improbable to always create the rumored PinePhone 2 using the RK3566. In theory another community-based Linux hardware business could arise, that charges a bit additional so it has the necessary finances to pay developers to activity on the kernel assistance for the hardware, but it appears extremely improbable that another community-based hardware business akin PINE64 volition appear.

In contrast, Purism is plainly preparedness to create a second type of its phone. In its July 2026 newsletter, Purism stated that it “is in the first stages of preparedness the Librem 5 v2 and Liberty 5 v2.” It is preparing a “crowdfunding run in the coming months” to “gauge client involvement and traction, which volition assistance prosperity the manufacturing of our second version.” The issue is that Purism’s community position has been stained by its refusal to refund the Librem 5 backers who cancelled their orders. Refunding the 600 customers who are motionless waiting for their Librem 5 refunds would do a lot to reconstruct the company’s community reputation, and it would disbursal the business small than $400k. Without taking that step, it seems improbable that Purism volition be capable to crowdfund the “over $2 million” that it projects volition be needed to create its next Linux phone. Maybe Purism can accusation a lesser amount (such as $99) to pre-order the phone, and afterward use those numbers to lift chief privately to create the phone.

At any rate, the period and disbursal of producing the Librem 5 v2 volition be much small than the archetypal type of the phone, since Phosh and its applications have already been developed and the mainline Linux controller assistance for the RK3588S is already in a fine province because of the final four years of activity by Collabora. Hopefully, Purism volition either provision backing or developers to assistance Collabora get the ISP and hardware video encoding working.

The difficulty for Purism is that it additionally needs to backing the betterment of its next generation of Librem 14 notebook, Librem 11 tablet and Librem Mini. The Librem 11 and Mini are rebadged ODM designs, so they don’t necessitate as much work, but the Librem 14 is a tradition design, which requires fairly a bit additional activity and financing to create. In addition, Purism reported in its July newsletter that it has been pre-approved to get complete $50 myriad in backing from the CHIPS Act to create a Librem Core-V processor according to the RISC-V architecture, which volition be a huge undertaking for the small business which doesn’t have any previous cognition in part design. Presumably, Purism volition have to lift several matching finances to get the authorities backing for its part project. In another words, many projects volition be competing for Purism’s notice in the future, and the Librem 5 v2 could be neglected and postponed in favor of another products.

Presumably Dawndrums volition initiate a crowdfunding run formerly it has a operating prototype of its RK3588S-based phone to display to the public, but the business based in Tunis has been extremely tight lipped concerning its forthcoming plans to bring the phone to market. There has been no news from Furi Labs concerning a new phone example to prosecute the FLX1s+. The implementation of Ubuntu Touch on the BraX3 phone has been stalled for months, and it appears that Brax Technologies is depending on the UBports community to complete the porting work. Volla Phone continues to recommendation Ubuntu Touch as an substitute functioning scheme on its phones, but the German company’s chief concentration is on evolving its own Volla OS, which is an AOSP derivative oriented toward privacy.

Jolla is making the correct moves to create a viable Linux phone market. The Finnish business says that it plans to move to bulk manufacturing of its Jolla Phone, so the phone volition be in stock, and to recommendation the phone to the North American market. However, many in the Linux community volition be reluctant to clasp Jolla’s phones, since of the proprietary application in its Silica interface and its AppSupport (aka AlienDalvik) to run Android apps. People who accept in liberated and open origin application won’t desire to buy a phone from a business that has been violating the GPL 2.0 licence by not published the kernel code for its Jolla C2 and Jolla Phone. In addition, these phones use UNISOC and MediaTek processors that don’t have any mainline Linux support, and they volition likely have abbreviated lifespans, since their kernel are improbable to always be upgraded.

A crucial aspect in the achievement of Linux phones is publicizing the phones to diagram the niche customers who attention concerning Linux, application freedom, privacy or security. Liberux appears to have unsuccessful since it did specified a mediocre job of publicizing its forthcoming NEXX phone and didn’t diagram adequate crowdfunding. Furi Labs likewise has done a extremely mediocre job of publicizing its phone, so that most Linux enthusiasts have never heard of the phone. Likewise, Dawndrums has done a extremely mediocre job of publicizing it betterment activity on a forthcoming RK3588S phone. In contrast, Jolla has extremely efficiently used social media to market its Jolla Phone to European customers.

There are multiple dozen companies that market Linux PCs, which could possibly develop into the Linux phone market. Most of those companies, however, don’t have cognition in the scheme of tradition hardware. Most of them use norm notebook designs from among the ODM’s that create specialty notebooks specified as Clevo or Tongfang. Most of these companies additionally don’t have much cognition doing kernel work, so they are likely improved off fair using a norm Android scheme provided by a phone ODM and installing Linux on top of Halium, so they can use a well-tested Android kernel and drivers.

There are additionally a figure of companies that create Linux sole commission computers (SBC’s), who could possibly jump into the Linux phone market. They have additional cognition in operating alongside Chinese and Taiwanese companies to scheme and create tradition hardware. They are improved armed to undertake the engineering challenges of entering the Linux phone market, but most of them do a mediocre job of engaging the community. Many companies which market Linux SBC’s don’t have community forums for their customers and do a mediocre job of using social media and online promotion to advance their products.

Public opinion surveys display that group are increasingly conscious that they are losing their privacy online. Ipsos polls established that 79% of earth respondants and 84% of American respondants province concern concerning their online privacy. A Malwarebytes study established that 89% of consumers are concerned concerning company and AI data misuse. 62% of Americans in a YouGov study survey worrying concerning how much individual data third parties have concerning them online. If Linux phones can be created that provision the identical functionality and comfort of use as Android or iOS phones, they could access that huge possible market of consumers who desire to maintain their privacy online. In command to petition to mainstream users, Linux phones volition need to assistance the use of Android apps through Waydroid or a akin solution. In the identical way that Murena and iodé market AOSP phones which obstacle third gathering trackers, Linux phones need to merge akin software.

The conditions may be ripe for Linux phones, but it is unclear whether the companies marketing Linux phones volition obtain advantage of those conditions to create a viable substitute to the current Android/iOS duopoly. For the purpose of application freedom, online privacy and the greater longevity of mobile devices, a concerted shove is needed to advance mobile Linux.