So who is the strongest contender here? I hear stuff about pinephone, then nothing. Fairphone, more silence. Purism, so much silence.
I will happily pay someone now for a half decent phone so that by the time android is fully enshittified we all have a place to go.
Here are the big Linux phone contenders that I’ve found:
I think the only promising one these days is the Furilabs FLX1, but it’s definitely good to keep an eye out for how things progress from here.
As far as I know, the most useable pure Linux phone right now is the Furilabs FLX1. They’re currently out of stock, and doing preorders for their second batch. By “pure Linux” I mean “a distro pretty close to what you can use on your laptop.”
There’s also several phones that can run Sailfish OS, including an official device. Sailfish OS isn’t quite vanilla Linux, but it might the most useable and supported non-mainstream option. I can’t find a clear answer about if you can run regular Linux applications on it, though.
I used Sailfish OS on a Sony Xperia smartphone for about a year until my carrier switched to VoLTE, and Sailfish OS at the time didn’t support VoLTE. It does now, though, so I plan on trying it again soon.
Furilabs has my attention simply because you can “seamlessly” run android apps on FuriOS in a container called Andromeda. Might be next after my Pixel 9 /w GrapheneOS is used up.
There’s also a grapheneos phone coming out soon which gives a bit of hope
Are you referring to just the rumors that they will partner with an OEM, or did I miss an actual announcement or something?!
This. Really hope it ia good.
I’m not sure FLX1 counts as a full 100% Linux phone. It uses the android driver stack in order to then boot to Linux. But I guess this might get them stuck with old insecure drivers? Not sure this is the best long term approach.
I thought it was basically Debian with Waydroid preinstalled.
No. the FLX1 uses a project called Hallium, which as I understand it, basically runs an Android container and the original Android kernel to interface with the hardware
Hu? They joy of s linux phone is, that Hardware is not locked to specific software, isn’t it?
I mean if you can install a Linux distro, you can install any Linux distro, not?
So we just need hardware that is strong enough as well as power efficient enough
Maybe a good screen and big battery
It’s one thing to have the hardware allow you to install anything. It’s an entirely different thing to get a set of software capable of managing a phone running on there. Phone hardware is super proprietary most of the time. Even if they release the drivers, someone still has to incorporate them and any hardware features into their OS.
I would not be satisfied with not using mainline kernel…
Briefly looked into it, and Sailfish OS looks like it’s getting closer to reasonable for an average user. The Aptoide store seems to have major apps (WhatsApp), but it still requires some tinkering, like going into several settings screens manually to do things that pop-up automatically in Android. Not too bad, but definitely only for someone who’s okay with a bit of tinkering.
WhatsApp is a “must” for most users globally as it’s the defacto messaging protocol standard used most places. Probably more important than SMS/MMS for most users. At least until everyone starts to switch over and something better (Signal, probably) starts to get a big enough install base that people use it.
In Canada, I frequently tell people they can Signal, text, or Whatsapp me, but the only people who ever use Signal with me are family I installed it for.
Games are probably a big deal, too. tbh, it’s not a “must”, but I’d be annoyed if I couldn’t play Minion Masters on my phone. (But I could probably set up Sunshine/Moonlight streaming, if needed.) I’m guessing a lot of people have games that they wouldn’t accept not being able to use.
Jolla Sailfish OS. Can buy a phone from them preinstalled, or flash certain Sony Xperia devices with the OS. Runs smooth as butter and has 2+ day long battery life according to owners. Its based on the old MeeGo project from Nokia back in the day and is based on Debian.
If you want something more Linux-like then the FLX1 is it. It runs very close to stock Debian Stable with Posh as the UI, but it runs some Android code underneath for device drivers, so its not a “pure” Linux system, but it’s a very good experience and still not controlled by Google.
I wouldnt recommend Fairphone if you want to do Linux stuff with it, it’s a perfect AOSP or LineageOS device though.
I wouldnt recommend Fairphone if you want to do Linux stuff with it, it’s a perfect AOSP or LineageOS device though.
Why not? Ubuntu Touch lists Fairphone 4 and 5 as 100% fully optimized and even writes “The Fairphone 5 is currently the best supported device with Ubuntu Touch.” I am curious to try this out.
I know there are postmarketOS build for Fairphone as well (but more limited in functionality, so I am not considering this yet).
You can install Ubuntu Touch on the Fairphone 4 & 5. It is pretty well supported.
Linux phones better be perfect or they’re not worth pursuing waaaaah.
Is phone calls, text, and battery management the baseline?
Phone… calls??
I think it’s one of those tech things that scammers use.
Yeah when work needs you to come in early or on your day off
Is that where you video dial the nephews?
My next phone will be a Linux phone. Might be an old refurb. But if Google is fucking up android I don’t have a choice.
They just posted this today. Do with it what you will.
I’m not really interested in a phone that runs linux on top of Android software, like what furi labs does. They use Halium, which makes it more like phones running Ubuntu touch or Droidian like what Volla does rather than something like the pinephone or librem V.
The Furi’s been around for a while. I’m hoping I can get one of the second batch due to be released soon, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they sold out again pretty quickly.
I support this so much, however due to work, I can not get away from Android/iOS. Many companies want you to install Microsoft Authenticator with this generally wanting to prompt you for MFA authorisation when accessing company resources. On top of this they often want you running Company Portal on your device too if you’re accessing resources such as emails or IM
Then they need to give you a work phone.
My personal phone is rooted. I couldn’t access anything work related (beyond authenticator) on it even if I wanted to.
I resisted carrying two phones for the longest time… up until recently I worked for places with relatively small IT departments and I trusted the people I worked with and worked for. Now I’m with a much larger company and I don’t even know all the people in IT, much less how they have their MDM system setup.
What I didn’t expect was how nice it feels to be able to put the phone down when I get home and then forget about it. Of course, anyone who may need to reach me in an emergency knows my personal number, but that’s only happened once in the past 2 years.
I’m actually losing money because I have two phones. (My company pays for a brand new phone and all the mobile data and calls) I could just switch to that phone for the low price of Microsoft intune. But I don’t want to stress if I download a sketchy app or something that my work phone would get infected. And the feeling when I get home and toss my work phone to my backpack and don’t have to worry about is worth the money I pay for my own phone.
I was forced into using Microsoft Authenticator as well, but you can extract the tokens it uses for TOTP code generation from its database lol.
Now, why not just fork AOSP a la grapheneos?
Why we always have to invent something new? Why not just take the fork in the road and go build something better from it?
Thinking modern os, not even google has been able to do it (fuchsia).
IMO one of the greatest parts of a pure linux phone is that nothing is new. It runs the same apps as my desktop and works in the same way, so I don’t have to learn two sets of apps. Other than stuff like call management and Phosh, the desktop environment I use that’s tailored for small screens, I run all pre-existing software like systemd, wayland, firefox, nautilus, etc. IMO the biggest hurdle is hardware support, since only a few phones are able to run pure linux, and even on those few, there are still many parts of the hardware that are not supported.
Asking the question I was wondering about too. If Google wants to kill AOSP eventually that’s all fine and dandy but that doesn’t stop people from forking it and continuing its development. And that way, at least, we don’t end up with another Windows Phone conundrum where the OS is perfectly fine but will eventually die due to lack of app compatibility (although Windows Phone’s demise was helped by some truly knuckleheaded executive decisions too to be fair).
Or, failing this, all Linux phones need a flawless Android emulation layer similar to Proton for Windows games, because I am afraid it will be a significantly steep uphill battle otherwise.
We have already tons of apps for Linux… And soo many "apps” are already just fancy websites in a container…
FirefoxOS for phones was such a great idea
I am so sad it did mot take off, was a great concept
Tonns of apps for linux are made with PC UX in mind and thus completely unusable on the phone.
I disagree
I have a pinePhone pro, and I love using desktop UI Apps on it. But it is too slow and has too less battery for me to be usable
But I love high DPI on small screen without Zoom
I must confess, that I currently use an iPhone as daily driver, but to come back to the topic, I have a 12mini and my browser is set to 50% all the time.
I know most apps are just webview2 these days, but since more and more companies are forcing their consumers to use apps by either gimping their websites outright or forcing users to use 2FA based on their own app, app support is vital for any mobile platform.
I speak from experience - I kept using my Nokia Lumia 1020 Windows Phone until the bitter end, which came when the government ID app stopped being supported on my device and I had to switch to keep being able to connect to the vast majority of services (Sweden’s BankID system is both a blessing and a curse this way).
Someone is trying to revive FirefoxOS: https://capyloon.org/
(and it kinda survives to this day as KaiOS on feature phones).
I’ll undust my pinePhone pro and flash it on it
🤔 maybe even worth filming it for peertube
But I cannot order a car on my desktop, or check my bank balance.
emulation layer is the way to go IMO, best of all the worlds.
Absolutely 100% agree. Rosetta and Proton are great examples of how native-like emulation can be implemented to help support platform transitions.
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Because we want general computation machines, not walled gardens.
“can”
wish my phone wasn’t carrier locked so I could switch to graphine
Same; though I just need the phone completely paid off then I can unlock it.
If you say it’s hard to install use the https://sailmates.net/ service then advocate that your local repair shop also offer this service then join your distro’s channel for troubleshooting.
crys in dusty pinephone(not pro) on my shelf
NLNet really needs to start funding Flare, the GTK Signal client. If there was a native, fully featured client, I’d drop flaship price on a Linux phone yesterday!
Flare is good enough that I use it daily. The fact that it cannot act as Signal’s “Primary Device” does kinda suck, but I just have a separate Android phone that I keep around for bullshit like that. It definitely is annoying that Flare only can see messages after you add it as a secondary device though.
And it also lacks a ton f features. I use the video/voice calls a lot for example.
I don’t think I’ve ever even used Signal’s call features, I forgot it even had them lol.
The only thing I need on a phone is too use nfc
The only thing I ask for is VoLTE actually working.
before
Nope. No time.
I wish that there were better kernels around. A monopoly (Windows on a desktop, Linux on a phone - well, at least iOS still has BSD) is not a good thing on any platform.
2026 year of the BSD phone.
For me, it sure is.
I want Linux monopoly anywhere…
