Linux Phones

Better late than never - here's what happened from the last one until 2025-07-22, 06:25 UTC: Ubuntu Touch 24.04 and Debian 13 "Trixie" now have release dates, another progress report for PureOS Crimson, progress on immutable postmarketOS, initial Shift8 support coming to Mobian, and more! Enjoy!

How to get started in postmarketOS?

The main website suggests "getting a second-hand SDM845 or MSM8916 device".

While I am fine with getting a second hand phone for this (as long as it doesn't cost as much as a new one) I see many devices with those chipsets that only partially work.

I am fully expecting this, but due to having been in the Android modding community in the past I know it is extremely common to abandon devices completely at random times. Since for this project I am willing to spend money on a dedicated device, I don't want to make a purchase I'll regret because they decided to move on to a newer device (or disappear from the internet completely).

I am not looking for a device with "perfect" support, as I feel like that would be useless. I want a device that works already well enough but that I can actually contribute with.

My own Poco X3 NFC seems good for this, but I don't think I want to commit my main smartphone yet. My older smartphone, the ASUS Zenfone 3 Laser, is completely unmentioned (but the base model is). Maybe I should simply use the latter and contribute by adding this extra device, or is it better to get something like a Google Pixel 3 or Motorola Moto G4 first?

Libcamera auto-focus progress, Plasma Camera switching to a libcamera backend, a Ubuntu Touch Q&A and a Lomiri bounty program by OS SCi, a video on (mobile) NixOS and more!

Still only on dev channel, but hardware support looks great.

Another week, another update: The failed crowdfunder is not the end for Liberux, two usage reports, Jolla unveils plans for open-sourcing SailfishOS apps, Phosh 0.48.0, and more! Enjoy!

Another fine qol improvement laid down that makes the setup experience simpler.

Github

Don't get too excited, because this is a prototype (by Timothée Giet) and isn't connected to #krita itself. But... You can get a feel of the way the workflow goes. I was really satisfied playing with it on my phone.

https://kde.social/@halla/114788984956143280

Fairphone (6th gen) launches with same-day Linux support patches, Phosh forms an organisation, a Ubuntu Touch Q&A, Sailfish Community News and more!

This week really was something: postmarketOS ship 25.06 (which, among other things, brings systemd) and work to reverse-engineer VoLTE, FuriOS 13.1.0 lands with Open-Store support (for Ubuntu Touch apps), and plenty of other improvments, Plasma Mobile share detailed log of all the fixes and improvements they managed to land in the past year (and what's to come), Jolla announce free updates for all Jolla C2 customers, ... and, if you missed it, I managed to interview Liberux about their Nexx phone - but there's way more still, including a packed Apps section. Enjoy!

I have access to two phones that are no longer being used, a Huawei P20 Pro and a P30 Pro. Through a link on the PotatoNV git page I saw HCUClient which I believe makes it possible to unlock these phones and unlock the bootloader if I buy the software for €19 for 72 hours.

If I unlock the bootloaders, are there any privacy oriented ROMs available for them, or any options at all?

When I search, it seems that because of the bootloaders being locked, nobody had worked on anything, although some posts in random corners of the internet say that there are a couple of options, but without confirming anything.

This blog post is already quite long, so it will omit changes merged for Plasma 6.5 (releasing in October, to be announced in a future post).

With the Plasma 6.2 release, we moved Plasma Dialer and Spacebar to the Plasma release cycle, allowing us to have consistent releases of the two apps. This completes our year long move to having all Plasma Mobile related projects released as part of wider KDE releases, streamlining the work for distributions and taking a load off us on having to maintain a separate release cycle!

In other news, a Fedora spin for Plasma Mobile was released! It will only be targeting devices that can currently boot Fedora (i.e. not ARM phones), but is very exciting nonetheless!