I have been looking at Fairphone and Volla, and it feels like the Smartphone scene for Linux is going very strong right now.

Think of it like this: We got 3-4 end-user ready Ubports smartphones, made by IN Europe(Volla/Gigaset is), with recent hardware, swappable battery, very good service and repairability in various formats. You can even purchase Gigaset phones (commercial equivalents of Volla) in stores/Amazon for a very good price.

The immediate orbiters of Linux smartphones like Fxtec, Planet Computers and Jolla are also based here.

I think we reached the year of the Linux phones. Atleast it is not the niche it was in 2020. I wonder how usable ubports is. If you got any experience with these phpnes on ubports, feel free to share.

  • iturnedintoanewt@lemmy.world
    7·
    1 year ago

    Are these true Linux phones? Or are we talking Android loader/drivers then launching a Linux session? So far the only two devices i know to be true Linux phones are the Pinephone and the Librem.

    • HarriPotero@lemmy.world
      4·
      1 year ago

      Jolla is the successor to Nokia’s Maemo/Meego OS which was proper Linux. Jolla does have seamless Android emulation. They don’t do their own phones anymore, though.

      • Ew0@slrpnk.net
        2·
        1 year ago

        This, if there’s a successor (an actual working one), it’s probably SailfishOS. Runs pretty well on my Xperia 10 III and the UI is super nice :)

    • CalcProgrammer1@lemmy.ml
      2·
      1 year ago

      Agreed, halium and Ubuntu Touch aren’t true Linux phones in my book. To be a true Linux phone you need to run mainline, or at least very close to it (pmOS forks, Megi kernel, etc) and do things the Linux way not the Android way (KMS/DRM/Mesa stack, ALSA/Pulse/Pipewire stack). There are some phones that are getting there thanks to postmarketOS like the OnePlus 6/6T but the ones you listed are the main true Linux phones.

      Typing this from my PinePhone Pro running postmarketOS.

      • iturnedintoanewt@lemmy.world
        1·
        1 year ago

        How’s that working these days? From time to time I dust off mine, try it a bit, and see that while there’s progress, it’s way too unstable for a daily driver. PPP even more so than old PP. I’m using a Pixel 7 running Graphene these days…

      • iturnedintoanewt@lemmy.world
        0·
        1 year ago

        Yeah but is it a low level android or is it a full Linux boot? As mentioned, the only two phones I know of that boot full Linux from scratch with Linux drivers are the Pinephone (and the Pinephone Pro) and the Librem 5. Both with their own set of issues.

        • CAPSLOCKFTW@lemmy.ml
          1·
          1 year ago

          It is 100% Linux with 0% Android. I had a Volla Phone X for a few weeks.

          Edit: It uses vendor blobs to communicate with the hardware. Besides that, it used some lineageOS code in Halium, which is a layer between ubuntu touch and the vendor blobs.