TuxPhones - Linux phones, tablets and portable devices

New, ambitious project aims to bring Linux mobile devices back to the consumer market

A project that has recently got the attention of many FOSS journalists is the JingOS Linux distribution, coming from China and offering an explicitly "iPadOS-style" user interface according to its

New GNOME "Text Editor" app is a mobile-friendly, GTK4-ready alternative to Gedit

Given the recent progress, it seems like the GNOME foundation is taking mobile-friendliness more seriously than ever. Thanks to joining forces with developers of large, mobile-concerned software such as Purism,

postmarketOS

Linux on your smartphone: everything you need to know in 2021

One of the main issues with modern smartphones is the extremely short lifespan of this category of devices, which makes even high-end ones painfully slow within years. In fact, studies

Linux on iPhones

Can the Apple M1 run Linux?

UPDATE: It looks like a developer set up a Patreon for bringing Linux to the Apple M1. Although this is unlikely to be a one-man job, supporting his work may

Flashes

⚡ Plasma Mobile gets major UI improvements, several bugfixes

From being one of the earliest desktops to embrace the mobile Linux world, Plasma Mobile has already become one of the stablest and most complete mobile desktop environments thanks to continuous work by its team. What looked like a pre-alpha experiment years ago is

GTK

Building responsive Linux mobile apps with libhandy 1.0 and Gtk3

November 2020: This tutorial is being updated to reflect the minor API and configuration changes in libhandy 1.0, which is the upcoming version. Thanks to Martin Chang (@marty188586) for

RISC-V

Precursor is a RISC-V, FPGA-assisted open hardware PDA aimed at developers and hackers

A week or so after the launch of the extremely ambitious FXTec Pro-1 Android/Linux phone, sporting a hardware QWERTY keyboard and the highest-end specifications seen on a Linux phone

Flashes

⚡ Ubuntu Touch is coming to the Google Pixel 3a

After Ubuntu Touch OTA-13 adding official support for a series of Oneplus (3/3T) and Sony Xperia (X*, XZ) devices, the most popular Linux distribution for phones is expanding further,

Flashes

⚡ Official PinePhone back cover will add hardware keyboard, wireless charging, NFC and more

Just days after announcing the PineCom PDA, the PINE team has released another blog post (link below) announcing their progress for October 2020. This includes several plans, such as the

PINE64

PINE64 to launch PineCom, a cheaper, modem-free PinePhone-like PDA

The first PinePhone, initially launched (more or less) as a cheaper alternative to the Librem 5, gained enormous success thanks to continuous efforts by both software developers and the team,

Flashes

⚡ The status of camera on the PinePhone: drivers, autofocus, color curves and more

After many months of work, omnipresent postmarketOS developer and photography enthusiast Martijn Braam has worked on turning the PinePhone camera not only into something working, but pushing the boundaries of the entry-level OV5640 sensor and its basic lens. Image quality improvements for the #PinePhone

Flashes

⚡ Official "Fedora Mobility" project targets PinePhone (and more)

After several years of inactivity, the official Fedora Mobility SIG team has been revived to work on bringing the popular Linux distro to the PinePhone in the immediate future, but also aims for expansion to other devices in the future. This interest may be

Flashes

⚡ WhatsApp and Anbox: the most popular messaging app now runs on Linux phones

As seen in several previous articles, almost all tuxphone-oriented distributions are actively working on supporting the Anbox abstraction layer in order to integrate Android apps quasi-natively with Linux ones. With Ubuntu Touch, postmarketOS, PureOS and Mobian supporting it, the project is getting a new

Linux on Android smartphones

Using a Google Nexus 5 as a Linux phone, in 2020

One of the main objectives of Linux is to give new life to older devices, and many projects are proving this by running (somewhat) modern UIs even on ancient smartphones

Librem5

Purism announces Android app support for the Librem 5

While the Purism Librem 5 may not be getting the same level of attention it was during its early crowdfunding phase, its developers seem to be working harder than ever

PinePhone

Exploting pogo pins: PinePhone gets modular

Modular phones have been hypothesized for years, with Phonebloks and Project Ara being the most popular concepts and just some shy experiments, like Fairphone 2, LG G5, Motorola Moto Z

PinePhone

PinePhone adds postmarketOS CE and higher-spec'd "convergence" variants to their line-up

After the PinePhone "BraveHeart" (hardware 1.1) and the first Community Edition (1.2), Pine64 has released a new revision of their popular Linux phone, as announced in their July

Linux Tablets

New CutiePi Shell "Sidekick" mode brings Linux convergence to the next level

Back in 2013 or so, "convergence" was one of the most trending topics in mobile software development, taking inspiration from responsive web development and the gap between desktop and mobile

PineTab

The $99 "PineTab" Linux tablet is now available for preorder

Almost one year after being announced, PINE64 has finally opened preorders for the AllWinner A64-based PineTab Linux tablet. The PineTab will cost $99 to the public, or $119 with its

New "SXMO" PinePhone desktop brings a full, lightweight tiling-based experience to Linux phones

In this period, PinePhone projects seem to appear faster than anything else in the Linux community, like the multi-boot PineLoader bootloader, the JumpDrive recovery system and USB flash storage emulation

postmarketOS now boots on over 200 phones and tablets

In its first three years of life, postmarketOS has gotten considerable popularity over time, partly thanks to the rising interest in the field after the huge press coverage of projects

Linux on iPhones

iPhone 7 boots postmarketOS and Ubuntu, becoming the first Linux-running Apple smartphone [updated]

Update 01/2021: A video showing an iPhone 7 running Ubuntu 20.04 with GNOME desktop has been released, bringing further ground to consider this the first Linux running iPhoneLet

Linux on iPhones

Linux on iPhones gets nearer as iOS devices gain dual-boot support

One month after the first signs of Linux support on several iPhones appeared, with the Linux 4.4 kernel (and Android!) finally booting on the iPhone 7 and some other

GNOME Mobile

GNOME Shell is moving towards a convergent, mobile-friendly UI

About a year after the first official GNOME apps received convergent user interfaces with Purism's libhandy, the most popular Linux desktop seems to be ready to take the next step:

Linux on Android smartphones

Large Maemo Leste update brings camera and TV output to 11-year old Nokia N900, PowerVR GPU support for Motorola Droid 4

In pre-Lumia (read Microsoft) times, Nokia phones used to be extremely widespread and praised for their very durable and innovative designs. Their relatively simple interfaces included some of the most