which linux phone is the most promising?

None. The sad, infuriating truth is that the makers and devs are a lot like this comments section: focusing on how good of a computer it is (or what apps it has).

You do a little digging and beneath all the hype there is a line buried in every review, so as not to raise suspicions, that says something like "now the call quality isn't perfect, but..." and what they mean is "it will sound like your friends are playing a full concert on a kazoo trying to talk to you."

Time and time again. Every linux-based, privacy-respecting, freedom-loving phone team out there seems to have conveniently neglected to make the phone good at being a phone.

In my opinion postmarketOS is the most promising mobile Linux OS now. But the phones? Only OnePlus 6 is good. PinePhone is a project to look at as well but the hardware is not as good from the regular user's perspective

Tbh GrapheneOS.

Android is Linux.

And unlike desktop Linux it was able to spread secure and private standards

• every app is sandboxed, not some opt-in like Flatpak
• apps start with no permissions (or at least very little), everything is opt-in
• it is like 99% unbreaking, immutable, it just always works while my desktop Linux broke all the time
• there is a webview, which can be hardened. Not Electron, which is insecure and bloated
• energy saving etc work like a charm. 1% battery loss over an entire night!
• hardware security with trusted element is decades ahead of desktop Linux (Ubuntu is just now getting TPM encryption support)
• it is a unified platform, with tons of apps, many of them essential (as the platform is so secure), like 2FA, Banking, public services etc. you can have a full FOSS phone though

I am sure excited for other operating systems but they are just toys. GrapheneOS does amazing work that is a 100% alternative today, for real phones with normal prices, good performance and outstanding security.

The main problem is political not technical. The market had been allowed to become a duopoly and too many critical things now need an app on an Android or Apple phone. The worse I know is banks needing an app for authentication for their online banking. No separate security device anymore, those are ewaste apparently.

Public EV chargers where you can only control them from an app.

Riding book at theme parks. The cases are growing. Even the app is just wrapper of hidden web page!

Frankly I think regulation is required to get competition in the market. Not the only tech one either. Why is it so hard for law makers to see monopoly in tech?

AOSP. Sad but true.

When first pinephone came out I really believed it's heading somewhere. It thought that it will be kind of like raspberry Pi (fun, cheap platform to play with) and that we'll quickly see copycats and it will slowly grow the way Linux on desktop did. AFAIK nothing like this happened. You still can't get a phone with decent Linux support which for me shows that we're stuck with android. I think most people that would help Linux phone happen are simply satisfied with LineageOS so there's no incentive to put as much effort into it as it requires.

There is a commercial phone linux: SailfishOS. IMO also the most polished one.

If those fuckers at Microsoft hadn't intervened with Nokia, we might have these things on much more devices. Meego was so promising 😔

Permanently Deleted

https://mobian-project.org/

When I was looking a couple years ago Ubuntu Touch was by far the most developed and stable. Primarily because Canonical poured millions of dollars into its development before giving it up and dropping it, but the community has gone a long way to make it what it is today.

Probably not a popular choice on this community though.

I think either PostmarketOS or Mobian would be the best existing candidates right now.
Hardware wise, the Fairphone 4 is probably the best option, especially compared to something like a Pinephone.

I tried Phosh (Gnome mobile shell) on an exhibition a while ago and honestly loved it.

However, I'm absolutely not confident in those tbh, in terms of reliability. The whole thing is highly experimental right now, and I wouldn't trust them as a daily driver.

Phosh is also available for Fedora, especially Silverblue (available as ARM iso), since you are, with me together, probably one of the most prominent Fedora Atomic fanboy :D

I see big potential in a uBlue-phone spin maybe. I tried making one myself, but I absolutely don't have a clue what I'm doing and don't want any responsibility for such a project.
Do you know if or how we could organise such a project?

If you want to support a Linux phone project, the PinePhone looks most promising. If you want an actual usable phone that runs open source software, offers great privacy and security, good (open source) app support and doesn't come with ads, trackers or any other bloatware, get a Google Pixel and install GrapheneOS and F-Droid.

To which project would you give your money to accellerate it?

I would reign in your hopes of accelerating a project using money, unless you have enough money to pay someone's salary for a significant period of time.

That said, I'd suggest postmarketOS or Mobian might be the most worthy of donations.

The problem with mobile phones is that they have big differences between each others in terms of hardware, so it's really hard to come up with a "unified solution", thus making development really slow.
Right now, the two distributions which came further in development are PostmarketOS and UbuntuTouch, but they are still far from being a reliable daily driver.

If the reason you'd like to chip in is not just Linux per se, but FOSS in general, there are plenty of fully free and open source Android roms that are a great deal in terms of usability, privacy and support, notably LineageOS, GrapheneOS, /e/OS and the one I chose for myself which is CalyxOS

Edit: when I talk about a phone being a "reliable daily driver", in my mind I think "a phone you can conduct a business with", so call and chat with clients, take pictures, exchange e-mails, have a working GPS and Bluetooth. And all of these features must be flawless and always available and sadly Linux phones aren't there yet.

Postmarketos with phosh works "fine" with the pinephone.

Been enjoying my L5 for nearly a year. There are for sure problems but really it works as a phone and as a small Linux PC. I really want Crimson to come though, PostmarketOS and Mobian look very attactive.

I found Ubuntu Touch/Droidian the most promising when I last tried to get a good Linux mobile setup. Everything was working and i could run any linux app i wanted. The only problem was mobile data configuration with ISP here in the UK. I would donate to whoever is making the best progress and having the most impact. There is so much variety of hardware with phones that a single (or very small number) of compatibility layers needs to emerge.

Edit: I don't want to buy a phone. ... Sorry for the bad wording.

I'd suggest editing the post's title as well.

I love my Pinephone, not enough to use it as my main phone thou.

It's running Mobian, mostly because everything else I have is running Debian in some form, but it looks like the largest project is PostmarketOS.

@GravitySpoiled
I'll trying to buy a pine phone as my first Linux phone as it's cheap. Not great but would be okay for tinkering.
@linux

All smart phones are *NIX, i don't even think the Windows phones were really Windows. Pick whichever UI you like best.

None. Linux phones are not going to be daily driver worthy in a long time. We already got our FOSS Linux based mobile OS, it is called Android.

If you want to donate to Linux devs, sure do it. But delusion about Linux phones is a futile and even dangerous exercise if you needed the phone to work in critical times.

For me, the best is e/OS, which is based off of LineageOS, but with extra privacy features to de-google. Just get a compatible phone, and run that.

None, because a phone is useless without applications.

Edit: I'm all for a truly open-source phone with no tracking but at some point things must be useful as well and applications from the Play Store or App Store are something people have to get and use everyday. For instance in my country, if you exclude browser-based banking no bank will work those Linux phones and the NFC / contactless payment system here requires either Apple Pay, Google Wallet or a proprietary app develop by a banking alliance. Govt provides electronic versions of your identity card, driving license and a ton of other cards related to the govt that also require an Android/iOS app they make... Even something simple like setting up a TP-Link Tapo wireless security camera will require an app these days.

Lineage os seems to be the most promising. We already have F-droid so the apps are there and the good news is that for every component that Google makes proprietary Lineage os is creating and maintaining a free software version.

Don’t do this.

Android is already Linux on a phone and it’s bad.

Donate to normal Linux on computers. There is an ever expanding mess of packages that need to be updated, fixed, hosted, maintained, streamlined, back ported and generally massaged into functionality with whatever goofy distro you pick.

Donate to Linux on computers instead.

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