The way that I see, Linux phones will only get traction when we are able to install android apps and use high end spec phones with good security. I hope that I'm wrong.
this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2025
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Liberux NEXX is supposed to be a thing but they sorely need backers. It costs about the same as an equivalent Android phone (pixel 9 pro 1tb costs $1,500, liberux nexx 1tb costs $1,300).
8 core/32gb RAM/1TB storage phone in a very sleek body, Linux phones could have their flagship soon (and unlike pinephone it sounds like Liberux is gonna do the actual work on developing the software).
I've noticed that my Poco F1 with 1/3 more battery but a good enough CPU runs around 3 times as long as my 5 years newer OnePlus 9, both running LineageOS 22 and same usage.
Maybe we are way past the curve where more processing power means shorter processing times/more energy savings vs. going full power for every little bit.
In summary, why would you still pay over $400 for a phone nowadays, if all you get is a better camera (which still doesn't make noticeably better photos) and less battery time?
Well, in the case of the liberux and the 9 pro, you get a lot more storage space built in (very fast storage), way more RAM, etc.
Its up to you whether that's all worth it. To me it is, I max out sub-$400 phones very quickly. The pinephone feels very choppy to use too by comparison.
Because carriers are smart and greedy and lobbied the government to sell a block of spectrum that is only used in the US for 5g, so if you want good connectivity in the us, you have to buy a phone from them at 3 times the price.
I think RK3588S is nowhere near Pixel 9 CPU.
That's a good callout. I'm not super familiar with it, do you know how it might bench against the Tensor G4?
Here is the comparison with Tensor G4.
RK3588S is a bit slower then Snapdragon 865, which is 5 year old.
Wow, that's quite the difference. What's more shocking to me though is the fact that the rockchip somehow is built to handle a higher resolution than the tensor despite being weaker (8k@60fps vs 4k@60fps), and has AV1 support where the tensor doesn't.
Interesting observation!
Honestly, I'd buy a phone with RK3588S, but $1,300 is overkill. I'd rather much prefer to downscale other specs to make it around 400-500$.
Well, waydroid exists and pixel bootloaders are still unlockable. Plus fairphone specs aren't too bad so it's plausible in the future.
While I love the idea, I just don't see this moving forward unless any of these projects can focus on splitting up these types of projects into a solid base, driver layer, and then UI layer. Instead they are all spending a ton of engineering resources building something from scratch.
So many projects have similarly started the same way and failed instead of working towards a base that replaces AOSP first, then spinning their own UI on top. The big device manufacturers figured out a decade ago this is the right way to go, and these small projects buck that and fail instead of just focusing on the thing they ultimately intend to focus on.
Get a good base that is removed from Google, THEN do this project.
solid base
GNU+Linux
driver layer
Linux
and then UI layer.
Plasma mobile
The split is already there, the problem is that most Android phone manufacturers never publish the drivers (let alone make them open-source) and the only way to get anything but stock image running is to just rip parts out of the stock image, which significantly limits what you can put below it (i.e. Linux version) and on top of it (i.e Android Java gubbins). And you can't "just replace AOSP", as it's a huge complicated thing (kind of by design) which allows vendors to tightly couple the drivers to the system image. The idea of all these "mobile Linux-es" is to get rid of AOSP entirely, replacing it with "desktop Linux userspace" (systemd, musl, D-BUS, NetworkManager, pipewire, upower, mpris, libnotify, Qt/GTK, Plasma/Gnome, etc etc etc). A DE is an integral part of this; you can't build and run Nova launcher just with Wayland and Pipewire but without Dalvik and Android SDK/NDK, and remaking all of that from scratch would be an insanely hard undertaking.
To put it another way,
Get a good base that is removed from Google, THEN do this project.
This project is required if you want to make a "good base", otherwise that "good base" would just be an empty TTY that you can't interact with because there's no on-screen keyboard; besides, that "base" is already there and has been for 20 years, what's missing is the drivers.
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Not sure what you mean. Isn't the base just GNU/Linux?
Sort of. Whatever hardware these are intended to run on require something like 3X the driver code (at least in the case of the Android Linux kernel, according to Greg Kroah-Hartman). Phones tend to have more specialized and proprietary hardware, so you can't just take the standard Linux kernel, use it there, and call it a day.
But I'd be surprised if the people working on this weren't aware of that fact, and I hope they are working on abstracting the hardware layers more so that every mobile Linux project doesn't have to start from scratch every time.
Edit: source (YouTube, sorry) for the claim about how much driver code is required for mobile devices.
That would make sense, though I was asking about the "solid base", not the "driver layer".
I mean, Linux is the driver layer, and you mentioned GNU (userspace) / Linux (hardware layer), and the Linux part of that solid base can't just be the vanilla Linux kernel that you'd run on a computer.
Yeah I could've phrased that better. I was thinking more process management, coreutils, networking, device interfaces, rendering, window manager, etc.
Phones tend to have more specialized and proprietary hardware, so you can’t just take the standard Linux kernel, use it there, and call it a day.
Eh, you sort of can on some phones, e.g. OnePlus 5 and 6; on some others it's just a couple dozen patches away from working.
But I’d be surprised if the people working on this weren’t aware of that fact, and I hope they are working on abstracting the hardware layers more so that every mobile Linux project doesn’t have to start from scratch every time.
The problem with other phones isn't "abstracting the hardware" (this is done by the Linux kernel), it's reverse-engineering the drivers so that they run on whatever kernel you want and use the open standards required by the "desktop linux" userspace. In fact, if you look at the "supported devices" list for all those mobile Linux distros you'll find a fairly similar set; that's simply all devices for which manufacturer's (or reverse-engineered) drivers are available. It's not like FOSS people are writing drivers specifically for their distro, which wouldn't work with any other - only corporate Android vendors do that!
I highly doubt that those "couple dozen" patches are trivial though. Even Pixel devices can't run the vanilla mainline kernel without a bunch of added code to make it work with the hardware (see: the Greg KH interview I linked).
And abstracting the hardware is what you do when you make drivers, so this is a distinction without a difference.
And abstracting the hardware is what you do when you make drivers
Yes, what I'm saying is that Mobile Linux people are typically doing just that, sometimes also trying to upstream it as well. I don't see how else they could be "working on abstracting the hardware".
The base for Android is also Linux. But there is another layer. That is AOSP, which is comparable to your distro, then there's another layer of your UI (ie: MIUI, One UI, Nothing UI, Pixel UI, etc) which is comparable to your DE on Linux.
That second layer is what they're referring to. Currently everyone is just playing with the third layer (the DE), to my knowledge.
Isn't that the UI layer they was referring to? I would think that the AOSP layer as summarized by balsoft is the solid base, which in Plasma mobile is GNU/Linux plus some basic stuff in the DE.
That is AOSP, which is comparable to your distro
AOSP is more than your distro, it's like the combination of all the gubbins that make your desktop computer work - rendering layer, compositor, unified device interfaces (like bluetooth or the battery), network management, audio, etc; whereas a typical Linux distro is simply a combination of all these already existing things.
It's just an analogy to get the point across. These details aren't really important.
Naw
could you explain?
Do you think Android is "just" Linux?
Like the other commenter, you have no idea how this works. The people up voting me do.
Do you think Android is "just" Linux?
No? It's not even much Linux besides the kernel. By my second sentence I meant "Isn't [Plasma Mobile's solid] base just GNU/Linux?"
KDE is not a functional Linux distribution. It's a desktop environment.
So, no, it's not Linux at all.
Okay, what more needs to be in postmarketOS Plasma in order so that it has a "solid base"?
Literally in my post.
Sorry that I couldn't see where you included that. Could you do me a favor and quote what components exactly need to have work done for a solid base? (brownie points if they refer to postmarketOS's Plasma Mobile as a starting point) Note that I'm already aware of the driver layer issues. I'm really curious about this solid base you mention.
Last time i tried plasma mobile it was unbearably slow (even slower then the normal unbearably slow) so i switched to phosh, but I would like to try it again so let's see if these updates made it any more usable.
UPDATE: Honestly i'm impressed, it might be because currently im not running waydroid beside it like i did on my previous Phosh install but it feels very responsive. With the angelfish browser providing a way better experience then firefox. The battery life is still very bad but outside that this could be used as a regular phone.
Great news, I also found Plamo a bit sluggish in the past! Will give it a go!
I REALLY want to try PlaMo, but I wish I could use Mobile Linux on my phone. I can't, but oh if I could, or if I could run PlaMo on Android, it would've been great. I once even "riced" my phone to look like Plasma Mobile.
FWIW some of the Plasma Mobile apps are available as Android apps, but I my experience most of them are not really stable enough for daily usage.
If you are looking to run the whole Plasma Mobile stack, you could use Termux and proot to run it "natively", although I imagine it would likely be a huge pain to get anything working reliabilly, if at all.
Awesome progress! What Linux phones do you use?
I have a PinePhone Pro, but it's quite low-end...
Is there any decent way to run Plasma Mobile in Termux by now?
Well, I love my good old Redmi Note 4 Pro (mido) running postmarketOS. Granted, it's not a daily driver. But yeah, I'm excited enough to install Plasma OS.
Burns just a little bit
Can't see instructions on how to use it, do I need to do anything non trivial on my phone? Should I test it on an old phone?
You'd need an operating system that uses it. It's going to be at least as difficult as flashing a custom rom, but likely even more so, as there might not be a ready-made build. Definitely something to experiment with on a secondary phone. PostmarketOS is your best bet, here are others that support Plasma Mobile.
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