Linux 手机能否成为 Android/iOS 双头垄断的可行替代？

作者 Amos Batto（2026-10-05），许可证：CC BY 4.0，下载：PDF、ODT

1. SoC 的困境：性能弱但寿命长 vs 性能强但寿命短
2. RK3588S 改变了 Linux 手机的游戏规则
3. 使用高通 IoT SoC 的 Linux 手机这一新选择
4. 在 Linux 手机中使用 Android 内核的问题
5. 基于 Android 的 Linux 手机将因更长的支持周期而变得更可行
6. 为什么软件是 Librem 5 面临的主要挑战
7. Phosh 在资金有限的情况下取得的成功
8. Linux 发行版对移动界面的采用
9. PINE64 试图绕过软件开发成本的尝试
10. 对 Linux 手机的热情逐渐消退
11. Jolla 表明 Linux 手机仍有需求
12. 移动行业正在关闭 AOSP 替代方案
13. 现在可能出现三种类型的 Linux 手机
14. 阻碍 Linux 手机的真正障碍是那些公司

五年前，Linux 手机看起来有望成为 Android/iOS 双头垄断的可行替代方案，而这两者牢牢掌控着移动手机行业。遗憾的是，在 2020 年 Purism Librem 5 和 PINE64 PinePhone 发布带来的一阵短暂的活动和社区参与热潮之后，Linux 手机市场总体上陷入了停滞。这种停滞部分是因为 Purism 和 PINE64 的问题，但也因为可用的 Linux SoC 无法胜任运行现代智能手机的任务，而硬件行业也没有提供任何拥有良好自由/开源驱动的优秀替代品。此外，Plasma Mobile 和 Phosh 在当时仍是初期的移动界面，也没有一个好的发行版选项能在搭载普通集成移动 SoC 的 Android 内核上运行这些界面。PinePhone 和 Librem 5 的糟糕表现，以及 PinePhone Pro 和 Librem 5 退款的问题，削弱了人们的热情和在下一次 Linux 手机上冒险的意愿。

幸运的是，所有这些条件都在改变，我相信现在 Linux 终于有可能在移动领域成为谷歌 Android 和苹果 iOS 的可行替代方案，就像过去三十年里桌面 Linux 已成为 PC 上 Windows 和 Mac OSX 的可行替代方案一样。这并不是说移动 Linux 会从根本上挑战谷歌或苹果的业务，但条件已经成熟，一个小型 Linux 手机市场有望兴起，类似于人们目前可以从许多小公司购买 Linux PC 的方式，例如 TUXEDO、System76、Purism、Slimbook、ThinkPenguin、Ubuntushop.biz、Entroware、Star Labs、Juno、Laptop with Linux、Linux Certified、ArkPC 等。

未来某个大手机品牌可能会出售几款搭载移动 Linux 的手机，这并非不可能，就像联想和戴尔目前在一些有限市场销售几款预装 Linux 的 PC 机型一样。摩托罗拉刚刚宣布，将于 2027 年开始销售一些搭载 GrapheneOS 的高端手机型号，这表明谷歌将允许大型手机制造商销售替代方案，很可能是因为它担心反垄断监管。随着移动行业日益关闭解锁 Android 手机引导加载程序的能力，越来越多的人将寻找 AOSP 衍生系统的替代品，而移动 Linux 可以提供这种替代方案。

五年前，移动 Linux 似乎终于到来了。Purism Librem 5 和 PINE64 PinePhone 刚刚发布，甚至像 Linus Tech Tips 这样的大型科技评测者也在尝试它们。Mrwhosetheboss 的视频“Linux 智能手机即将杀死 Android 吗？”中，他举着 Librem 5，在 YouTube 上获得了 780 万次观看。Librem 5 已被移植到 Mobian 和 postmarketOS，PinePhone 已被移植到 20 种不同的 Linux 发行版。越来越多的手机型号可以在 Android 内核之上运行 Jolla 的 Sailfish OS 和 Ubuntu Touch，许多人正在他们的旧手机上测试 postmarketOS。Plasma Mobile 和 Phosh 作为移动界面正在快速推进。KDE 采用了 Kirigami，GNOME 采用了 Adwaita，因此 KDE 和 GNOME 应用都可以在桌面和移动界面之间自适应。Waydroid 项目使得在 Linux 容器内运行 Android 应用成为可能。移动 Linux 的未来似乎一片光明，但那个未来似乎从未到来。值得审视是什么阻碍了移动 Linux，以理解未来如何克服这些条件。

自首批移动 Linux 设备发布以来的 25 年里，人们基于 Linux 内核对不同移动操作系统进行了大量实验——Sharp Zaurus、G.Mate Yopy 和 Motorola A760。我统计了多年来存在过的29 种不同商业移动 Linux，可能还有更多我遗漏的。移动 Linux 经历了许多不同的浪潮，当时看起来它们可能成为下一个大事件，包括 EZX、MotoMagx、Maemo、LiMo、Moblin、Meego、Tizen、Firefox OS、webOS、Ubuntu Touch 和 Sailfish OS。多年来，摩托罗拉尝试了不同的 Linux 变体，这些变体基于使用社区商店中可用的 Java 应用的理念，因此谷歌的 Android hardly 独特，但它是成功的移动 Linux 分支。如今，它们常常被统称为“Linux”，作为与 Android 分开的一个类别，但 Tizen 和 Firefox OS 在架构上与 Android 和标准桌面 Linux 发行版一样截然不同。

移动 Linux 操作系统依然存在，尽管如今它们已不那么引人注目。诺基亚为 N9 打造的许多 MeeGo 代码，仍在由芬兰小型公司 Jolla Group 继续开发，该公司再次销售搭载其 Sailfish OS 的手机。Firefox OS 于 2016 年被 Mozilla 基金会放弃，2017 年以专有系统 KaiOS 的形式重生，用于没有触摸屏的低端手机，但随着 Android 如今已覆盖手机市场最廉价的细分领域，该市场正在慢慢消失。Ubuntu Touch 于 2017 年被 Canonical 放弃，如今作为社区项目在 UBports 的志愿者手中延续。甚至 webOS 和 Tizen 也依然存在，尽管它们不再被用作移动操作系统。webOS 运行在 LG 电视上，Tizen 则用于三星电视。

尽管科技媒体很少报道，但一个微小的 Linux 手机市场依然存在。Purism、PINE64、FuriLabs、Jolla、Jolla-Devices、Volla 和 PrivacyPortal（以及未来的 Brax）都在销售预装某种 Linux 变体的手机。如今购买 Linux 手机的人数比 2020-22 年 PINE64 推出 PinePhone 和 PinePhone Pro 时更少，但实际上销售 Linux 手机的公司比 5 年前更多。有充分理由相信，过去困扰 Linux 手机的许多问题将在未来得到解决。

SoC 困境：性能弱但寿命长 vs 性能强但寿命短

过去，可用的硬件选择限制了 Linux 手机的可行性。支持 Linux 的片上系统（SoC）通常用于单板计算机（SBC）、电视盒子、物联网（IoT）设备以及工业和汽车应用中的嵌入式微处理器，这些领域的价格点较低，因此其性能通常较弱，能效也不如专为智能手机设计的典型移动 SoC，因为它们采用较旧的制程节点制造。然而，它们提供长期支持，因为它们用于产品生命周期较长的应用。例如，汽车包含数十个 SoC，通常仅设计就需要 3 到 5 年，并且需要能够运行未来 20 年。相比之下，支持 Android 的移动 SoC 非常强大，但仅生产 1 到 3 年。

如果 Linux 手机的设计者想要能够运行 Linux 内核（而不是 Android 内核），他们的大多数选择都只能提供很弱的处理能力、糟糕的能效和糟糕的散热。如果他们想尽可能避免专有二进制固件，要么必须选择一款社区已经打磨多年的较老 SoC，以消除自由/开源驱动中的缺陷（例如 PinePhone 中的全志 A64），要么必须花数年时间给 Linux 内核打补丁，以正确支持一款较新的 SoC（正如 Purism 在 Librem 5 中对 NXP i.MX 8M Quad 所做的那样）。如果他们认定把补丁提交到主线 Linux 太麻烦，那么未来支持他们的硬件就会更难，因为他们将不得不为每个新的 Linux 内核版本继续应用同样的补丁。Purism 选择把他们的改动上游到主线 Linux，而为 PinePhone 内核工作的志愿者通常没有这样做。

像 NXP、瑞芯微、全志、Amlogic 和博通这些生产支持 Linux 的 SoC 的芯片制造商，其收入根本不足以证明在芯片中使用最先进制程节点是合理的。即使他们能把一款 Linux SoC 卖上 10 到 15 年，销量仍然不足以收回使用 3nm 制程所需的额外 4 亿至 6 亿美元，而且随着每一代新制程节点，成本还在不断上升。在硅产业的最前沿设计一款芯片极其昂贵。Silicon Analysts 估计，在台积电以 3nm 节点制造一片晶圆平均成本为 19,500 美元，而在 28nm 节点仅为 3000 美元。大多数 Linux SoC 都是低价格、薄利润的芯片，因此他们必须卖出数百万颗才能赚到较多利润。一些 Linux SoC 制造商如 NXP 专注于细分市场，因此利润率更高，但他们的销量往往不大，所以利润仍然有限。

芯片制造商降低成本的另一种方式是使用较老一代的 Cortex 核心，这些核心向 ARM 支付的授权费更低，并且大量使用低功耗的 Cortex-A5 系列核心，而非功耗更高、授权费也更高的 Cortex-A7 和 Cortex-X 系列核心。恩智浦在其 i.MX 9 系列处理器中显然采用了这些削减成本的策略。该系列中最强大的芯片是 i.MX 95，它包含六个 Cortex-A55 核心，而更合理的做法本应是使用两个 Cortex-A78 核心以获得更好的性能，再加四个 Cortex-A55 核心以实现低功耗。i.MX 95 采用 16nm FinFET 工艺制造，与上一代 i.MX 8M Plus 处理器所用的三星 14nm 工艺相比略有退步。这种削减成本的另一个例子是博通的决定：在其 BCM2836（40nm，4x Cortex-A7）、BCM2837（40nm，4x Cortex-A53）、BCM2711（28nm，4x Cortex-A72）和 BCM2712（16nm，4x Cortex-A76）中采用较老的 Cortex 核心和更大的制程节点，尽管明知这些芯片将售出数百万颗（例如分别用于 Raspberry Pi 2、3、4 和 5）。即便是因 AI 热潮而成为全球最富有芯片制造商的英伟达，在其 Tegra SoC 中似乎也在避免使用前沿制程节点所带来的成本。它取消了 2021 年 4 月宣布的 Tegra Atlan 系列计划，并且至今仍未发布 2022 年 9 月宣布的 Tegra Thor 系列。其 2018 年 3 月宣布的 Tegra Orin 系列如今已显老态，使用的是 8nm 节点。

相比之下，智能手机市场在 2025 年售出 12.5 亿台，规模巨大，手机厂商愿意为处理器支付高得多的价格，尤其是高端机型，这使得高通、联发科、苹果、三星、谷歌、小米和华为能够投入巨资，为昂贵的 3nm 制程节点设计移动 SoC。诸如高通骁龙和联发科天玑这样的集成式移动 SoC 销量如此之大，以至于尽管通常只生产 2 到 3 年，它们仍能盈利。旗舰型号（例如骁龙 8 系列和天玑 9000 系列）在第二年之后就会失去大部分市场，因此 SoC 制造商不得不收取高得多的价格，以覆盖使用前沿制程节点的巨额成本。

此外，运行 Android 的集成移动 SoC 集成了许多额外功能，例如 WiFi、蓝牙、蜂窝调制解调器、GPS/GNSS、音频 DAC、充电控制器和 USB-C 控制器，而在 PinePhone 和 Librem 5 等 Linux 手机上，这些功能需要单独的芯片。这使得这些手机的电路板设计成本高得多，因为它们不能简单地采用高通或联发科的标准参考设计并加以调整。它们必须定制设计电路板，这需要的元件数量是典型智能手机电路板的两到三倍。Librem 5 包含 74 个集成电路（IC），其 4 块电路板共有 1267 个元件，使其成为有史以来最复杂的手机。Librem 5 用来替代集成移动 SoC 的六颗芯片（i.MX 8M Quad、RS9116、BM818、Teseo-LIV3F、WM8962 和 bq25895）总共占据 1483.2 mm2，是骁龙 8 面积的 10 倍。Purism 不得不使用小至 0201 的元件，并使用 10 层来将所有东西塞进 Librem 5 的主电路板，该电路板经过大约十几次迭代才做对。即使是像 PinePhone 这样旨在尽可能经济的极简 Linux 手机，其电路板上也有 24 个 IC 和总共 627 个元件，使其比大多数 Android 智能手机更复杂，后者通常有 300 到 400 个元件。

添加所有这些额外元件使 Linux 手机的设计和生产成本更高，但也使它们更耗电，因为在更大的制程节点上运行半打芯片比运行一个在 ≤4nm 节点上制造、已针对能效优化的集成移动 SoC 需要更多能量。很难协调 Linux 手机中的所有额外芯片，让它们进入低功耗模式和睡眠模式以节省电池。再加上一个制程节点在 28 到 8 nm 之间、未针对电池使用优化的 SoC，Linux 手机不可能匹配 Android 手机的电池续航。

RK3588S 改变了 Linux 手机的游戏规则

许多 Linux SoC 制造商已经决定，他们甚至不应该费心去制造具有现代计算设备所需 CPU 和 GPU 性能的芯片。NXP、Amlogic 和 Broadcom 根本对制造有竞争力的 SoC 不感兴趣。然而，当 Rockchip 在 2022 年发布 RK3588 及其低功耗变体 RK3588S 时，从根本上改变了制造一款像样的 Linux 手机的前景。凭借四个 2.4GHz Cortex-A76 核心和四个 1.8GHz Cortex-A55 核心以及 Mali-G610 MC4 图形处理器，市场上终于有了一款 SoC 中具有足够处理能力的 Linux SoC，可以制造出可接受的 Linux 智能手机。

Liberux NEXX 和 Dawndrums Divine D. 是目前正在使用 RK3588S 设计的两款 Linux 手机。Purism 刚刚在其论坛上宣布，其下一代手机“正在积极设计中”，该手机不会像 Librem 5 和 Liberty 那样基于 i.MX 平台，因此它很可能也基于 RK3588S。

当然，RK3588S 的性能不会让任何习惯安卓手机的人感到惊艳。RK3588 和 RK3588S 采用 8nm 制程工艺，比当今最先进的 2nm 落后了四代。如今采用 4nm 制程的低端骁龙 4 Gen 4，其单核 CPU 性能比 RK3588 高出 25%。（参见下方 SoC 表格。）RK3588S 在短时爆发下性能与 RK3588 相近，但在超过 30 秒的持续负载下性能会低 10%-15%。等到基于 RK3588S 的 Linux 手机在两年后上市时，它们的性能将明显逊于市面上所有安卓智能手机，但这一差距对于大多数不玩 3D 游戏、不拍摄高分辨率视频的人来说，可能并不会成为限制因素。在某个节点上，更强的处理能力带来的效用会递减，而对大多数人来说，RK3588S 已经跨过了这个门槛。

较旧制程工艺的重要之处在于其能耗。搭载 RK3588S 的手机比采用高通、联发科、紫光展锐等集成移动 SoC 的手机发热更高、续航更差。挑战在于如何散发多余的热量。PinePhone 的 SoC 和蜂窝调制解调器因为没有良好的散热片而变得非常热。Librem 5 的 SoC 通过导热硅脂与 LCD 背板连接，这避免了 SoC 过热，但导致触摸屏和铝制框架摸起来很烫。搭载 RK3358S 的 Linux 手机需要某种散热方式，但 Linux 手机制造商不太可能负担得起加入均热板，因为均热板必须专门设计，对于产量有限的手机来说会非常昂贵。RK3588S 需要降频才能适应手机的功耗和散热范围。

起初，RK3588 的主线 Linux 支持非常有限。瑞芯微从未在其 opensource.rock-chips.com 网站上发布该芯片的文档，并且瑞芯微在 2025 年底关闭了该网站。2024 年 12 月 21 日，树莓派替代领域最具影响力的评测者 Jeff Geerling 在 X 上报告：

我被告知瑞芯微不再认为 RK3588 是‘开源’芯片。实际上，这意味着瑞芯微不再向开源项目贡献 RK3588 代码，并且他们决定不再直接向 SBC 厂商销售 RK3588。

另一方面，瑞芯微仍在 Github 上更新其 RK3588 的公开内核代码。Collabora 多年来一直努力为 RK3588 添加主线 Linux 支持，并且 Collabora 将瑞芯微列为其合作伙伴之一，因此瑞芯微并未完全抛弃 Linux 社区。Collabora 最近为 RK3588 中的视频捕获单元和 MIPI CSI2 接口添加了主线 Linux 支持。现在 Collabora 正与 Ideas on Board 和瑞芯微合作，为所有 RK35xx 芯片创建新的图像信号处理器（ISP）驱动。Collabora 已经让硬件视频解码器支持 VP8、VP9、H.264 和 H.265，目前正在开发H.264 硬件视频编码器。

RK3588S 发布四年后，主线 Linux 中对该芯片的支持已经足够充分，可以打造一部运行自由/开源驱动程序的 RK3588S 手机。RK3588S 在启动时需要执行一个专有的 Synopsys DDR 时序训练 blob。RK3588S 现在可以为 GPU 使用自由的 Panthor 驱动，但它需要专有的 mali_csffw.bin 固件，该固件在启动时从 /lib/firmware/ 目录加载。RK3588S 的其他所有 blob 要么已被替换，要么不再需要。现在有了一个针对 NPU 的FOSS 驱动。用于硬件视频编码的专有 MPP 库可以用软件视频编码替代，Collabora 正在为 ISP 和硬件视频编码开发自由驱动，因此未来可能不再需要软件视频处理和编码。Collabora 为 Trusted Firmware-A（TF-A）开发了一个FOSS 版本，可以替代专有的 bl31.elf 固件。如果使用 DisplayPort Alt Mode 进行视频输出，则 bl31.elf 中的 HDMI blob 不再需要。如果不使用硬件强制安全功能或加密密钥，则不需要专有的 bl32.bin 固件。

如果 Purism 在其下一部手机中使用 RK3588S，Purism 不太可能像在 Librem 5 上那样，试图通过将 blob 存储在单独的 NOR Flash 芯片上并用辅助处理器执行它们来获得 FSF 的 RYF 认证，因为 RK3588S 没有像 i.MX 8M Quad 中的 Cortex-M4 那样的辅助低功耗处理器。

Collabora 最终有望让 RK3588S 的所有硬件都获得 mainline Linux 驱动的支持，在此之前，RK3588S 的 GPU 和 CPU 拥有足够的处理能力，可以用软件处理和编码图像和视频，因此基于 RK3588S 构建的手机可以像普通智能手机一样拍照和拍摄视频，尽管速度会更慢且更耗电。相比之下，以前使用 Linux 内核的手机根本没有足够的处理能力来提供像样的摄像头。在 PinePhone 上拍照慢得令人痛苦，而 Librem 5 上的 Millipixels 应用在每拍一张照片后会暂停 3 到 4 秒。由于 Librem 5 的 i.MX 8M Quad 处理器缺少 ISP、音频 DSP 和硬件视频编码器，在 Librem 5 上处理和编码一段 720p 视频所需的时间大约是视频长度的 10 倍，而在 PinePhone 上则大约要 50 倍，因为其过时的 Allwinner A64 处理器以及明显更慢的 RAM 和 eMMC。

除了 RK3588S 之外，市场上没有多少其他选择可以制造一部好的 Linux 手机。最接近的选择是 Nvidia 的 Tegra Orin NX 或 Orin Nano Super，它们只包含 Cortex-A78 核心。它们缺少低功耗的 Cortex-A55 核心，而且能效不高。它们拥有比 RK3588S 中的 Cortex-A76 核心更新的技术，但 Tegra Orin 和 RK3588S 一样采用 8nm 节点制造，而且 Tegra Orin 较低的时钟频率限制了其单核性能。在软件自由方面，Tegra Orin 也差得多，需要在初始引导加载程序、次级引导加载程序、引导配置表、USB 固件、HDMI/DisplayPort 配置、ARM Trusted Firmware 和 GPU 用户空间驱动中使用专有 blob。许多 Linux 用户可以忽略 Linux 设备树中的 blob，但更难忽略 Nvidia 在用户空间中的 GPU blob。

另一个选择是 12nm 的 Allwinner A733，它提供较低的性能，配备两个 2.0GHz Cortex-A76 核心和六个 1.79GHz Cortex-A55 低功耗核心。Allwinner 多年前就停止了与 Linux 社区的合作，并经常违反 GPL 2.0 许可证，不发布其 Linux 源代码，因此 A733 可能不是一个可行的选择，尽管 Allwinner 曾发表过一些关于打算与社区合作的评论。另一个选择是 NXP i.MX 95，它确实有主线 Linux 支持，但其在 16nm 节点上配备六个低功耗 Cortex-A55 核心的性能很差，性价比不高。

PinePhone 2 原本预计使用更经济的 Rockchip RK3566，该芯片采用较旧的 22nm 节点制造。然而，2022 年有太多志愿开发者放弃了 PINE64，这家总部位于香港的公司在可预见的未来不太可能推出任何新机型。由于 AI 热潮导致 RAM 和 eMMC 价格高涨，PINE64 的 Linux 设备生产目前处于暂停状态，但部分原因是 PINE64 无法对许多仅有一半功能的设备提价，因为许多曾参与 PinePhone 的社区团体已不再开发支持 PINE64 新设备的软件。

RK3588 成为首选选项的另一个原因是，Rockchip 承诺在 2027 年推出继任芯片 RK3668，采用 5 或 6nm 节点，配备四个 Cortex-A730 核心和六个 Cortex-A530 核心，因此未来应该有可能持续升级手机。Purism 在 Librem 5 中投入巨资支持 28nm 的 i.MX 8M Quad，认为有可能升级到该 SoC 未来的 14nm 版本，但 NXP 决定在 14nm 的 i.MX 8M Plus 中削减 GPU 一半的核心并移除 DisplayPort 支持，因此 Purism 无法在同一处理器系列中升级其手机。鉴于在更小工艺节点上制造的成本持续上升，其他芯片制造商不太可能在不久的将来推出新芯片来挑战 RK3588 的性能。

使用高通 IoT SoC 的 Linux 手机新选择

过去，制造运行 Linux 内核的手机的唯一方法是设计一个包含许多独立芯片的复杂设备。历史上，高通并不费心为其支持 Linux 的 SoC 制造强大的处理器。然而，对于能够处理 AI 和来自多个视频源的大量图像处理的更强大物联网处理器的需求日益增长。与寿命短暂的智能手机和平板电脑不同，物联网设备的产品生命周期很长，因此更适合使用 Linux，而不是随时间推移更难支持的 Android。2023 年 3 月，高通宣布其即将推出的 6nm QCM6490 处理器集成蜂窝调制解调器，将支持四种操作系统（Android、Linux、Ubuntu 和 Windows IoT Enterprise），这极大地改善了 Linux 手机的前景。

随后，这家总部位于圣地亚哥的公司宣布了其新的产品长寿计划，该计划将销售 QCM6490 并提供软件支持，直至 2036 年 7 月。FairPhone 5 和 SHIFTphone 8 都是围绕 QCM6490 设计的，因为其长期支持对环境有益，而这种长期支持正是 Linux 手机所需要的，因为将一款 Linux 手机推向市场需要很长时间，而且它需要销售多年才能收回对一款年销量有限的产品的高额投资。搭载 QCM6490（1x 2.7GHz Cortex-A78，3x 2.4GHz Cortex-A78，4x 1.9GHz Cortex-A55）的 Fairphone 5 因与其他 Android 手机相比基准测试成绩差、电池续航差而受到批评。然而，QCM6490 提供的 CPU 和 GPU 性能显著优于 RK3588S，能效也更好。

随后的QCM4490 和 QCM8850采用更新的 4nm 节点制造，提供比 QCM6490 更低和更高的功耗选项。QCM4490（2x 2.4GHz Cortex-A78，6x 2.0GHz Cortex-A55）的单核性能几乎与 QCM6490 相当，且能效更高，但其支持将于 2030 年 4 月结束，这对 Linux 手机来说太短了。QCM8850 或许可以通过降频来适应 Linux 手机的功耗范围，但其支持将于 2033 年 4 月结束，因此寿命更长的 QCM6490 可能是 Linux 手机的更好选择。

使用这些被高通重新命名为“Dragonwing”的物联网处理器之一的好处是，它们使设计和将手机推向市场变得显著更容易，因为它们将如此多的功能集成在一个芯片中，从而降低了手机电路板的复杂性。高通提供了可定制的参考设计，因此使用 Dragonwing 处理器设计 Linux 手机应该容易得多，需要的电路板迭代次数更少，测试也更少。

资源有限的公司可以与 SHIFT 或 Fairphone 签约生产其手机，然后安装 Linux，类似于Murena和iodé销售 Fairphone 和 SHIFTphone 并在手机上安装其专注于隐私的 AOSP 变体的方式。这不仅避免了设计硬件的时间和成本，还允许以环保和道德优势来营销 Linux 手机。Fairphone 或 SHIFT 也可以签约提供手机的保修服务。

高通为其 Snapdragon 和 Dragonwing 处理器提供免费/开源驱动程序，随着时间的推移，其中许多处理器将在主线 Linux 中得到部分支持。然而，高通的驱动程序依赖于许多专有 blob。Adreno A660 GPU 使用 blob 来加速 3D 图形。音频数字信号处理器（aDSP）使用 blob 来处理音频解码和处理。计算 blob 被 DSP 和 NPU 用于机器学习等任务。VPU 需要 blob 来进行硬件视频解码和编码。内联数据包加速器（IPA）使用 blob 来加速其网络路由。这些 blob 使 SoC 运行更凉爽、更节能，但音频处理、视频编码/解码和计算等任务可以由 CPU 和/或 GPU 在软件中处理，以避免使用这些 blob。

虽然这些 blob 是可选的，但在需要 WiFi、蓝牙和蜂窝调制解调器功能的手机上，用于操作这些功能的 blob 就不是可选的。用户空间中并不需要这些 blob，但避免它们的唯一方法是使用单独的 WiFi/蓝牙和蜂窝调制解调器芯片。将这些芯片添加到手机电路板上会显著增加额外成本和复杂性，并降低手机的能效。

另一方面，添加这些额外芯片也将使得可以使用硬件终止开关来关闭手机的无线通信，这将是该手机的一大卖点。然而，想要能够切断 WiFi/蓝牙和蜂窝调制解调器电源的这类客户，很可能也会担心启动 Qualcomm QCM 芯片所需的三个 blob，尤其是那个运行 hypervisor 和处理加密的 TrustZone 的 blob。尽管 RK3566、RK3588 和 i.MX 95 也需要一个 blob 来启动，但那是来自 Synopsys DesignWare 的一个小文件，仅用于训练 DDR RAM 的内存时序，而启动 QCM4490、QCM6490 和 QCM8850 的 Qualcomm blob 则要庞大得多。

在 Linux 手机中使用 Android 内核的问题

2020 至 2022 年间，随着 Librem 5、PinePhone 和 PinePhone Pro 的发布，移动 Linux 浪潮之所以令人兴奋，是因为这些手机运行在 Linux 内核上。相比之下，大多数其他 Linux 手机将其 Linux 栈运行在 libhybris 之上，后者加载 Android 库和驱动程序，并将调用转换为 libc 和 musl，以便它们能与 Android 的 Bionic 协同工作。使用 Android 内核的优势在于，它允许 Linux 手机使用像 Qualcomm Snapdragon 或 MediaTek Dimensity 这样具有良好性能和能效的现代集成移动 SoC，从而使 Linux 手机能够与 Android 手机竞争。

问题在于，运行 Android 内核的 Linux 手机会显著缩短手机的使用寿命。历史上，Google 仅为每个 Android 内核提供 4 年的安全更新支持，并且至少需要进行一次 Android 升级才能获得这 4 年的支持，因为 Google 通常只支持每个 Android 版本 3.5 年。

使用不再获得安全更新的 Android 手机存在安全风险，因为世界上有如此多的 Android 恶意软件，包括在 Google 官方 Play 商店中。许多黑客专注于攻击 Android，因为它在承载宝贵个人信息的设备上被广泛使用。AV-TEST 统计有 3762 万个不同的 Android 恶意软件和 3038 万个潜在不受欢迎的应用程序（PUA），这些程序会做用户可能不希望的事情，例如收集他们的个人数据。相比之下，AV-TEST 统计 Linux 中有 529 万个恶意软件和 58,128 个 PUA，而且其中大多数很少被安装，因为大多数 Linux 用户只从他们发行版的仓库安装软件，那里以自由/开源软件（FOSS）为主，软件包维护者若包含恶意软件将遭受声誉损害。

高通和联发科等公司通常只为其智能手机SoC销售2到3年，而高端骁龙和天玑型号的大部分需求在一年后就枯竭了，因此从历史上看，它们只提供1到3年的Android更新和2到4年的安全更新。它们通常不会费心升级内核，而且它们提供的专有blob是为与特定内核配合使用而设计的，无法升级。从历史上看，Google在每个Android版本中只支持三年内核，因此这限制了大多数手机最多只能使用三个Android版本。

与Android手机2到4年的软件支持相比，Purism 宣传Librem 5将获得“真正延长手机寿命的终身更新”。同样，PINE64承诺将销售PinePhone及其替换部件“至少5年”。这两款Linux手机的支持时间可以远远超过市场上任何Android设备。它们使用自由/开源驱动程序和Linux内核，可以持续升级，因为它们不依赖仅与特定内核版本兼容的专有blob。虽然它们确实包含专有固件，但它们不依赖SoC制造商提供新的blob来支持最新版本的内核。

Android内核寿命短的问题在于，Linux手机通常需要更长时间开发和推向市场，然后它们的销售年限比大多数Android手机更长。考虑到使用Linux SoC的所有挑战，FuriLabs决定为其FLX1手机采用搭载联发科天玑900处理器的传统智能手机设计，该手机于2024年7月开始发货，这并不令人意外。该手机的操作系统FuriOS基于Droidian项目，该项目在Android内核之上使用libhybris运行移动Debian栈，包含Wayland + wlroots + GTK + GNOME库 + Phosh。与Librem 5和PinePhone不同，FLX1拥有处理能力来应对人们对现代智能手机所期望的所有任务。

问题在于，天玑900于2021年5月发布，搭载Android 11，使用android11-5.4内核。Google于2026年1月1日停止支持该内核，Linux于2025年12月3日停止为5.4内核提供更新。联发科不会为其处理器发布主要版本的内核升级（尽管未来可能会改变），而且联发科为天玑900提供的驱动程序包含无法升级以支持更新内核的专有blob，因此FLX1及其后续产品FLX1s和FLX1s+只能停留在过时的Android 11内核上，无法获得安全补丁和错误修复。由于这些手机使用Andromeda（Waydroid的自定义分支）在FuriOS内运行Android应用，它们可能面临大量Android恶意软件的威胁。Waydroid削弱了标准Android中的应用沙箱和SELinux安全性，并且它基于过时的AOSP 13，该版本于2026年3月停止获得安全更新。考虑到安全影响，FuriLabs是否仍应使用不受支持的内核销售FLX1s+值得怀疑。

目前售价为 369 欧元的 Jolla C2 社区手机 也存在类似的安全隐患。C2 于 2024 年 9 月开始发货，基于 2021 年 9 月发布的紫光展锐 Tiger T606 处理器。C2 运行的是名为“5.4.233-android12-9-g9c3a5d5b97e3”的自定义内核。据推测，这家芬兰公司采用了 2023 年 2 月 25 日发布的 Linux 5.4.233，并加入了 Google 的 Android 12 内核修改，因此它本质上使用的是与 FLX1/s/s+ 相同的、不受支持的内核，而该内核自 2026 年 1 月 1 日起就未收到 Google 的任何安全更新。Jolla 甚至懒得将内核更新到 5.4.302，那是 Linux 于 2025 年 12 月 3 日针对 5.4 内核发布的 最后一个维护版本。Jolla 尚未发布 C2 内核的源代码，因此 Jolla 所谓的“社区手机”无法由社区进行升级。即使社区能够将内核升级到其最后一个维护版本，也必须牢记，Linux 5.4.302 在发布时有 1539 个未修复的 CVE（通用漏洞与暴露），而 Linux 的新严重 CVE 平均 每 2.5 天 就会被发现一个。

与 FuriLabs FLX1/s/s+ 一样，Jolla C2 也能运行可能包含恶意软件的 Android 应用，但它使用的是 Jolla 专有的 AppSupport（又名 AlienDalvik），它像 Waydroid 一样在 LXC 容器内运行 AOSP。借助 AppSupport，Android 应用能比 Waydroid 更好地集成 到宿主操作系统中。据推测，Jolla 运行的 AOSP 版本比 Waydroid 更新，因为 Jolla 将 AppSupport 的使用授权给其他公司，所以它很可能在为 AOSP 应用 Google 的安全更新，但没有为 C2 手机上受支持的内核应用。

所有运行 Android 内核的 Linux 手机，例如搭载 Ubuntu Touch 的 Volla 手机和运行 Sailfish OS 的新款 Jolla Phone（2026 年），都将面临同样的问题：它们的寿命因 Android 内核而缩短，而由于 SoC 制造商的专有 blob 只与一个主要内核版本兼容，这些内核只能从 SoC 制造商那里获得主要版本升级。遗憾的是，所有这些手机都使用联发科处理器，这些处理器对主线 Linux 的支持很少甚至没有，因此无法通过切换到主线 Linux 内核来延长其寿命。

基于 Android 的 Linux 手机将因更长的支持而变得更具可行性

尽管如此，Android 手机市场有计划的淘汰已经开始改变。Google 希望其 Android 操作系统能更好地与苹果的 iOS 竞争。苹果承诺为其手机提供至少 5 年的支持，通常超过 6 年。与其他 Android 手机制造商不同，Google 的商业模式并不依赖于计划性淘汰。Google 能说服越多的人使用其操作系统，就能为定向广告收集越多的数据，因此延长 Android 手机的寿命是吸引更多用户使用其平台的一种方式。

此外，COVID-19 疫情导致人们购买的新手机减少，随后供应链危机又因零部件价格上涨而推高了手机价格。2020 年至 2024 年间，苹果 iPhone 的全球平均售价从 724 美元上涨至 903 美元。全球智能手机销量在 2020 年暴跌，至今仍未恢复到疫情前的水平。为了说服人们为更昂贵的手机掏腰包，需要让消费者相信这些手机能用得更久。

2020 年 8 月，三星宣布，其 S、Note 和 Z 系列手机（从 S10 开始）都将获得三年的操作系统更新和安全更新，正如谷歌自 2016 年该品牌首次推出以来一直为其 Pixel 提供的那样。三星做出这一政策改变时，智能手机行业刚刚经历了历史上最严重的下滑，2020 年第二季度销量同比下降 23%。2021 年 10 月，谷歌宣布将大幅延长其 Pixel 设备的使用寿命，承诺从 Pixel 6 开始提供 3 年的操作系统更新和 5 年的安全更新。三星不能让它的 Galaxy 设备被篡夺最佳 Android 品牌的地位。2022 年 2 月，三星宣布将超越谷歌，承诺从 Galaxy S21、Z3 和 Tab8 开始，为其旗舰机型提供四年的操作系统更新和 5 年的安全补丁。

这引发了两家公司之间的竞争，看谁能为其移动设备提供最长的软件支持。谷歌决定再次超越三星，并制定一个超越苹果支持政策的新标准。2023 年 10 月，谷歌承诺 Pixel 8 系列将获得 7 年的操作系统更新和安全更新，外加“Pixel 功能更新”和“来自谷歌的 AI 技术”。谷歌宣布将支持 Pixel 8 到 2030 年，这在移动行业引起了震动。三星决心不被谷歌超越，并于 2024 年 1 月宣布其新的 Galaxy S24 和 S24 Ultra 也将获得 7 年的操作系统更新和安全更新。2025 年，三星将其所有新 Galaxy 机型的软件支持延长至六年，包括其售价约 125 美元的低端 Galaxy A06 4G。

2024 年 10 月，在其骁龙峰会上，高通表示将为其高端移动处理器提供 8 年的操作系统升级和安全更新，并于 2025 年 2 月正式宣布，当年发布的新款 7、8 和 8 Elite 处理器都将获得这一前所未有的支持水平。同样重要的是，高通承诺其高端骁龙处理器还将获得两次内核升级，因此它们将使用新 Android 版本官方支持的内核。联发科不能让高通垄断下一代旗舰手机的高端移动处理器市场。2025 年 5 月 27 日，联发科发布消息称，其天玑 8400 和 9400 芯片也将获得 8 年的支持。

传统上，每个新的 Android 版本只支持三年的内核，但在 2024 年，Google 增加了第四年，随 Android 15（android12-5.10 到 android15-6.6）提供，第五年随 Android 16（android12-5.10 到 android16-6.12）提供，第六年随 Android 17（android12-5.10 到 android17-6.18）提供。然而，Android 中这些额外的支持年限很可能是 Google 实施的临时解决方案，直到它能够将芯片制造商纳入其 Longevity Google Requirements Freeze（LGRF）计划，该计划于 2024 年 10 月启动。根据该计划，芯片制造商预计每 3 年升级一次内核，以便能够长期支持其 SoC。在 Linux 内核维护者宣布将把对 LTS 内核的支持从 6 年减少到 2 年之后，Google 于 2024 年 7 月宣布将为其内核提供 4 年的安全更新，因此这表明未来的 Android 版本将回到只支持 3 年内核的状态。

高通已承诺为其高端处理器提供两次内核更新，但高通对其低端处理器只字未提，除了在 2020 年 12 月宣布其所有骁龙处理器将获得三年的操作系统更新和 4 年的安全更新。其他 SoC 制造商对其低端处理器的支持也同样保持沉默。很有可能，大多数搭载中端和低端处理器的智能手机只会获得 4 年的支持，这意味着 Volla、FuriLabs、Jolla 和 Brax 现有的所有 Linux 手机可能都将面临同样的问题：使用无法升级的不受支持的 Android 内核。

然而，新的 Linux 手机在未来可以设计为获得 8 年的支持，如果它们使用更高端的骁龙或天玑处理器。即使设计像 FLX1 这样的定制手机——它花了三年时间才推向市场，因为它有三个用于麦克风、摄像头和蜂窝调制解调器的硬件切断开关，并且需要大量的软件开发工作——这款 Linux 手机仍然应该是可行的，因为它还将有 5 年的软件支持，并且至少可以销售 3 年。

如果选择骁龙 8 或天玑 9000 系列以利用其更长的软件支持，手机将获得额外的好处，即通过其 USB-C 端口以 DisplayPort Alt Mode 提供视频输出。这意味着该手机可以作为融合设备进行营销，使其既可用作手机又可用作台式 PC。与 Android 桌面不同，Linux 桌面作为 PC 要有用得多。如果手机有足够的 RAM 和存储空间，对于不需要大量处理能力的人来说，它可以成为传统 PC 的替代品，同时它具有比笔记本电脑更便携的便利性，并且不需要在多个设备之间传输数据。对于必须在多个地点工作并希望能够随身携带数据的人来说，融合手机可能是一个非常有吸引力的选择。

然而，如果要设计一款更经济、不需要视频输出的手机，骁龙 7 和天玑 8400 是专为中高端手机设计的处理器，它们仍然可以获得 8 年的支持（前提是手机厂商愿意向高通或联发科支付延长支持的费用）。这将是 Volla、Jolla、FuriLabs 和 Brax 最具吸引力的选择，它们都销售中端手机。

If a Snapdragon chip is selected, there is a decent chance that the chip will eventually gain some mainline Linux support, so the phone can have a second life after the official support ends, although its functions requiring binary blobs probably won’t work with the upgraded mainline Linux kernel. What is so frustrating is that many of the makers of Linux phones are selecting MediaTek processors over Snapdragon processors, so there is little hope for that second life.

Why software was a major challenge for the Librem 5

When Purism announced the Librem 5 in August 2017, the California-based company wasn’t just facing a major obstacle in using a new SoC, that hadn’t yet been released, which would significantly delay the phone. Purism, however, faced an even bigger challenge in the software to install on the phone.

Purism had observed how trying to develop mobile Linux had humbled larger companies with far more resources, and it tried to avoid their mistakes. Motorola developed half a dozen different varieties of Linux, but couldn’t unify and direct its development efforts, and eventually adopted Android which commoditized its phones, so it had to be sold off to Google and eventually Lenovo in order to survive. Palm took too long developing webOS and ran out of money as Android ate its market, so it had to sell itself off to HP in 2010 in order to survive. Likewise, Nokia took too long developing MeeGo as its business collapsed due to Android, so it turned to Microsoft in 2010 to provide Windows Mobile for its phones, which only hastened the destruction of the Finnish company. The Mozilla Foundation developed an entire operating system based on web standards, but found that it didn’t have the resources to match Google’s Android, and abandoned the development of Firefox OS for smartphones in December 2015, although it continued development for TVs and Internet of Things for another 10 months. Canonical attempted to unify the desktop and mobile spaces with its Unity8 interface and develop Ubuntu Touch as a mobile OS with good convergence for the desktop. However, it proved to be a costly endeavor with limited commercial interest, and Canonical’s CEO, Mark Shuttleworth, announced that the company would abandon the development of Ubuntu Touch in April 2017.

This tragic history has taught Linux hardware vendors that they should do as little software development as possible, except code to make their hardware work and some distro maintenance. However, avoiding software dev work was not viable strategy in 2017 for the kind of phone that Purism was attempting to create.

All the available mobile Linux interfaces in 2017 had major drawbacks, including Sailfish OS’s Silica, Firefox OS’s Gaia, KDE’s Plasma Mobile, UBports’ Unity8→Lomiri, Maemo Leste’s Hildon, LuneOS’s Luna Next and Nemo Mobile’s Glacier UI. Jolla had spent years polishing its Sailfish OS, but Purism’s goal of 100% free software disqualified Jolla’s proprietary Silica interface, as well as Samsung’s Tizen, whose problematic Flora License grants a patent license only to “Tizen certified platforms”. Nemo Mobile and Plasma Mobile were still incomplete and would have required a lot of dev work on Purism’s part to supply all the missing parts. LG had turned webOS into an operating system for smart TVs/projectors and automobiles, and replacing LG’s proprietary bits would have taken quite a bit of work. Firefox OS and Ubuntu Touch were complete systems, but both of them would have required a huge commitment on Purism’s part to maintain their software in the long term. Firefox OS’s code was abandoned, and the volunteers at UBports didn’t have the manpower to maintain its huge codebase. All of the available interfaces were based on a separate mobile stack, whereas Purism wanted to unify with the software stack in desktop Linux, because one of its announced goals was that the Librem 5 could be used with the major distros, including Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, SUSE and Arch.

Purism originally leaned toward adopting Plasma Mobile for its Librem 5 phone, but that would have required maintaining both a GNOME-based stack on the desktop and a separate KDE-based mobile stack in its PureOS distribution. At that point in time, Plasma Mobile was still an inchoate system, that would have required a huge amount of dev work to get ready for a commercial product launch. Plasma Mobile was based on many things that were incapatible with a desktop stack, such as oFono telephony and the Halium Project, which was also used by LG’s webOS and UBport’s Ubuntu Touch, in order to run the system on top of libhybris with a Android kernel and drivers.

Purism was already working with GTK and GNOME in PureOS, and it marketed the Librem 5 as a phone aligned with the ideals of the Free Software Foundation, which sponsored GNOME, so it made sense for Purism to favor an interface based on GTK and the GNOME ecosystem. However, the only available GTK-based interface was Hildon, which was hopelessly outdated, and would have required a lot of work to upgrade from GTK 2 to GTK 3.

In the end, Purism decided that it would be easier to create a new mobile interface, which it called Phosh (phone + shell), as a thin overlay on top of GTK plus GNOME middleware, than do dev work on one of the existing mobile interfaces. By basing Phosh on the standard desktop stack consisting of Linux + Wayland + wlroots + GTK + GNOME and adding code to roughly 20 GNOME applications to make them adaptive, Purism was able to take advantage of all the corporate support provided by IBM/Red Hat, SUSE, Canonical and Google for this stack. Purism had to submit code upstream to Linux, wlroots, ModemManager, GTK/GNOME and Matrix to support its mobile operating system, but then it could rely on those projects to maintain the code in the future. This was arguably a better strategy than helping develop Plasma Mobile, which has minimal corporate support, and was focused at the time on developing a separate stack than KDE’s desktop Plasma. Purism started working on its libhandy library in mid-2018 to add to standard GTK3/GNOME desktop applications to make them adaptive for a smaller mobile interface. Then the Purism developers worked with the GNOME community to develop libadwaita in 2020, so GTK4/GNOME could become adaptive between mobile and desktop screens.

As detailed in my article, “The strategic advantages of Phosh for mobile Linux,” unifying with an existing desktop stack and getting the broader community to adopt its software to help maintain it was arguably the best strategy to reduce the long-term maintenance costs, especially for a tiny company like Purism that has limited resources.

Unfortunately, developing a new mobile interface involved higher costs upfront, and Purism ran into financial problems during the global COVID-19 pandemic. In early March of 2020, Purism stopped paying refunds to customers who cancelled their preorders, telling customers that they would have to wait till the phone started shipping in order to get their refunds. Between February and May of 2020, 5 of the 14 developers working on the Librem 5 quit the project, and there was a noticeable drop in the number of software commits by the Purism employees who stayed, indicating that Purism probably wasn’t paying them.

Purism was caught in a hopeless situation. If it publicly admitted in early 2020 that it was having financial problems, all of the orders for its products would have dried up and the company would likely have gone bankrupt. If it paid out all the refund requests, it also would have likely gone bankrupt, which would have harmed everyone who had put down $599 – $799 to pre-order the Librem 5. Purism held off on paying refunds, which probably allowed the company to survive and eventually start delivering its phones in November 2020. However, it didn’t appear to have the funds on hand to manufacture all the pre-ordered phones, because the manufacture of the Librem 5 was done in small batches until it was caught by COVID’s global supply chain shortages and couldn’t procure the i.MX 8M Quad processors for 6 months during 2021.

Purism never repaid the refunds for the canceled Librem 5 orders. Angry customers waiting for their refunds publicly denounced the company on public forums, which blackened the company’s public reputation and suppressed sales of the Librem 5. The early reviews for the phone noted the poor battery life and the fact that critical functionality was still not implemented, such as the cameras, VoLTE support in the modem and the ability to suspend. In order to recoup its high development costs, Purism kept raising the phone’s price, until it reached an eye-watering $1299 in March 2022, which further suppressed sales of the phone.

Instead of refunds, Purism offered customers who had canceled their orders credit plus 20% extra to buy another product from Purism. Customers who received the Librem 5 were able to resell it for more than they paid, but many customers who had canceled their orders refused to do that on principal. In a letter to Louis Rossmann in August 2023, Purism admitted that it still had 600 cancelled Librem 5 orders, which it still didn’t have the finances to refund.

The success of Phosh despite its limited funding

Despite all the controversy surrounding the California-based company, its strategy of making a sustainable mobile OS by unifying with a popular desktop stack with good corporate support and upstreaming its code so it would be maintained over the long term has proven to be correct. Of the 469k lines of code in the software projects that Purism initiated for the Librem 5, 98.7% of that code is now controlled by external organizations. GNOME adopted libhandy, Calls and Chat (i.e. chatty) as official projects. In late 2020, the Purism developers started worked with the GNOME community to develop libadwaita to become the canonical implementation of GNOME’s human interface guidelines (HIG). Not only did this make GNOME’s GTK4 applications adaptive between the desktop and mobile environoments, but it gained features like in-app notifications, customizable animations and speed/fluidity improvements. GNOME has continued developing its GNOME Shell on mobile based Mutter, which is its unified display server, compositor and window manager. In contrast, Phosh uses wlroots (a Wayland compositor library created by Sway) and its phoc (a Wayland compositor), which are lighter weight than Mutter. However, GNOME has helped promote Phosh by hosting its code and documentation at GNOME World to foster its development.

As Purism has cut its budget for code development, Phosh’s development has increasingly moved outside the company. FreeDesktop.org adopted feedbackd, which is a D-Bus activated daemon that provides haptic, visual and audio feedback in response to events. In February 2025, the non-profit association Phosh.mobi e.V. was created in Germany to guide the development of Phosh as an independent entity. Three of the nine founding members of Phosh.mobi were former or current Purism employees/contractors, including Guido Gunther, who is Phosh’s main developer.

Over the last five years, the amount of code in the projects that Purism created for the Librem 5 has grown by 74.9%, and much of that new code is being written by people who are no longer employed or contracted by Purism. The only code projects still controlled by Purism are gtherm, haegtesse and wys, which are DBus daemons for thermals, transfering modem audio and bringing up PulseAudio during calls, respectively. Together, these projects only represent 6173 lines or 1.3% of the total code.

In a survey that PINE64 took of 3079 PinePhone users in January 2022, 39.3% selected Phosh as their favorite interface, compared to 15.5% for Sxmo/Sxmo, 15.0% for Plasma Mobile and 6.7% for Lomiri (formerly Unity8). Despite Phosh only starting its development in April 2018, more users preferred it over Lomiri and Plasma Mobile, which have been under development since March 2013 and July 2015, respectively. Purism’s strategy of using the existing infrastructure and applications from GNOME allowed the tiny company to create a usable interface faster than other competing interfaces.

It is surprising that Phosh became the most popular mobile Linux interface, considering that the Qt toolkit and KDE had such a head start over GTK and GNOME in supporting mobile environments. Qt Quick was introduced with Qt 5.1 in June 2013 to make Qt controls adaptive for small screens, and Qt Mobile was introduced in December 2013 to make them cross-platform, and KDE’s Kirigami library for adaptive applications was introduced in March 2016. GTK didn’t gain similar abilities until 2019 with libhandy and GNOME didn’t have an answer to Kirigami until libadwaita was introduced in 2021.

Phosh has some glaring limitations. Its default Squeekboard keyboard is basic and kludgy. Only in 2025 did Phosh gain an alternative keyboard with word correction and word completion, plus the ability to select from multiple characters by long pressing a key. The desktop mode in Phosh to output video to an external monitor or projector has a very limited interface. Phosh has no camera app, and most installations rely on Megapixels developed by Martijn Braam for the PinePhone or its Millipixels fork developed by Purism for the Librem 5. Millipixels only gained basic support for auto-focus and the ability to shoot video in January 2023.

Phosh doesn’t have the three buttons at the bottom or the swipe gestures from Android that most people are used to. Plasma Mobile’s interface is much closer to the familiar Android interface, and it is nicer visually. Phosh’s interface is much simplier. It doesn’t use navigation buttons and has fewer configuration options than Plasma Mobile. A swipe from the bottom displays Phosh’s Overview screen where apps can be opened or closed. A swipe from the top displays a Quick-Setting panel, notifications, and buttons in the top corners to lock or turn off the phone.

Phosh became the more popular interface, partly because Purism was paying developers to work on it, so it was more stable, whereas Plasma Mobile was more prone to stalls and crashes. Plasma relies on hardware acceleration from the GPU to speed up its interface, which isn’t supported by the drivers for the A64 and i.MX 8M Quad in the PinePhone and Librem 5, whereas Phosh is faster and more responsive just using software rendering. Phosh also requires less RAM, although it does run more background processes that use more CPU.

Adoption of mobile interfaces by Linux distros

Phosh succeeded because its close adherence to a common desktop stack made it easier to package and distribute in different distros. Phosh was first adopted by postmarketOS (now Nura) in September 2018, just a two months after Purism first debuted it. The close ties between the Phosh developers and Debian helped get Phosh packaged into Debian in February 2020, where it became the basis of the new Mobian distro. Phosh allowed Debian, Arch, Manjaro, Fedora, OpenSUSE and NixOS to become mobile distros for the first time, which in turn encouraged Linux application developers to start testing their software in a mobile interface to see how it functioned on smaller screens. Because Phosh didn’t stay isolated in one Linux distro, it attracted more volunteers to help develop the software and work on porting it.

Over time, Plasma Mobile has followed Phosh’s example and increasingly unified with its Plasma desktop stack. Originally the Plasma Mobile stack was quite different from the standard desktop Plasma stack, since Plasma Mobile was based on the oFono telephony library and could be run either on the standard Linux kernel or on the Halium Project, which allows Plasma Mobile to run in an LXC container on top of an Android kernel and drivers, and using libhybris to translate its Linux calls to libc into Android’s Bionic. Over time the KDE has jettisoned parts of Plasma Mobile to unify it with its desktop stack. In December 2020, KDE announced that it would get rid of Halium and only run on a Linux kernel, because that change would allow Plasma Mobile to employ a traditional Linux userspace without blobs and upgrade their KWin composer. A year later in December 2021, Plasma Mobile announced that it was switching from the oFono library to ModemManager, because it was more stable and better maintained than oFono. Finally, in February 2026, Plasma Mobile announced it would be switching from the Maliit on-screen keyboard to the new Plasma Keyboard. Over time, KDE has incorporated Kirigami into more of its standard applications, so it doesn’t need two different applications for Plasma and Plasma Mobile.

The unification of the mobile and desktop stacks made it easier for Plasma Mobile to follow Phosh’s example in getting packaged and incorporated into all the major Linux desktop distributions, so they could also be used on mobile devices. Nearly every major distro started testing its code on the PinePhone, which helped get more people testing and contributing to Phosh and Plasma Mobile.

Despite the fact that these two interfaces have fewer developers than desktop GNOME and desktop Plasma, they have don’t need nearly as much manpower because they can piggy back on the desktop stack and the convergent apps, so they can thrive with much less dev work and maintenance than big siloed codebases like Ubuntu Touch, Firefox OS, Tizen, webOS, etc.

Sxmo (Simple X Mobile) has followed simple strategy of building on top an existing deskop stack. It was created by Miles Alan, as a “collection of simple programs and shell scripts” on top of Sway and its wlroots library. It was first released in February 2020, and quickly became the second most popular interface on the PinePhone due to its light-weight and simple design, which made it easy to customize. Sxmo has been incorporated into the mobile distros (postmarketOS, Mobian and DanctNIX), but the desktop distros haven’t adopted it, which has limited its reach.

UBport’s Lomiri interface is faster and more responsive and consumes less RAM than Phosh and Plasma Mobile, but it was originally isolated in Ubuntu Touch. Canonical spent years developing its Unity8 interface, which is based on Qt Quick and used in Ubuntu Touch. The UBports community renamed the interface as Lomiri in February 2020. UBports has followed a similar strategy of trying to attract more people to its Lomiri interface by getting it incorporated into the major distros. UBports modified Ubuntu Touch and the Lomiri interface so they could run on either Halium or a standard Linux kernel, and switched to using more standardized libraries that were easier to upgrade over time. Nonetheless its small number of volunteers has struggled to maintain its huge codebase, and update it to new versions of Qt.

Despite the head start of Plasma Mobile and Lomiri, they stayed isolated for longer in KDE Neon and Ubuntu Touch. In contrast, Phosh got adopted almost immediately by postmarketOS, and once it got packaged by Debian in early 2020, most of the other major distros quickly adopted it. When postmarketOS was first released in May 2017, it used Weston, which is Wayland’s reference compositor, but within the first 100 days of its existence, postmarketOS adopted Plasma Mobile. However, postmarketOS chose to ship its PinePhone Community Edition with Phosh due to its greater stability.

Unlike in the past, when mobile Linux interfaces were isolated in a few distros, many distros now support Phosh, Plasma Mobile and Lomiri. Because mobile Linux is no longer isolated and locked into silos controlled by large companies, such as Nokia, Samsung, LG, Mozilla and Canonical, it has a much greater chance of succeeding and attracted contributors than it did in the past. Because Phosh and Plasma Mobile and Sxmo are based on using existing software stacks that are maintained by outside organizations, it is much less likely to be abandoned, as happened with Firefox OS, or to ossify and fade into obscurity, as happened with Hildon.

PINE64’s attempt to get around the cost of developing software

PINE64 was founded as a crowd-funding campaign in October 2015 by TL Lim and Johnson Jeng to develop a single board computer based on the Allwinner A64 processor. The company based in Hong Kong focuses on producing economical Linux hardware devices. It gets around the high costs of developing software by just producing the hardware and then invites the community to develop the software for its devices. By allying with various different Linux distros, PINE64 initially had a great deal of success.

PINE64 probably shipped over 100,000 PinePhones, which greatly stimulated the development of mobile Linux. The release of the PinePhone led to the creation of the Mobian (Mobile Debian) and DanctNIX (based on Arch ARM) distros and inspired the creation of the Sxmo interface. The PinePhone helped Plasma Mobile decide that it only needed to run on a Linux stack and pushed UBports to add support for running on a Linux kernel. It also caused many of the major distros to work on porting to a mobile device for the first time.

PINE64 played an important service for the community by getting cheap hardware into people’s hands so they develop software for that hardware, but it made the fundamental mistake of focusing on the distros, which only works if the hardware already has kernel support and good free/open source drivers. Drew DeVault, the lead developer of Sway and one of the volunteer developers who worked on the PinePhone, observed that PINE64 was putting the cart before the horse, by helping to finance the packaging work in particular distos, rather than first paying developers to work on the booting and driver development, that would have benefitted all the distros.

Because PINE64 chose hardware for the PinePhone that was mostly already supported by FOSS drivers, it was able to attract a large number of distros to work on the phone. Volunteer developer Ondřej Jirman (aka “mega” or “megi”) created a custom Linux kernel for the PinePhone. Volunteers at UBports did the initial work on bringing up the hardware. Arnaud Ferraris (aka “a-wai”) at Mobian developed the telephony stack using the eg25-manager in userspace. Martijn Braam at postmarketOS worked on the camera. PINE64 initially released a series of five development batches of the PinePhone, which had different distros preinstalled (Ubuntu Touch, postmarketOS with Phosh, Manjaro with Phosh, Manjaro with Plasma Mobile and Mobian with Phosh). For each phone sold, PINE64 donated $10 to the distro which provided the software. After that, PINE64 planned to let the buyer select which distro to support by selecting the distro’s logo to display on the back plate of the PinePhone’s case.

Nonetheless, there were arguments among the different distros behind the scenes over the design of the hardware projects. PINE64’s founder, TL Lim, grew frustrated and decided to just ship PINE64’s devices with one distro and one interface preinstalled. Given the complexity of trying to work with so many different distros, this wasn’t an unreasonable decision, but it had to be handled with care to not alienate the other distros. Unfortunately, Lim chose to only ship PINE64 devices with Manjaro and Plasma Mobile preinstalled. PINE64’s own poll of PinePhone users showed that Phosh was the most popular interface, but it was controlled by Purism, a competitor to PINE64. Plasma Mobile wasn’t a bad choice, since it was a community-based interface that needed corporate support. Manjaro, however, was a very poor choice, since it wasn’t doing any software dev work and has been widely criticized for its bad practice of shipping software in development that is known to be broken, which creates more work and public backlash for the projects developing the software.

Many of the crucial volunteers who worked on the PinePhone were burned out by the time that development on the PinePhone Pro started. They were frustrated by the internal arguments and the fact that PINE64 had shifted from sharing revenue with many distros to only paying Manjaro, rather than the people who were doing the necessary dev work. The PinePhone Pro’s hardware required quite a bit of software dev work to support it. In August 2022, Martijn Braam at postmarketOS publicly broke up with PINE64 due to its bad decisions in favor of Manjaro. PINE64’s response failed to address Braam’s frustrations, and Drew DeVault posted that “PINE64 has let its community down.” Most of the volunteer developers stopped collaborating with PINE64, so the community-based company didn’t have the manpower to do the necessary software development for its new hardware. Most distros weren’t willing to work on a phone that couldn’t even properly boot. Thousands of people bought the PinePhone Pro after it was released in December 2021, expecting that eventually it would become a functional device, but it still had major software problems when its sales were cancelled in August 2025. The failure of the PinePhone Pro illustrates that PINE64 had its priorities backwards by focusing on one distro that mainly does packaging work, rather than focusing on the booting and kernel work.

Another of the problems was that PINE64 sent out its free hardware samples to the same small number of volunteers. By the time that the PinePhone Pro started its development, those volunteers were overwhelmed by all the new hardware that PINE64 was releasing, which all needed serious software dev work to ever be functional. With so many projects needing attention, the volunteers couldn’t focus their energy on any one device, so all of them got neglected.

PINE64 charges such low prices for its hardware, that it doesn’t have the necessary funds to pay for serious software dev work. However, its revenue sharing model with the distros was working to convince talented people associated with those distros to do the hard work of supporting its hardware. Then, PINE64 undermined its whole community development model by deciding that it would only sell its hardware with one distro and one interface preinstalled, and its decision to only share its revenue with that one distro. Then, PINE64 made matters worse by only listening to Manjaro in how it designed its hardware, which alienated many of the volunteers from other distros that it needed to do the software dev work. Once the best volunteers abandoned PINE64, the company hasn’t been able to complete the development of the PinePhone Pro, PineNote, PineTab2 and many of its other projects, so the people who ordered these devices are unlikely to ever be able to use them as fully functional devices.

Rather than sharing revenue with many different distros, PINE64 should have used any profits that it generated to pay developers to work on the drivers and kernel support for the hardware. It could have taken a community-based approach by observing who was making progress, and helping to finance their work. Because the Allwinner A64 already had decent free/open source drivers, volunteers were able to fill in the gaps with the PinePhone. However, many of the kernel changes that they made never got upstreamed to mainline Linux, which PINE64 could have required if it were paying for that work.

PINE64 also could have directed its revenue sharing program to help finance development work that would benefit all users of PinePhone, regardless of which distro they chose, such as Martijn Braam’s work on the Megapixels camera app or Biktorgj’s work on freeing the EG25-G modem firmware. Given that Phosh, Plasma Mobile, Lomiri and Sxmo/Swmo were being packaged in many different distros, it would have been better to pay people to work on developing those mobile interfaces than giving money to the distros. There are plenty of volunteers in the community who were willing to work on porting distros to the PinePhone, but there are far fewer people who are willing to do difficult driver and software dev work in their spare time.

The waning enthusiasm for Linux phones

After the initial enthusiasm for the Librem 5, PinePhone and PinePhone Pro in 2020-21, there was a noticeable drop in people’s interest in Linux phones. The number of posts about the Librem 5 and PinePhone on Reddit and the Purism and PINE64 forums reduced in 2022-25. The subsequent announcements of new Linux phones, namely the F(x)tec Pro¹ X with Sailfish OS and Ubuntu Touch, the Volla phones with Ubuntu Touch, Furi Labs FLX1/s/s+, the Jolla C2 with Sailfish OS, Liberux NEXX, Commodore Callback 8020 and Mecha Comet, haven’t generated nearly as much public interest and community engagement as the announcements of the Librem 5, PinePhone and PinePhone Pro. This difference is partly due to the fact that Purism and PINE64 were established companies that were already shipping Linux devices and they had community forums and Subreddits where people could gather and discuss the upcoming devices.

Nonetheless, I suspect that many of the people who bought the Librem 5 and PinePhone had a similar experiences to mine which dampened their enthusiasm for Linux phones over time. When both of those phones first arrived, they were fascinating devices for geeks like me, who had been playing around with Linux for years on their desktop PCs. I had a blast flashing different distros on the PinePhone and I frequently downloaded the latest version of PureOS and reflashed my Librem 5. I ran benchmarks on the two phones and eagerly followed the dev work to add support for the phones’ hardware. I had spent years waiting for the Librem 5, and after it arrived, I followed the development of Phosh and Adwaita by the Purism developers, like I was rooting for my favorite sports team. I considered the development of Phosh and Plasma Mobile to be the most exciting thing that was happening in the Linux world, and I enjoyed trying out new versions of the interfaces to see what was new in each release.

The first year after the Librem 5 and PinePhone were released were exciting times. I was so intrigued by the phones that I looked up every component on the Librem 5 and PinePhone schematics and documented them on the projects’ wikis. However, each time I flashed a new distro on the PinePhone to try it out, I only played with the phone for a day or two, before it went back in the drawer on my desk. I took the PinePhone apart and admired how it was designed, but I never used the phone for very long before I put it down. Its performance was poor. It took a long time to load apps and there was a noticeable delay in the interface. I also found it distracting to use the phone when the screen was dimmed or the battery was low, because of the noticeable flicker on the screen. I considered pulling out the soldering iron to implement a fix that would speed up the Flash memory storage, but I feared that I might accidentally ruin the board. I expected that PINE64 would issue an new version of the PinePhone that would fix the problems, but instead PINE64 dismissed the screen flicker as a problem and hasn’t changed the eMMC’s voltage from 3.3 to 1.8 volts, which would have increased its sequential read speed from 55 to 125 MB/s. I was also annoyed that PINE64 provided no way to communicate with its hardware developers, so I wasn’t able to get errors fixed that I found in the PinePhone schematics.

Unlike the Pinephone which I rarely used, I kept using the Librem 5, because its better CPU and memory performance made its interface much more responsive than the PinePhone. Nonetheless, the Librem 5’s screen and aluminum frame got hot, since Purism used thermal paste to join the i.MX 8M Quad to the LCD’s backplate to dissipate the processor’s heat through the screen and aluminum frame. I often felt like I was walking around with a heater in my pocket. The battery drained fast, so I was constantly having to charge the Librem 5.

Eventually the Purism developers got the Librem 5’s camera to work, and I tried out each new version of the Millipixels app. It was fun playing with the camera and I learned a lot about how cameras work trying to adjust the settings to get a good photo. However, the Librem 5 took a long time to process each photo in software after taking a picture, since its i.MX 8M Quad processor lacked an image signal processor and hardware encoder in the VPU. It also took me way too long fiddling with the Millipixels’ settings for me to rely on the camera. Whenever I wanted to make sure that I would get a decent photo, I pulled out my Xiaomi Redmi Note 7 running LineageOS to take the photo. Eventually it was possible to shoot video on the Librem 5 at a low resolution and frame rate, but it took so long to process the video and the quality was so limited, that I never bothered using it.

In the end, the PinePhone sat most of the time in a drawer in my desk, and the Librem 5 sat charging on my desk. They were good entertainment for the geek in me, but I didn’t use either of them as my primary phone. Many of the early adopters appear to have had similar experiences with their Linux phones. It was hard to justify buying another Linux phone, when there was already one sitting unused in the drawer. Many people were unwilling to take a chance on another Linux phone after witnessing how the community developers abandoned PINE64 in 2022, and software development stalled for the PinePhone Pro and how Purism refused to refund cancelled orders for the Librem 5.

When Furi Labs announced its upcoming FLX1 in June 2024, it solved many of the problems with the Librem 5 and PinePhone. It contained a 6nm MediaTek Dimensity 900, which was powerful enough shoot video and run 3D games with Vulkan. It offers three hardware privacy switches and multi-booting to run multiple operating systems on the phone. The phone’s software was developed by Bardia Moshiri, who is the lead developer of Droidian, which runs Phosh in a Debian-based distro on top of Halium with an Android kernel. It was based on well-supported projects and software which had already been developed, so its costs would be low, but it had an experienced developer to provide software support. In other words, it would avoid the high costs that troubled the Librem 5 and the lack of software support that bedeviled the PinePhone Pro. People report that the FLX1 and its following FLX1s and FLX1s+ variants work well, but the Linux phone is not well-known and appears to have gotten a limited number of orders. The company’s forum has been frozen and there has been limited activity on the Droidian forum, indicating that the phone has gained little traction in the Linux community.

Revision 1.1 of the Divine D. circuit board arrived on Aug 10, 2026.

In January 2025, Liberux, a startup based in Madrid, Spain, announced its upcoming NEXX Linux phone based on the RK3588S with specs to make nerds salivate: 4×2.4GHz Cortex-A76, 4x Cortex-A55, Mali-G610 MP4 GPU, 32GB LPDDR4X RAM, 256GB eMMC, 5G modem and 3 hardware kill switches. In June 2025, Liberux started the crowdfunding for the phone, and a couple days later announced a modular and open architecture that would allow the RAM board with an FPC connector to be upgraded up to 32GB, the eMMC board with a standard socket to be upgraded up to 512GB, and the cellular modem with a custom adapter board to be replaced/upgraded. The price varied between €790 and €1310, depending on the selected configuration. In addition, the NEXX would have two USB-C 3.1 ports to facilitate the phone being used a convergent desktop PC and an AW8737SCSR amplifier and a 3.5mm audio jack for better analog audio.

The NEXX was a revolutionary design, promising to be the first phone in history with two USB ports and the first one with the RAM and eMMC on separate boards, so it could be upgraded and connected like a normal PC. Liberux was attempting to offer the first truly convergent smartphone that had the right software and hardware to replace a desktop PC, yet it hardly generated any headlines in the tech press. It only got 120 pre-orders in a month, which generated a tenth of the $1.7 million in crowdfunding that it needed. When its crowdfunding campaign failed, Liberux reported that it was negotiating with investors for raise the funds to build a prototype. However, its last post on the company’s Mastadon account was in November 2025 about “moving forward with new self-funding.” After 11 months of silence, it is looking increasingly doubtful that the NEXX will ever come to market.

There is more hope for the Dawndrums Divine D. phone, which is being produced by a startup in Tunisia. The startup has continued to make slow progress according to its Mastodon posts. They are now on the second revision of their main board and have produced a breakout board for debugging it. They are developing their own distro known as DawnOS, which is based on Mobian and planning to support both the Phosh and Plasma Mobile interfaces. They are asking for donations, but appear to be largely self funded at this point. Like the NEXX, the Divine D. also promises to be an outstanding convergent phone, supporting up to 32GB RAM and offering a separate HDMI port for video out. It also offers a LoRa (long-range radio) chip, and a pogo pin interface to add accessories to the phone.

Jolla shows that there is still demand for Linux phones

While the failed crowdfunding of the Liberux NEXX and the limited sales of the Furi Labs FLX1 would suggest that there isn’t much hope for Linux phones, it is important to keep in mind that these phones were poorly advertised and produced by unknown startups that had no prior track record, so people were reluctant to order them. Bitter experience with the Librem 5 refunds, the failures of the PinePhone Pro, and all the cancelled Linux mobile devices over the years, such as the Ubuntu Edge in 2013, the Firefox OS phones in 2015, the Jolla Tablet in 2015 and the Necunos NC_1 in 2019, has taught Linux enthusiasts to be cautious about crowdfunding mobile devices.

However, there are reasons to believe that there is quite a bit of pent-up demand for mobile Linux, and it only requires the right kind of promotion and a company with a credible track record to unlock it. Ironically, the company demonstrating that people still want to use Linux phones is tiny Jolla, which has somehow managed to survive over the years.

The Finnish engineers who used to work on Nokia’s MeeGo founded their own company named Jolla Oy in 2011 to keep developing that code as Sailfish OS. They took the FOSS parts of MeeGo and added their proprietary Silica interface based on Qt QML, which imitates the Swipe UI that Nokia had developed for Meego on the N900/N9. They also developed their own proprietary AlienDalvik to run Android apps inside Linux. Jolla deserves credit for developing libhybris and helping to maintain much of the code developed by Nokia, including the oFono telephony library and the Maliit virtual keyboard. Remarkably, the small Finnish company managed to survive nearly going bankrupt in late 2015, when it cancelled its crowdfunded Jolla Tablet, which caused many of its customers who preordered to lose their money. It split off its hardware operations into a separate company named Jolla-Devices, which sells now Sony smartphones with Sailfish OS preinstalled to the European market, plus Volla Phones with Ubuntu Touch and Pixels with GrapheneOS.

After killing off the original company in 2024, because it was majority owned by Russian investors, who were politically toxic due to the war in Ukraine, Jolla reemerged under a new company named JollaBoys that bought the old company’s assets from Jolla Oy. The new Jolla company has returned to the business of selling hardware. Jolla announced its Jolla C2 Community Phone in May 2024, and started delivering them two months later, which helped reestablish the credibility of the company. When Jolla started taking preorders for its new Jolla Phone on December 5, 2025, it sold out its crowdfunding goal of 2000 phones within the first 48 hours and 5000 phones within the first week. People were pre-ordering the Jolla Phone without having seen any reviews of the phone and not even knowing what processor it would contain. The phone, which initially cost $499 and now costs was €679, was marketed as containing 12GB RAM, 256GB storage, a user-replaceable battery and a physical privacy switch. Jolla’s advertising for the phone clearly struck a chord with European consumers, which proclaimed it to be a “Do It Together (DIT) Linux phone, shaped by the people who use it.” The Finnish company emphasized the independence of the phone from the rest of the mobile phone industry, stating on the order page: “The Jolla Phone is not based on Big Tech technology. It is governed by European privacy thinking and a community-led model.”

Jolla has sold 15,000 units of its phone as of August 2026 just by taking pre-orders for production batches from its web site, and it probably could have sold far more units if it had paid for advertising, expanded beyond the European market, and kept the phone in stock, so customers didn’t have to wait months for the next production batch. Clearly, there is an untapped market of people who are dissatisfied with the reigning Android/iOS duopoly.

The mobile industry is shutting down the AOSP alternative

Today the use of Linux is growing on the desktop. Many people are installing Linux on their PCs, because they have become disgusted by how Microsoft has turned Windows into an advertising platform for surveillance capitalism and a vehicle for AI slop. Rather than buying new PCs, a growing number of people have decided to install Linux, because support for Windows 10 has ended and they can’t upgrade their old PCs to Windows 11 due to Microsoft’s arbitrary TPM restrictions.

Likewise, many people are equally disenchanted with Android and iOS on their phones. More people have grown distrustful of the surveillance capitalism which undergirds the Android market and the restrictions and rising prices of Apple’s “walled garden” on the iPhone, yet the options to escape the smartphone duopoly keep shrinking. In the past, people who wanted to gain some control over their digital lives could unlock the bootloader on their phone and install an AOSP derivative such as LineageOS, /e/OS, CalyxOS or GrapheneOS, however the mobile phone industry is increasingly shutting off this escape valve.

Every year there are fewer Android phone models on the market which allow the bootloader to be unlocked. The rise of Chinese brands, which now control roughly 60% of the global smartphone market, has driven many of the traditional phones brands out of the market which did allow their bootloaders to be unlocked. Many of the phone brands that were mod-friendly, such as LG, BQ, LeEco, WileyFox, Essential and Razer, are now gone from the market, and other mod-friendly brands like Sony and HTC now have so few sales that they are no longer relevant in the global smartphone market. Huawei stopped allowing its bootloaders to be unlocked in 2018. In the last couple years, Samsung, ASUS and Realme all followed Huawei’s bad example and no longer allow their bootloaders to be unlocked. Xiaomi, which rose to fame as a mod-friendly brand, has recently implemented so many restrictions to obtain its unlock codes, that it is unlikely that modders will bother porting custom ROMs to future Xiaomi models.

As noted in my article on LineageOS statistics, the brands which have good policies for bootloader unlocking has shrunk from 42.5% to about 7% of the global smartphone market over the last couple years. The brands which allow their bootloaders to be unlocked (without major restrictions like Xiaomi) only sold about 87 million phones in 2025, including Lenovo/Motorola (60M), Google (12M), OnePlus (11.6M), Nothing (2M), GigaSet (>1M), Sony (400k), Fairphone (145k), SHIFT (10k), Teracube, Volla and Brax. Together those brands only represent 7% of the 1245.5 million total smartphones sold in 2025.

However, that is an overestimate, since most phone models never get good custom ROMs made for them. A good portion of Motorola and Google phones are sold through carriers, and many carriers like Verizon don’t allow their phones to ever be unlocked, even if they are no longer under contract. MediaTek Dimensity and UNISOC Tiger processors have gained market share in recent years, and those chipmakers don’t publish the source code for their kernels like Qualcomm does for its Snapdragon processors. A few brands that use MediaTek SoC’s, such as Motorola, Xiaomi, Volla, Gigaset, TeraCube and Brax, do publish their kernel code, but that code for many other MediaTek phones will never get published, nor will custom ROMs be made for them. UNISOC processors are basically black boxes for the modding community. The bootloaders of all phones with Apple A-series, Huawei Kirin and recent Samsung Exynos processors are locked, so the modding community is restricted to just Qualcomm Snapdragon, Google Tensor and some MediaTek Dimensity processors. Motorola and Xiaomi have switched most of their budget model lines from Snapdragon to MediaTek Dimensity processors, so they are harder to mod.

Aside from the Motorola Moto G05, which was released in Jan 2025 and replaced 8 months later by the G06, there has not been a single budget phone released by a major phone maker in 2025 or 2026 that has gained official support by LineageOS. Gaining official LineageOS support is important, because many of the other custom ROMs are based on LineageOS and only port to its officially supported models. Just looking at phone models with official LineageOS support which allow their bootloaders to be unlocked, only about 20 million or 2% of smarphones sold each year are good for installing custom ROMs.

The situation is about to get much worse. Sadly, Oppo just announced that it will pull its OnePlus brand from the North American and European markets. OnePlus phones will still be sold in India and China (where the bootloader can be unlocked if the user presents an official Chinese ID card), but OnePlus is essentially gone for the modding community. Nothing, which was a rising star in the modding world, has been losing sales. The London-based company denies rumors that it will pull out of a third of the countries where it currently sells phones, but confirms that it plans to cut 100 jobs, which comprise 12% of its workforce. At any rate, none of the phones which Nothing has released in the last two years have gained official LineageOS support.

Samsung has been making it more and more difficult to mod its phones over the last decade, so the Korean company’s decision to lock the bootloader for all its phones getting its ONE UI 8 interface wasn’t a surprise, but Xiaomi’s decision to start restricting its bootloader unlock codes was a major blow for the modding community. The only major global brand left for modding is Motorola, but there are only unofficial ports available for recent Motorola models, meaning that some things don’t work correctly or security patches aren’t being provided. Motorola promises to launch phones with GrapheneOS in 2027, but they will be flagship models which probably cost over $1000 and be limited to a few select countries.

Aside from the Motorola Moto G15 (released in December 2024), people are unlikely to find a new phone where they can install an official LineageOS port for sale in Africa, most of Latin America (except Mexico) and most of Asia (except India, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia). The only option to run a custom ROM in most of the world is to buy a used Motorola or Xiaomi phone from a couple years ago, such as the Moto G (2024), Moto G32, Moto G34, Moto G84, POCO F5, POCO F5 Pro, POCO F6 Pro or Redmi Note 13 Pro. There are more recent phones like the Moto Edge 70, which have unofficial LineageOS ports, but it is a gamble if they will ever be officially supported by LineageOS.

As Google has pushed phone makers to support their phones for longer, many companies have decided to collect more personal data from their users for better targeted advertising and for training artificial intelligences. The smartphone industry is moving away from a business model based on planned obsolescence toward one based on surveillance capitalism, and the phone makers don’t want their users to opt out of the system, so they have removed the option to unlock the bootloader and made it harder to gain root access. That way they can recoup the cost of providing more years of support for their phones by monetizing their users’ data.

In addition, Google has made it harder to maintain custom ROMs, because it has moved more and more functionality from AOSP into its proprietary libraries and services (starting with Android 4.1 in 2012), and largely abandoned the development of many of the free/open source apps in AOSP in favor of its proprietary apps. Starting with AOSP 16 in 2025, Google stopped including the device trees and driver binaries for Pixel devices in AOSP, so ROM developers no longer had target devices, where they could easily test out and adapt the latest versions of AOSP on running hardware. Now custom ROM developers have to do painful trial and error to make the device trees for Pixel phones just like all the other phone brands. Google also squashed the kernel’s commit history, which makes it very difficult for ROMs like GrapheneOS to create their own custom kernels, because they can’t easily take new features, bug fixes and security patches from Google’s kernels.

Given how the smartphone industry is locking down their hardware and pushing business models that are inimical to users’ privacy, there is increased opportunity for Linux phones to be marketed to people who want to escape the Android/iOS duopoly and surveillance capitalism.

Three types of Linux phones are now possible

In the past, it was much harder to bring a Linux phone to market, but now there are three viable types of Linux phones that can be brought to market, and all of them have better prospects than in the past. The first type is the pure Linux phone which runs a Linux kernel, like the Librem 5, Liberty, PinePhone and PinePhone Pro. These phones previously didn’t have the processing power to offer the functionality that people expect in a smartphone. They often lacked components such image signal processors, audio digital signal processors, hardware video encoders, Vulkan graphics, neural processors and encryption engines, or they lacked the FOSS drivers to support those components. The RK3588S and the upcoming RK3668, however, will give pure Linux phones the processing power to be viable alternatives to Android and iOS phones for the first time.

The pure Linux phone is the riskiest type because it requires the most investment in engineering the hardware. Companies can’t just modify a reference phone design from Qualcomm or MediaTek or call up a phone ODM and ask them to modify one of their existing designs. They have to work with a design house or ODM that has some experience with radio frequencies to custom design a phone with 2 to 3 times more components than a standard smartphone. This means many iterations of the circuit board to get it right, and some kernel work to use all those different chips. It will take a long time to get to market, which can lead to customer complaints and reputational loss if using crowdfunding to finance the dev work.

The benefit of the pure Linux appoach is that it allows for true hardware kill switches that cut the current to separate components, rather than the use of pins on an integrated mobile SoC or software to turn off the WiFi/Bluetooth, cellular modem and GPS/GNSS. The second benefit is the ability to select components that have free/open source drivers, which allows for greater software freedom and more transparency to address security and privacy concerns. The use of proprietary blobs in the drivers often prevents the kernel from being upgraded because the blobs are often only compatible with a specific kernel version number, which allows the chipmakers to dictate the lifespan of devices. Another benefit of not using a reference design from an SoC maker or an ODM is the phone maker has full control over the design and can publish the schematics and board views for the circuit boards, so the hardware is as free as the software.

In the past, Qualcomm didn’t produce powerful Internet of Things processors with Linux support, but now it is possible to build a good Linux phone based on an Internet of Things processor, like the QCM6490 or QCM8850 with an integrated cellular modem. These Dragonwing processors are not as up-to-date as the latest Snapdragon processors, but most of them receive 10 years or 15 years of software support, and many of them will eventually get partial support in mainline Linux, so they can live on with community support after they are no longer supported by Qualcomm.

The third kind of Linux phone is built on an integrated mobile SoC, which runs a standard Linux stack on top of an Android kernel using libhybris to translate glib calls to Android’s Bionic. This used to not be a good option because Android SoC’s were not supported long enough for the long development cycles and lower annual sales of Linux phones, but now it is possible for the high-end processors that are getting 8 years of software support from Qualcomm and MediaTek.

This approach is the most economical way to bring a Linux phone to market, since many phone ODMs already have reference models available and are willing to work with phone sellers to tweek those models to their specifications. It is not impossible to work with an ODM to add privacy switches to a design, as Furi Labs demonstrated with its FLX1, but it takes longer to get a custom design to market, so it is important to select an SoC that gets 7 or 8 years of software support, so the phone will enjoy a reasonable lifespan.

It is no longer necessary for Linux phone companies to expend huge amounts of capital in developing mobile Linux, because there are now three good mobile interfaces—Phosh, Plasma Mobile and Lomiri—which offer a reasonably complete complement of applications, so hardware companies don’t need to risk bankruptcy developing the software like before. Because Phosh and now Plasma Mobile are based on a well-supported desktop stack and convergent applications, they will require much less work to maintain and it is easier and less costly to keep providing software updates for the phone. Companies offering Linux phones will still need to hire developers to work on things like power management and camera support, but they don’t have to bet the farm like Purism did with the Librem 5 or provide no software support as PINE64 did with the PinePhone and PinePhone Pro.

This reduction in software development costs, however, probably won’t result in more economical Linux phones. The shorter software support for the QMC4490 and the mid-range and low range Snapdragon and Dimensity processors rules out the making of an economical Linux phone. It is possible to make an upper mid-range Linux phone based on a Snapdragon 7 or Dimensity 8000 series processor, but it won’t support video out via DisplayPort Alt Mode over USB-C, so it can’t be used as a convergent PC, which is a major selling point for Linux phones. Given that the QMC6490 does support DisplayPort Alt Mode, it is probably the best option for making an upper mid-range phone.

Companies like Jolla, Furi Labs, Volla and Brax may choose to continue making mid-range Linux phones, but they will likely suffer from the same problem as the FLX1 and C2, where the Android kernel is unsupported and no longer getting security updates, so it is better to move up to a more expensive SoC that gets 8 years of support. Ideally, these companies will stop using MediaTek processors, and select Snapdragon processors that get partially supported in mainline Linux, so people can run a distro like Nura on them after they are no longer supported.

The real barrier holding back Linux phones is the companies

Now that the available SoC’s and software are no longer holding back the making of compelling Linux phones, the real barrier to creating a viable Linux phone market are the companies to make and sell those phones. There aren’t many companies with the experience and passion to make Linux phones, which historically have lost money.

PINE64 recently announced that it is pausing production of most of its devices due to the high prices of RAM and eMMC. Essentially PINE64 is admitting that it can’t raise the price of many of its products, because they don’t have the needed software support, so many people won’t pay elevated prices for them. It appears unlikely at this point that PINE64 will change its business model to pay for software developers to work on the kernels for its hardware, nor is it repairing its relationship with the distributions and volunteer developers who have abandoned the company, so it is unlikely to ever produce the rumored PinePhone 2 using the RK3566. In theory another community-based Linux hardware company could arise, that charges a bit more so it has the necessary funds to pay developers to work on the kernel support for the hardware, but it appears highly unlikely that another community-based hardware company like PINE64 will appear.

In contrast, Purism is clearly planning to produce a second version of its phone. In its July 2026 newsletter, Purism stated that it “is in the early stages of planning the Librem 5 v2 and Liberty 5 v2.” It is preparing a “crowdfunding campaign in the coming months” to “gauge customer interest and traction, which will help fund the production of our second version.” The problem is that Purism’s public reputation has been stained by its refusal to refund the Librem 5 backers who cancelled their orders. Refunding the 600 customers who are still waiting for their Librem 5 refunds would do a lot to restore the company’s public reputation, and it would cost the company less than $400k. Without taking that step, it seems unlikely that Purism will be able to crowdfund the “over $2 million” that it projects will be needed to produce its next Linux phone. Maybe Purism can charge a lesser amount (such as $99) to pre-order the phone, and then use those numbers to raise capital privately to develop the phone.

At any rate, the time and cost of producing the Librem 5 v2 will be much less than the first version of the phone, because Phosh and its applications have already been developed and the mainline Linux driver support for the RK3588S is already in a good state due to the last four years of work by Collabora. Hopefully, Purism will either provide funding or developers to help Collabora get the ISP and hardware video encoding working.

The challenge for Purism is that it also needs to finance the development of its next generation of Librem 14 notebook, Librem 11 tablet and Librem Mini. The Librem 11 and Mini are rebadged ODM designs, so they don’t require as much work, but the Librem 14 is a custom design, which requires quite a bit more work and financing to create. In addition, Purism reported in its July newsletter that it has been preapproved to get over $50 million in funding from the CHIPS Act to develop a Librem Core-V processor based on the RISC-V architecture, which will be a huge undertaking for the tiny company which doesn’t have any prior experience in chip design. Presumably, Purism will have to raise some matching funds to get the government funding for its chip project. In other words, many projects will be competing for Purism’s attention in the future, and the Librem 5 v2 could be neglected and postponed in favor of other products.

Presumably Dawndrums will launch a crowdfunding campaign once it has a working prototype of its RK3588S-based phone to show to the public, but the company based in Tunis has been very tight lipped about its future plans to bring the phone to market. There has been no news from Furi Labs about a new phone model to follow the FLX1s+. The implementation of Ubuntu Touch on the BraX3 phone has been stalled for months, and it appears that Brax Technologies is depending on the UBports community to finish the porting work. Volla Phone continues to offer Ubuntu Touch as an alternative operating system on its phones, but the German company’s primary focus is on developing its own Volla OS, which is an AOSP derivative oriented toward privacy.

Jolla is making the right moves to create a viable Linux phone market. The Finnish company says that it plans to move to mass production of its Jolla Phone, so the phone will be in stock, and to offer the phone to the North American market. However, many in the Linux community will be reluctant to embrace Jolla’s phones, because of the proprietary software in its Silica interface and its AppSupport (aka AlienDalvik) to run Android apps. People who believe in free and open source software won’t want to buy a phone from a company that has been violating the GPL 2.0 license by not published the kernel code for its Jolla C2 and Jolla Phone. In addition, these phones use UNISOC and MediaTek processors that don’t have any mainline Linux support, and they will probably have short lifespans, since their kernel are unlikely to ever be upgraded.

A critical factor in the success of Linux phones is publicizing the phones to attract the niche customers who care about Linux, software freedom, privacy or security. Liberux appears to have failed because it did such a poor job of publicizing its future NEXX phone and didn’t attract enough crowdfunding. Furi Labs similarly has done a very poor job of publicizing its phone, so that most Linux enthusiasts have never heard of the phone. Likewise, Dawndrums has done a very poor job of publicizing it development work on a future RK3588S phone. In contrast, Jolla has very effectively used social media to market its Jolla Phone to European customers.

There are several dozen companies that sell Linux PCs, which could potentially expand into the Linux phone market. Most of those companies, however, don’t have experience in the design of custom hardware. Most of them use standard notebook designs from one of the ODM’s that make specialty notebooks such as Clevo or Tongfang. Most of these companies also don’t have much experience doing kernel work, so they are probably better off just using a standard Android design provided by a phone ODM and installing Linux on top of Halium, so they can use a well-tested Android kernel and drivers.

There are also a number of companies that make Linux single board computers (SBC’s), who could potentially jump into the Linux phone market. They have more experience in working with Chinese and Taiwanese companies to design and produce custom hardware. They are better equipped to undertake the engineering challenges of entering the Linux phone market, but most of them do a poor job of engaging the community. Many companies which sell Linux SBC’s don’t have public forums for their customers and do a poor job of using social media and online advertising to promote their products.

Public opinion surveys show that people are increasingly aware that they are losing their privacy online. Ipsos polls found that 79% of global respondants and 84% of American respondants express worry about their online privacy. A Malwarebytes survey found that 89% of consumers are concerned regarding corporate and AI data misuse. 62% of Americans in a YouGov poll report worrying about how much personal data third parties have about them online. If Linux phones can be created that provide the same functionality and ease of use as Android or iOS phones, they could tap into that huge potential market of consumers who wish to preserve their privacy online. In order to appeal to mainstream users, Linux phones will need to support the usage of Android apps through Waydroid or a similar solution. In the same way that Murena and iodé sell AOSP phones which block third party trackers, Linux phones need to incorporate similar software.

The conditions may be ripe for Linux phones, but it is unclear whether the companies selling Linux phones will take advantage of those conditions to create a viable alternative to the current Android/iOS duopoly. For the sake of software freedom, online privacy and the greater longevity of mobile devices, a concerted push is needed to promote mobile Linux.