[SOLVED] Will Linux Phones ever become commercially viable and decrease to a price point of 200-400 USD?
[SOLVED] Will Linux Phones ever become commercially viable and decrease to a price point of 200-400 USD?
Don't say, hey android has Linux in it, yeah no, idc, I want to know how far we are from buying a Linux phone at a price point of 200 USD.
A Linux phone is one which is built completely on Linux, uses Linux apps and most important has a terminal.
I don't want a Linux Phone for privacy, although that's a great reason, but I want it for the freedom it provides me. Hell, I don't care if Android itself comes with a terminal and has similar features to Linux, I just want a Terminal which can install apps, where I can write commands and it will execute it. Complete Control on my phone and how it behaves is what I want.
I want to tell it when to sleep, when not to sleep, when to boot, when to edit a file and how, when to take a screenshot and what to do with it and where to save it, etc, etc. I hope you get the idea.
I have a feeling those budget phones around that price are sold at a loss and gain the money from selling user data. So I doubt it'd get down to that price
Outside of ads or razor thin margins, data profiling. They can recoup the costs from selling more expensive and premium smartphones. A new entrant in the market catering to a niche is unlikely to do so.
Probably not what you meant, but you can buy a Nexus 5x on eBay for $200 and flash Ubuntu's mobile is to it.
Yes, no, maybe, depending on what exactly you mean.
- A phone that is comparable in specs to a similarly priced Android and runs native Linux without tricks: This is not going to happen ever.
- An Android phone that can be hacked into running Linux with tricks: Yeah, that exists, but it's DIY. There are a lot of cheap phones that you can e.g. install PostmarketOS on.
- A phone that runs native Linux without tricks for that price point: Yeah, that's called a Pinephone, and it's pretty much that.
There are two main issues, why a Linux phone with good specs and without tricks and with full, real Linux is impossible:
- Linux phones got a tiny market share and due to the natural monopoly of operating systems and app stores, that's not gonna change any time soon.
- SoC manufacturers have a different way of working than PC part manufacturers. For example, they won't upgrade the Linux kernel/drivers necessary. Because of that, my phone (Fairphone 4), which came out in 2021 and runs Android 12 still uses the 4.19.157 kernel, even though 4.19 came out in 2018. And even of the 4.19 version, the newest revision is 228, and I'm still running 157. They didn't even bother upgrading the revision number. Stuff like that doesn't fly on decent native Linux. And SoC manufacturers will not support newer kernels if it's only for <3% of the market share or some miniscule number like that.
Do you think that might change with risc-v? As in, it would be more likely to have open source code and community support for kernel updates
I don't think so, no.
What causes the situation currently is not ARM, but the companies making SoCs.
Currently, with RISC-V, we are seeing early-adopter trial runs by early-adopter companies. None of the usual suspects have any amount of serious skin in the game.
When Qualcomm is making mass-market high-performance RISC-V SoCs, they will treat them exactly the way they are treating their equivalent ARM SoCs right now.
Seems like Android which supports a broad range of Terminal commands is the best next thing.
Termux is the best i could get. You can run a lot of apps, compile with clang; use vim, emacs and nano; run XFCE with the help of X server(maybe running locally ny XSDL app), run proot distros like ubuntu debian arch and all, use ffmpeg, and with extension apps like Termux:API you can use more android permission to do things like initiate a call with a command. You may use termux:widget and termux:float or maybe even termux:boot and do a lot of things there
You can toss BusyBox on Android and have most of the commands you are used to. It has been a long, long time since I have done Android development (Android 7 was the last version I developed on), but back then, Android didn't have bash. It was ash. So very similar, but you are missing some things.
If you want just an user-land mostly-compatible system, that's pretty much it.
You can use Termux which proots if you don't have root.
If you have root, you can use something like Linuxdeploy (which is seriously outdated, but if you know what you do, you can update the Linux installation in there). This gives you a chroot-based Linux with shell and GUI over VNC and root. It's able to play almost everything you want.
On my installation (Ubuntu 22.04 with XFCE) I even got FEX to work, which allows me to run x86/x64 Linux programs. Then I installed x64 Wine and now I can run Windows x64 apps on my phone.
I didn't see anyone mention SailfishOS.
I bought a Jolla Mobile with SailfishOS when they came out and I LOVED it. It's a fast smooth beautiful user interface, has Android app support, and truly is Linux. Like, it comes with a Terminal, full root access is easy to unlock, uses BtrFS, Wayland, the Linux standard hierarchy... It was wonderful.
The Jolla Mobile is pretty old now, but I think there are still phones you can get it on.
Before the rise of Android and ios I'd have said it was possible, but the goal posts have shifted pretty far. Unless something backed by a corporate entity or government rises Up, it's a no. A chromeos type thing for smartphone is not going to happen for mass market, because there is already Android.
Discounting Android, the last mile of what a smartphone is capable of can not be accomplished in Foss manner, without end to end verified OS images and some kind of secure enclave for banking and "security" features, carriers and banks are not going to get on board any more. Convenience features like DRM video streaming, casting also probably are not achievable either
True, with the goalposts. Nowadays we are happy if we can root/custom ROM and are still able to access our banking apps.
I think you're totally right! It's kinda hard to use banking apps with a custom ROM already.. Unless some big corporation makes a move into something different we're gonna be stucked in the iOS and Android chains ..In that case I wish Microsoft would have been successful with their mobile OS so other companies had the guts to launch their own and compete in a more fragmented market
I think that I would be a close to ideal candidate for a Linux phone, because I use my phone for so few things.
That being said, the few things I do use it for are absolutely essential for me, as in I must have them to function throughout the day, and I am not interested in having multiple devices I need to carry to do them. Those are as follows:
- A quality OSM map/nav app.
- A Discord app.
- A Matrix client and an XMPP app.
- A fast browser.
- A quality media player.
Most those have something on a Linux phone, but they are either slow, buggy, of missing features, at least as far as I know.
There are other issues too though, so far Linux phones seem to be slow and buggy from the reviews I've seen.
But the ecosystem is a bigger issue. One of the nice things about being on an unlocked android phone running GraphenOS or Lineage is that you not only have access to most of the official Android app ecosystem, but also to the thousands of apps in the unofficial fdroid ecosystem and naked APK ecosystem.
So you get overall so much more than just Android, which is already a lot.
Switching to a Linux phone severely limits you on that ecosystem, because many desktop Linux apps won't run at all on a Linux phone OS.
Another user here pointed out the similarity to Microsoft's Windows phones that they tried to enter the market with years ago.
I had two of them, and honestly, I absolutely loved them. The hardware was sleek and powerful, everything that made Windows 8 suck on desktop was actually awesome on mobile. The only issue was, MS didn't deliver on the app ecosystem. There were a few dozen popular apps that were ported over from Android, and many of those were buggy or had limited features. That killed the phones hardcore. Who wants to use a phone that looks nice and runs fast, but only has a few apps that you need?
Would you buy a super powerful and sexy gaming computer that could only play 10-20% of your game library?
Personally, I would prefer to see the teams that are developing Linux phone OSes stop working on those projects and switch over to fully custom and FOSS Android versions. Similar to what we have now with different companies' Android versions. But instead of the main differences being icon themes and bloatware, make them more varied like distros.
KDE Android, Ubuntu Android, Arch Droid, etc.
Have them focus on making their Android distros fast and feature-full. People could then have android powered tablets and car consoles that are compatible with Linux and other unofficial versions of Android.
I would love to have a KDE Android phone that is 100% integrated with a custom KDE Android car console. It would be a FOSS version of Android Auto. Imagine being able to remotely transfer files from my Linux PC to my car, both running KDE connect. Syncing them together to update my OSM custom maps. I could install Finamp on my car's console and stream my Jellyfin music to it while navigating using Magic Earth or OSMand on a nice big screen.
I can keep dreaming...
I hoped for that when PinePhone came out but now I don't know. PinePhone should be easy to clone so I hoped more similar devices will start to show up and we will see some competition and progress but as far as I know PinePhone is still the only device like that. So couple years after it was released Linux on mobile still barely works. You can get Volla Phone with Ubuntu Touch and, according to their page, you will have issues with incoming and outgoing calls. Not really what I'm looking for in a phone... And then we have the issue with apps. What I'm actually using my Android phone for:
- banking apps 2FA
- electric car charging - my home charger, all networks of public chargers and my car itself use android apps
- moonboard app
- signal
- GPS
Those features are why I have a mobile phone. Everything else I can do in my PC. None of those things will have dedicated Linux app except maybe for Signal but as of today even Signal doesn't have a mobile Linux app. GPS still have issues in most Linux phones. So as of today, years after PinePhone was release Linux phones are still useless to me. Maybe one day Android emulation will work well enough to support all those things but today it's also not a real option. I'm willing to use 'crippled' phone for some time (same as I was using Linux desktop back when it didn't have many popular apps) but as of today Linux phone would be a hobby project and I still would have to do everything on Android phone so it's not a great option. And I'm not sure this will change in the next 5 years.
PinePhone is $150. The more appealing option long term will be getting Linux running well on old Android phones though, as they are available used for $100 or less and have better specs. Often better specs than even the $400 PinePhone Pro, which is the most powerful designed-for-Linux phone I know of.
I'm typing this on a OnePlus 6T running postmarketOS. I paid somewhere around $125 for this phone, with box and accessories and in very good condition. It has an 8 core processor, 6GB RAM, Vulkan-capable Adreno 630 GPU, better WiFi/Bluetooth than either PinePhone, much better battery life, and a very nice OLED screen.
It's not all perfect yet though. It doesn't support VoLTE yet in Linux, so you have to force 2G mode to be able to receive calls and texts. Call audio is sometimes missing. No camera support. No USB host mode support. Sensors are WIP, but I'm testing the merge request for them and rotation works.
I ran a PinePhone and then a Pro for a year each. I think I prefer the OnePlus 6T experience. If they get the modem issue figured out it will be an amazing option.
"Android" phones can sometimes have "close to mainline" Linux distributions flashed onto them. You can get some of those, used, for less than 100$.
A custom Android rom would provide you with a decent chunk of the freedom you want in a mobile device.
A phone specifically built for Linux, with as much as possible FLOSS firmware, will cost a lot more. The cheapest is probably the PinePhone.
Unless people pay for the hardware and software development to happen, Linux phones will never be as feature complete as Android or iPhones, so people will not buy as many, so the prices will not go down.
Also, I gotta disagree reeeeaaal hard with the sentiment in the comments here that Android is Linux since you can slap a terminal on it. Excuse me, but where's the GNU?
Excuse me, but where’s the GNU?
Your expectations around price are unrealistic unfortunately.
And you can use a terminal with stock Android. Although you'll probably need to root it to do anything useful.
My big killer feature for Linux phones is running Wayland/X11 apps mostly unmodified, if AOSP added support for that I wouldn't be too disappointed about sticking with it. I've tried to make android apps before, but doing things the Android Way™ basically requires you to use java and their bespoke UI primitives, and it always makes me wish I could just use the tools I'm already used to.
Being able to have intricate control over my phone is nice, but I'd rather do it with a KDE-like settings maze than a terminal because of how tiny the screen is, and if I'm doing something serious that would require a terminal I would rather do it at my desk.
I definitely think the Android ecosystem has some serious problems, but I already run a custom ROM without Google Play Services installed so I'm fairly well-insulated from that. I do plan on installing a mobile Linux system on my old phone to experiment, but I doubt it will become my system of choice.
Note: Linux phones are notoriously insecure (source)
yeah, now I am not buying it lol. I wanted a daily driver not a phone for some habit :(
For most linux users I'd say less security is a necessary evil. Security hardening is a tradeoff and I'd guess most people dont want their systems to be as locked down as ios or android. Or even modern MacOS, there are quite a lot of modifications that will require you to turn of System Integrity Protection, which blocks modifications of system files in normal use.
But how much software is ARM compatible though? Since Android is also free and open source (Google apps are closed and has closed aspects), I don’t see Linux phone ever being cheaper than they would otherwise be running Android. A 200-400$ Android phone today is basically a year or two old or just garbage.
Honestly, I disagree about cheap android phones being shite. I have a redmi note 10 pro and it genuinly is a very impressive phone especially for the money. I bought it new when it came out and it wasn't expensive at all.
Pinephone is barely usable as is They need to ve functional first