The JingPad A1 is a tablet with an 11 inch AMOLED display, support for pen and touch input, and an optional keyboard cover that lets you use it like a laptop. The JingPad A1, which is up for pre-order from Indiegogo for $549 and up is one of the only tablets designed to ship with a GNU/Linux distribution rather than iPadOS, Android, or Windows.

It ships with JingOS, an Ubuntu-based operating system designed by Chinese company Jingling that incorporates elements of Plasma Mobile as well as a custom user interface. The tablet isn’t expected to ship to backers until October, but Kingling sent a pre-release sample to TechHut, which has posted the first English-language hands-on video to YouTube.

Here’s a roundup of recent mobile Linux news from around the internet.

JingPad A1 – Hands On Review – ARM Linux Tablet with JingOS [TechHut/YouTube]
One of the first third-party looks at the JingPad A1 Linux tablet looks at the pre-release hardware and JingOS 0.91 software experience with some basic testing of app installation, the keyboard, camera, and more.

Maui 2 Beta packages are coming soon [@maui_project]
The Maui framework enables convergent apps that adapt to different screen sizes for desktop or mobile use. Beta 2 is coming in August, and more details should be available in the next regular update from the Maui blog.

The latest Pinephone keyboard prototype [megi]
The latest PinePhone Keyboard prototypes feature a series of improvements and seem to work well with Megi’s open source firmware. Images, video, and schematics. Martijn Braam also has the latest prototype. Unless testers encounter unforeseen problems, the PinePhone Keyboard should be available for purchase soon for around $50. 

Maemo Leste ported to the Moto Droid 3 [@maemoleste]
This open source continuation of the Maemo operating system originally developed by Nokia now runs on this 10-year-old smartphone with a slide-out keyboard.

Sailfish OS for the PinePhone bug fix: headphone detection now works [@adampigg]
The port of SailfishOS for the PinePhone can now detect when you’ve plugged in headphones and route the audio to them.

Nemomobile in July/2021 part two [Jozef Milch]
Nemo Mobile, which is an open source GNU/Linux distribution that uses Mer as its base (like Sailfish). But while Sailfish has a proprietary user interface, Nemo uses the open source Glacier UX. It’s also a lot less far along in development, but developers have been making big progress this month, with fixes for the keyboard and notifications and initial support for telephony (SMS and phone calls – albeit without sound, so it’s still very much a work in progress). You can download recent builds for the PinePhone at GitHub. 

You can keep up on the latest Linux smartphone news by following Linux Smartphones on Facebook and Twitter or by subscribing to our RSS feed.

Support Liliputing

Liliputing's primary sources of revenue are advertising and affiliate links (if you click the "Shop" button at the top of the page and buy something on Amazon, for example, we'll get a small commission).

But there are several ways you can support the site directly even if you're using an ad blocker* and hate online shopping.

Contribute to our Patreon campaign

or...

Contribute via PayPal

* If you are using an ad blocker like uBlock Origin and seeing a pop-up message at the bottom of the screen, we have a guide that may help you disable it.

Subscribe to Liliputing via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 9,547 other subscribers