Lilbits: New (old) games for feature phones, a fanless Ryzen mini PC and Jolla finally turns a profit

KaiOS is a Linux-based operating system that powers more than 150 million feature phones. It’s not considered a full-fledged smartphone operating system due to limited functionality and limited support for third-party apps. But it brings features like a web browser, media player, and some apps to cheap phones that may not have touchscreen displays.

And now KaiOS users can run two popular (if somewhat dated) games on KaiOS phones: Fruit Ninja and Jetpack Joyride.

In other recent tech news from around the web, Prime Computers has released it’s first fanless mini PC with an AMD Ryzen processor… but maybe not the Ryzen processor you were hoping for. Canonical has pushed out a new point release for Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. And the company behind the Linux-based Sailfish OS for smartphones has finally turned a profit 10 years after its founding.

Here’s a roundup of recent tech stories.

• Fruit Ninja and Jetpack Joyride now available for 150 million KaiOS-enabled devices [KaiOS]
  Are these games still popular titles in 2021? They’re 10+ years old at this point. Still, the line between smart & feature phones looks a little narrower. But that’s not shocking, since KaiOS is basically a fork of Mozilla’s discontinued smartphone operating system known as Firefox OS. 
• AMD-powered PrimeMini Connect [FanlessTech]
  The PrimeMini Connect is a fanless mini PC with an AMD Ryzen Embedded R1606G processor. While it’s the company’s first fanless PC with a Ryzen chip, that 25W dual-core chip is an older model released in 2019.
• Ubuntu 20.04.3 released [DistroWatch]
  The update brings bug fixes and support for newer hardware to the popular GNU/Linux distribution. The Linux 5.11 HWE (hardware enablement kernel) is also available, and many other packages have been updated.
• After ten years, Sailfish OS maker Jolla is finally profitable [LinuxSmartphones]
  Started a decade ago by a group of former Nokia employees, Jolla built Sailfish OS out of the ashes of the Linux-based MeeGo operating system that Nokia abandoned when the company switched to Windows Phone. Microsoft eventually acquired Nokia’s smartphone business… but it didn’t go well and Windows for phone is now dead. But Sailfish OS? That’s still a thing. And now the company that makes it has turned a profit for the first time. 

You can also find the latest news about open source phones by following our sister site LinuxSmartphones on Facebook and Twitter.