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.
Maui 2 Beta packages are coming soon with the new Maui Report blog post!
After three months of development the.Maui Apps and MauiKit Frameworks will be released in early August.#mauikit #maui #convergent #kde #pinephone #nitrux pic.twitter.com/Gzkjn5sRDK— Maui Project (@maui_project) July 28, 2021
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.
The next revision of the PinePhone keyboard, this one is actually nice to type on 😀 pic.twitter.com/kvkiQ2jNA6
— Martijn Braam (@braam_martijn) July 26, 2021
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.
New device port (Motorola Droid 3 – XT862) with big milestone: from kexec to mainline with 3D, wifi, keyboard and more. pic.twitter.com/RoDuxVordA
— Maemo Leste (@maemoleste) July 23, 2021
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.
#Pinephone #SailfishOS headphone detection and routing now working 😀 🎧 @thepine64 @JollaHQ pic.twitter.com/qrITk4vNt7
— Adam Pigg (@adampigg) July 24, 2021
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.
There were so many changes in @nemomobile in July that I had to write second blog post. It is becoming usable on @thepine64 #PinePhone. @ManjaroLinuxARM is inside.https://t.co/ntcIkHFPz4 pic.twitter.com/Vf4NjeXJ5M
— Jozef Mlich (@xmlich02) July 28, 2021
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.