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Roundup: Librem 5, Precursor, Fedora, Gentoo, Nemo Mobile, and GNOME 40

Developer Martign Braam, who created the Megapixels camera app and many other Linux apps for the PinePhone, PineTab, and other mobile Linux devices, recently wrote an article asking whether folks who are buying Linux phones really want Linux phones. As I’ve mentioned, folks who are looking for an Android or iOS-like experience with access to […]

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Linux smartphone news roundup: Xfce for phones, browser and camera updates, and more

There’s a new Linux distribution for smartphones that’s the first I’m aware of to be based on the Xfce desktop environment, but while the first pre-release builds of ExpidusOS for the PinePhone are now available for download, there’s still a lot of work to be done to make it into a usable operating system. It […]

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Future PinePhones will ship with Manjaro and Plasma Mobile (and other updates on the keyboard, modem firmware, and more)

After shipping five different PinePhone Community Edition models, each with a different operating system and/or user interface pre-installed, Pine64 ended the Community Edition program this month. So what’s next? A few things: Pine64 has announced that future PinePhones will ship with Manjaro Linux and the KDE Plasma Mobile user interface pre-installed. If you already have […]

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Pinephone software updates: Manjaro releases daily builds, postmarketOS gets easier to install to internal storage

Developers for two different smartphone Linux distributions have announced updates in the past few days that make it easier to install and/or try out new features on the PinePhone. PostmarketOS Installer One of my favorite things about the PinePhone is how easy it is to try out different operating systems. Just download the latest build […]

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PinePhone news roundup (1-24-2021)

It’s been a busy week for PinePhone hardware and software developers. If you’ve been following LinuxSmartphone on Twitter you may have noticed that developers have made progress in making several different Linux distributions more usable, while other developers have been working to bring open source firmware to the PinePhone’s modem. The PinePhone KDE Community Edition […]

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Can a Linux phone replace my iPhone or Android device?

Google and Apple have come to dominate the smartphone space in recent years, but there are a small (but growing) number of phones that ship with GNU/Linux-based operating systems instead. At the same time, there a growing number of Linux distributions designed to run on smartphones. There are currently at least 17 different software releases […]

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Lilbits: Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G leaked, a new Manjaro build for phones, and used phone shipments are up

Samsung is holding an event on January 14 to officially launch its Galaxy S21 smartphone lineup. But images and details have been leaking for some time. Now Evan Blass has released a high-res picture showing the Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G from multiple angles and without any watermarks. But are new phones a hot commodity anymore? […]

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There’s a new Manjaro ARM Lomiri dev build for the PinePhone

Manjaro is one of the most popular desktop Linux operating systems, and it’s increasingly becoming one of the most versatile GNU/Linux distributions for smartphones as well. The PinePhone Manjaro Community Edition smartphone that shipped a few months ago came with Manjaro ARM software featuring the phosh user interface pre-installed. The PinePhone KDE Community Edition phone […]

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Lilbits: Snapdragon 888 is almost here, a 4K video editor that fits on a 1.44 MB floppy, and Linux phones are real PCs

Qualcomm introduced the Snapdragon 888 processor earlier this month, promising big boost in CPU and graphics performance and energy efficiency. Last week the company shared some initial benchmarks that help make the case, (but which also show that Qualcomm’s next-gen chip is only somewhat competitive with Apple’s previous-gen processor). But when will you actually be […]