Posted inNews

Purism shows off new features coming to PureOS for the Librem 5 smartphone (camera software, wireless toggles, screen rotation and more)

The next major release of the PureOS operating system that ships with the Librem 5 smartphone will bring a number of new features and improvements. Code-named Byzantium, the new version of PureOS will bring a handful of new applications plus user interface tweaks that let you do things like enable automatic screen rotation, toggle WiFi, […]

Posted inNews

News roundup: Updates for JingOS and Phosh, notes on PinePhone keyboard hacking

Developers at Purism have released a new version of the Phosh user interface for Linux phones, bringing bug fixes, usability improvements, and several other changes to this phone shell used by multiple smartphone Linux distributions including some versions of postmarketOS (which recently celebrated its fourth birthday, by the way). Meanwhile, the folks at Jingling have […]

Posted inNews

Lilbits: Linux phones and laptops, gaming on the Surface Duo, and is Netflix the Netflix for games?

Every time a company launches a game subscription service that lets you play a library of games for a monthly fee, it invariably gets referred to as a Netflix-for-games model. Now it looks like the real Netflix for games could be… Netflix. The company is reportedly looking to hire an executive to head up a […]

Posted inNews

Lilbits: Clubhouse for Android, Allwinner’s RISC-V chips, and Galaxy Z Fold3 and Z Flip2 leaks

Audio-only social network Clubhouse has been grabbing a lot of headlines over the past few months. But it’s also been an iOS-only app… until now. The developers have begun a limited beta test of Clubhouse for Android, and it’s expected to become more widely available in the coming months. No screenshots of the Android app […]

Posted inNews

Librem 5 smartphone gets a price hike and shipping delay in response to global component shortages

There’s a global chip shortage affecting a wide range of industries including personal computers automobiles, and niche devices like the Precursor, and Pocket P.C. handheld computing devices and the Analogue Pocket handheld game system. The latest fallout? Purism is pausing shipments of its Librem 5 Linux smartphone until this fall, and customers who place new […]

Posted inNews

Disk encryption, GPS, new apps and settings coming to the Librem 5 with PureOS

Purism’s Librem 5 smartphone ships with a custom GNU/Linux distribution called PureOS. It’s the same software that runs on Purism’s Linux laptops, but it’s been adapted to work with phones like the Librem 5. So far there are some key features that haven’t worked yet. Now Purism is announcing it’ll enable some of those things […]

Posted inNews

Lilbits: Linux phones and laptops, S-Pen for more phones, and an RK3566 single-board computer

Pine64, the company behind a line of geeky, inexpensive, and hackable smartphones, laptops, and single-board computers designed to run open source software tend to only publish one blog post each month. But it’s always a doozy, and the January update is no exception. Among other things, Pine64 unveiled that The next PinePhone Community Edition smartphone […]

Posted inFeatured, News

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 […]

Posted inNews

Lilbits: ARM computers, Linux phones, and the Pixel 2 rides off into the sunset

After rocking a Google Pixel 2 as my primary smartphone for the past three years, I took advantage of a Google Fi Black Friday promotion and traded in my phone for a brand new Pixel 4a 5G for $298 after trade-in. There were two reasons I decided the time was right to upgrade. First, my […]