Know any non Librem5 PinePhone for Mobile Linux? Legacy devices too!

What a coincidence. I have a Samsung Galaxy III Mini in front of me that I installed Postmarket OS on the other day. It's so satisfying to be able to view this phone as a normal computing device instead of a locked down phone.

And the installation process was so easy. No fiddling around "rooting" a phone - just "pmbootstrap init" and answer a few questions.

I've not actually used it as a phone yet, so for me so far the usefullness is limited, but I read it works, and I can write graphics to the framebuffer. Of my own phone! How cool is that!

It also boots into a variety of desktops in various states of usability.

Keep an eye out for the Pinephone Pro.

https://www.pine64.org/pinephonepro/

It's still not crazy-fast, but it's definitely more competitive than the original PinePhone.

> Rockchip RK3399S 64bit SoC – 2x A72 and 4x A53 CPU cores @ 1.5GHz

> ARM Mali T860 4x core GPU @ 500MHz

> 4GB LPDDR4 @ 800MHz

> 128GB eMMC flash storage

> Optional micro SD card (SDXC up-to 2TB)

> 6″ 1440 x 720 in-cell IPS with Gorilla Glass 4™

> 3MP Sony IMX258 main camera

> 5MP OmniVision OV5640 front-facing camera

> Samsung J7 form-factor 3000mAh

> $399

The OnePlus 6/6T on postmarket are pretty close to daily driver ready

They're fast, stable, and if you can live without camera, cellular and fast charging, (which yes, I realize means it's more like a tiny tablet than a phone) everything works beautifully.

EDIT: Cellular Data works, just not phone calls, so if you have a low latency/reliable 4G connection you could make VoIP work probably :)

> I have not seen any love for the Cosmo's mobile linux hardware.

This is because they lack the main advantage of L5 an PP: all free drivers allowing to run mainline Linux kernel (or install other operating systems) and therefore guaranteeing lifetime updates. Lack of planned obsolescence and verifiable security. Same with the other hardware.

More reasons: https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Freque....

SailfishOS is officially supported on a number of different Sony mobiles (e.g. X, XA2 range, 10 and 10 II ranges). All these devices continue to receive updates.

SailfishOS is not completely FLOSS, but it's real Linux, and it's polished enough to be a daily driver (I've been using it for 7 years).

> I think there is too much bias and assumptions that only those 2 are "Linux phones".

And there's a good reason for that. I'm in mobile GNU/Linux space since 2008 when I got my Neo Freerunner and I've been involved in many mobile GNU/Linux projects since, so I've seen plenty of approaches being tried and tested. postmarketOS has made amazing progress, but it would be nowhere near as far as it is right now without native devices which facilitated software progress the most (even inside postmarketOS itself). Why? Porting is always a game of catch-up which more often than not gets abandoned before getting complete as people move to more recent devices and the cycle starts anew. In contrast, devices like Librem 5 or PinePhone (and Freerunner or to some extent even N900 in the past) offer either a good support from the start, or at least a clear maintainable path forward for things that don't work yet, which is something you don't get at all when you have to rely on bits of Android infrastructure.

It isn't a coincidence that there are only two phones in the "main" category of postmarketOS-supported devices: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices

Nokia N900 Motorola Droid 4

For these two, see https://maemo-leste.github.io/

You can text and use gps on both of them, as well as make voice calls on the Motorola Droid 4 (calls work on N900, but you need complex audio routing and audio filtering. If anyone has experience with Linux audio, the project will appreciate their assistance)

Yes, they both have non-free PowerVR GPU, but its blobs work on Linux mainline, at least

The Poco does not have working calls or camera, the redmi seems a lot more reasonable though.

As for the cosmos, from what I've heard their linux support is lackluster (as in non-mainline and with a bunch of functionality missing) but that might be outdated. Anyone has first-hand experience?

> the Cosmo's mobile linux hardware

I haven't used a Cosmo; perhaps it's better. I do, however, own a Gemini (the first generation of that series), which is the reason I don't own a Cosmo.

> https://store.planetcom.co.uk/products/gemini-pda-1

This is actually a great example with which to answer your question. So this device, the Gemini, sells today, in 2021, for $680.00 (or right now $400 with a black Friday deal). The most recent Android version for it is an Android 8.1 image from 2019[0], using a kernel that doesn't even try to match upstream, also last touched in 2019[1]. Now, they ship an official Debian image, which is super cool! Of course, it still uses the same ancient out-of-tree kernel, and they somehow managed to ship an official image with apt broken. To reiterate: This is the best software officially available for that device, which they are still selling for $680. Okay, so forget the vendor; maybe others have filled in its failures? Well... XDA is dead [2], and PMOS is doing better but the device is still mostly broken[3] and running the same ancient kernel[4].

So: Having owned a Gemini, I decided that unless I had some specific reason to think the situation was going to be better, I wasn't going to waste money on another Planet Computers product. And to your general question, AFAIK this is the reason in general why Pine and Librem as such a big deal: The software doesn't suck; you have an actual hope for getting updates and things working nicely. Hallium might let you use something better than Android, but it still kinda sucks because it just lets you bolt a nicer userspace to the awful base that the vendors ship.

[0] https://support.planetcom.co.uk/index.php/Gemini_Firmware

[1] https://github.com/dguidipc/gemini-android-kernel-3.18

[2] https://forum.xda-developers.com/f/planet-gemini-pda-roms-ke...

[3] https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Planet_Computers_Gemini_P...

[4] https://gitlab.com/postmarketOS/pmaports/-/blob/master/devic...

Maybe an alternative: Xiaomi Mi A2 with CalyxOS (https://calyxos.org/)

I bought a OnePlus 6 for this exact reason. I think a OnePlus 5(t) would work better since the notch gets in the way on the 6(t)!

the Redmi 2 is a Qualcomm msm8916 device. That SoC is already well mainlined, for anybody wanting to get an idea about mobile linux, pick a phone of that SoC class (most manufacturers had them) because they're the cheapest at ~30 bucks. It will not be very performant (feels like I/O mostly), but still impressive using phosh for the first time in this formfactor.

What I had read was that Cosmo used Mediatek, who was hostile to openness.

HP Touchpad