linux

The dream of a truly free as in speech, open source smartphone running Linux has never truly died. It just took on various forms and suffered numerous setbacks along the way. Last year, however, it seemed that the dream is finally close to becoming reality, with both the Purism Librem 5 and the PINE64 PinePhone declaring shipping dates. The Librem 5 had a rocky head start and now it's the PinePhone BraveHeart edition's turn to try convincing the world that a Linux phone for consumers is not such a bad idea after all.

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Computing and manufacturing have changed so much that things that were almost impossible to do unless you were a giant corporation are now something hobbyists accomplish in their spare time. That apparently includes making computers the size of business cards. No, this is far from being a Raspberry Pi clone that is the size of a hundred business cards stacked on top of each other. This computer that runs Linux is really a business card, the type that you give out for free to impress people and impressed they probably will be.

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There are currently two open source Linux phones trying to make their way into regular consumers' hands and one of them is getting all the spotlight but not all for good reasons. Although it was the first to launch and, on paper, has the better specs, Purism's Librem 5 is garnering some controversy, raising questions on its capability to ship a finished product in a few months. As if it didn't have enough to worry about, Purism just started pre-orders for a version of the Librem 5 that's 100% made in the USA and costs three times the regular Librem 5 that has yet to ship in its final form.

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Android and iOS may be the mobile platforms today but there have always been attempts to push other horses into the race. Most of them used the Linux kernel just like Android but a few were more direct efforts to bring some of the Linux desktop stack to mobile in one form or another. Thanks to changes in the industry, particularly in electronic components and production, there has been a steady rise of such attempts to create true Linux and truly open source phones, with Purism's Librem 5 and PINE64's PinePhone leading the way. These are primarily targeted at a small hobbyist market and at users that value privacy and security above all else. But while those are valid and desirable goals, it's actually important that these Linux phones become more mainstream in order to cultivate a healthier and better mobile market in general.

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When smartphones first arrived, it was perhaps not that strange that the devices ran programs that were vastly different from the ones our computers. The portable bricks were different enough to bypass our expectations of computers and we were perfectly fine with having disconnected experiences between the two. These days, however, both devices and users have changed and some do want to have the exact same apps on both their smartphones as well as computers. Neither Android nor iOS have been able to fully accomplish that but one still experimental phone is close to making that geek dream come true.

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Huawei has once again narrowly dodged the bullet for another three months but that only means its ordeal will have no finality in its ordeal with the US government. Of course, it has to keep chugging along in spite of all the uncertainty and prove to the world it can still put out products that will make consumers wish the company wasn't in that much trouble. That is pretty much the setting of the Huawei's multi-product announcement that introduces the MatePad Pro tablet and MateBook D 15 laptop to the world.

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Linux users keeping tabs on the smartphone market may have long been wishing for an honest to goodness non-Android Linux phone. That almost came to be with Ubuntu Touch but Canonical sadly saw no profit to be made there. That mission has then been left to smaller companies that prize principles over profits, manufacturing and selling computing devices that value security and privacy more than anything else. One of those is PINE64 whose PinePhone is just a month away from becoming reality.

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Making smartphones is hard business, especially if you're not a giant like Samsung or even someone smaller like Motorola. It becomes even more difficult when you're using a combination of hardware and software that no other company uses, specifically those geared towards open source solutions and privacy. With that in mind, it's not hard to imagine that Purism would run into issues even as the first batches of its Linux-powered privacy-focused Librem 5 phone. That's exactly what happened but the small company is confident it can course-correct after just one slight delay.

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Over the weekend, Samsung sent a relatively small number of its customers an email that they probably didn't want to read on a weekend or on a weekday. The company was put its Linux on DeX beta program to rest and not because it was graduating to a stable release. On the contrary, Samsung was ending the program completely. It may have had a small number of users but LoD, as it was known, was well-loved by those because of what it enabled. Fortunately, there are other ways to carry on that promise in a hopefully more sustainable and more future-proof way.

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There is a lot of buzz going on around smartphone displays and cameras in the past few months but, for all the advancements in mobile technology, there is one issue that the market has not yet fully resolved. Perhaps except for Apple, user privacy is often just an afterthought among the major manufacturers and platform developers in the consumer tech market. That's why its up to smaller players like Purism, whose Librem 5 Linux phone has started shipping to backers, to make privacy the number one bullet point on its feature list.

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There have been attempts at making and selling source open source-friendly devices, from desktops to tablets to, of course, smartphones. There are even open source and privacy-oriented smart speakers. All that's missing is a smartwatch, one that's not just a smartwatch OS slapped in proprietary hardware. Rising to that challenge is Pine64, creators of a line of ARM-powered open source friendly computing products. While it says that PineTime smartwatch is just a side project, interest could catapult it to an actual product in the very near future.

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Ever since Huawei was put on the US' blacklist, the future of its products has been put into question. The company has more or less bragged about its self-sufficiency in terms of hardware components but software, especially mobile, is a different story. The company has been reportedly looking for alternative operating systems to put on its devices and it seems it may have settled on Linux for some of its laptops being sold in China.

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