I've been looking at Linux phone options for a while now. This one is crowd funded, so I'm waiting to see if it actually materializes.
Some things that buyers might want to consider: Supply Chain Security - Do you trust the manufacturer? What about their suppliers? What about their government? Pretty much every government in the world has mandated access to mobile phone activities, so choose which government you want to have this access. Spain is part of the EU, so you get the bonus of both their national government, and the EU having full access to your private communications under their rules for doing so.
I've backed a different EU alt-hardware project before and it's always more tricky to make a product than it seems.
The other project already had finalized most of the design (which took years of work prior to crowdfunding), had multiple assembled prototypes, and were promising shipping in 6 months. It turned out to take 2 to 3 years between all the component delays, negotiating with manufacturers, getting production lines set up, hardware certification, fixing design flaws, yelling at manufacturers for doing something wrong. Some of these delays probably could've been avoidable but there truly seemed to be surprises every step of the way.
These people seem to have not much more than a dev board that talks to a PC, and are promising to go from that to shipping fully assembled phones in 1 year. It would truly be amazing to see but I really don't think that's a realistic amount of time
Very cool, didn't know about this!
Their website [1] has lots of more details of course, as well as pictures (or renders, not sure) of the planned products.
I was bordering on being interested, since it would be cool to feel that the phone is fun/interesting again, but then I realized that in real life I'm way too tied to various proprietary (Android, in my case) apps since pretty much everything that could be a web site has been made into an app. :|
Went back to check since I had a thought, and they do state that they will include a "jailed Android OS" which I guess helps, but that also kinda removes the free/open/clean feeling associated with having a Linux-based phone. Hm. I guess I'm just complaining, at this point. Sorry. :)
Previous discussions:
Just the other day I was actually talking with a colleague about actually missing proper open phone outside of the abysmal duopoly (android/ios) and voilà, this popped up.
I'm kinda tempted to get one just to support the concept and EU-based initiative.
I just hate that our mobile market is locked-in... in my case the most annoying thing would be banking :/
If this is going to be Linux phone, then a good use case would be to use it on desktop mode with an external monitor. They mention this on their website but they are planning on doing it with a convuluted wireless device?
Why not simply usb C with displayport alt mode?
I could just stick a dongle in there and connect all my peripherals. It's not new technology, that's what I do with my 3 year old phone.
This is the only way to escape the suffocating stranglehold of big american tech.It is high time for tech made for users, instead of tech for stockholders with no morals at all.
In terms of security, privacy and anonymity, is the OS much different than grapheneOS?
For me it's all in the camera specs and results. I can't wait to hear about that!
Interesting specs. Looks like it's based on the RK3588S. In terms of CPU grunt that's a fairly good upgrade over the RK3399S used in the Pinephone Pro, ~3x more performance in single core according to Passmark[1].
For the GPU in the RK3588, there is a Mali-G610 MP4, which at least on paper looks pretty promising. Notebookcheck shows it only -35% of the Apple A14 Bionic[2]. For comparison, the Mali-T860 MP2 in the RK3399S used by the Pinephone Pro seems rather anemic by today's standards[3].
The other specs also look fairly good. 32 GiB of modular(!) RAM, two decent resolution camera sensors, a fingerprint sensor, a decently large battery, a modern modem...
It stands to reason that if they really do manage to get mainline Linux working well on this, while it won't be cutting edge by smartphone standards, it really ought to be one of the first mainline Linux phones where the performance is actually decent.
I'm cautiously optimistic. Looking at the postmarketOS compatibility list, few phones on the market have good modem support and fewer have working camera (literally no device has managed to get a "Y" in camera!) which makes me wonder if the fairly modern Qualcomm modem and fairly decent looking camera sensors they chose can really actually work under mainline Linux and a fairly stock userland. If it does, then damn. We're possibly entering peak "viable Linux phone" territory here.
[1]: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/4906vs3987/Rockchip-RK3...
[2]: https://www.notebookcheck.net/ARM-Mali-G610-MP4-Benchmarks-a...
[3]: https://www.notebookcheck.net/ARM-Mali-T860-MP2-Benchmarks-a...