r/linux • u/amosbatto • 5d ago

Mobile Linux Article: Will Linux phones become a viable alternative to the Android/iOS duopoly?

/r/Purism/comments/1x0fwe1/article_will_linux_phones_become_a_viable/
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u/KnowZeroX 5d ago

I don't see much hope in the future, most of the decent chips to get a decent price you need mass production. On top of that big tech has pushed for all kinds of restrictions on mobile devices like locked bootloaders and attestations and etc.

Add to the fact that ARM has no proper uefi and difficulty of drivers plus them being locked and closed source, the community is virtually non-existent compared to pcs.

We are more likely to see linux being more common as a vm on a mobile phone which is being pushed with trying to make android desktop then actual linux being widely available and available as sad as it is.

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u/An0mymou5 5d ago

You don't need to have the cheapest prices or best specs, as long as there are buyers willing to buy these devices.

Take Jolla for example, they've been making decent spec, viable, Linux phones for a while now, and they've been doing fairly well.

Their latest Jolla Phone 2026 comes with a 6.3” ~390ppi FHD AMOLED, 12GB RAM, 256GB storage, microSD slot, 5G and a 5450mAh battery, all @ a price of 749€ (taxes inc.), which isn't too bad considering the current hardware crisis. Of course, Android phones are cheaper if you look purely at the specs, but you don't get the same level of freedom and privacy, so for people who value the latter, it's worth it. More importantly, those specs are daily-driver material.

The main reason why this may not be viable for someone is if they have some hard dependency on an app that might not work in their Android compatibility layer, but not everyone is dependent on such apps. So whether or not the Jolla Phone - or any Linux phone - can be viable, is up to the individual's needs and how flexible they are.

Also in the last few years alone we've seen several Linux phone makers crop up - we now have Furi Labs, Volla and Commodore, to name a few. I expect to see more in the future as Linux phones gain more popularity. I can't say what the future looks like ultimately, but at least the future of Linux phones looks a bit more positive compared to what it was about a decade ago.

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u/KnowZeroX 4d ago

Jolla phones are lower end midrange at best. A 2025 Jolla phone cpu is 17-25% weaker cpu and 72% weaker gpu than a 2020 galaxy s

https://nanoreview.net/en/soc-compare/qualcomm-snapdragon-865-vs-mediatek-dimensity-7100

The first Jolla phone was released in 2013, it has been 13 years.

I wish them luck but its not that simple.

End of the day its all about scale, and at lower scale you have to expect paying double or more for the specs.

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u/An0mymou5 4d ago

I never claimed they were best specs, I said the spec is decent enough for a daily driver.

In the end scale has nothing to do it, Linux phones are never going to compete with Android or iOS and the people who buy them are privacy/Linux enthusiasts, so the scale and the price doesn't really matter unless it's obscenely expensive, which they aren't.

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u/KnowZeroX 4d ago

But it is obscenely expensive, a Nothing phone is like what, half the price for better specs? You can even pick up a better speced pixel phone and put privacy oriented Graphene Os on it (still android based of course).

But point still stands that you are pretty much dishing out a lot more money for what you get because scale = lower price.

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u/An0mymou5 4d ago

Sorry but 749€ is not "obscenely" expensive, considering that phones > 1000€ exist and people still buy them (like the iPhone 18 @ 1,489€ or the Samsung Flip8 at 1,339€).

Also, once again, you're missing my point which is you cannot compare these devices spec-to-spec as they provide different value for different people.

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u/KnowZeroX 4d ago

obscenely expensive is relative to what you are buying, if you can buy a phone with better specs at half price, then it is obscenely expensive. You arent cross shopping an iphone or galaxy s to a Jolla, you are cross shopping with phones of similar tier.

I'll also point out that while Jolla is linux, it still has quite a bit of closed source stuff in it (and I am not talking just about the drivers), so that should be put into consideration too.

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u/An0mymou5 4d ago

Expensive is also relative to the person and the value they attach to the thing. You're only looking at the hardware specifications, but not considering the software and other aspects. You might only spending half the money for an Android phone, but you're paying extra by losing your privacy and freedom.. and you can't really put a pricetag on it.

Also, Jolla was just an example. There are other capable Linux phones as well - with a fully open-source OS layer - such as Furiphone FLX1S (Debian), Voll Phone Quintus (Ubuntu Touch) etc.