I imagine you know the Fairphone company and their smartphone (see it). With the Fairphone, it is possible to install another O.S than Android. In the Faq there is a reply for this kind of thing:
Question:
Can I install an alternative OS ?
Answer from Fairphone company:
Yes, installing alternative Operating Systems is possible, once made available. We are looking forward to the respective communities to port their Operating Systems - such as Ubuntu Touch, Lineage OS, Sailfish OS or / e / - to Fairphone 3.
All Fairphone 3’s are shipped with the bootloader locked to ensure an attacker cannot compromise the device by installing their own system or boot image. If you decide to try an alternative Operating System or to contribute to the porting efforts, you can unlock the bootloader of your Fairphone 3 by following this step-by-step guide.
I think you have a shot at playing the Manjaro ARM team. As you have a smartphone operating system, it would be great to port the Manjaro ARM system on the Fairphone 3. Knowing that the features of it are better than the Pinephone and the price is cheaper than the librem5 . In addition, it is an ethical and repairable smartphone.
Currently we’re in the process of testing libhybris for the devices which we and the Android boot manager team have.
Fairphone is not in the question as of now. It is very early to even say that we will get manjaro to work on any android device as it needs alot of R&D.
We do like the idea of getting it to work and we’re trying things but it will take time as we are all volunteers here and can only test during our free time.
Thanks for bringing up this topic maybe we will have more community users to pitch in and do some collective work.
I was interested by the pinephone, but unfortunately the specs of the device are too weak. In addition, it is more intended for testing than as an operational phone device for every day. I think I will have to wait for a long time.
Yes – I would looove to run Manjaro on my new FP3+, too!
I mean, though currently I am on /e/, the “de-G**gled Android”, but I still feel a bit uncomfortable with it, since it’s not the same as a neat Manjaro Linux system, which I already got on my PC~
Also, like Manjaro – though it already comes shipped on Pinephones – which is kind of a European project, the Fairphone is as well, right?
However, unfortunately I am no developer at all, so I wonder where I could be of help here…
Yet I think a maintained Manjaro version for the FP3+ will be popular and sustainable with the FP3±users since these devices are designed for a long span of life. – And maybe some day there will also even be Fairphones with preinstalled Manjaro for sale then, when such a distro exists…?
… besides, the more often I look at that project site full of envy, I think Manjaro on the FP3 in combination with Plasma Mobile could become a true story of success like it is for the PinePhone!
Yet there’s already a shortage of natural resources for making CPUs and stuff, so users simply will have to consider buying refurbished or environmentally sustainable manufactured and long lasting phones, too! – Hence it would IMHO be a big pro, Manjaro soon providing a modern, real GNU/Linux & ecological solution for this situation, probably aming at market leadership, right?
Further, another personal advantage would then be to finally switch over to KDE/Plasma on my Manjaro PC as well.
It is not possible to run Manjaro on FP3+, because there is no mainline kernel support for hardware now. Perhaps this will happen in the future sometime.
Well, sure.
Exactly that’s why I wanted to trigger that~
The FP3+ is mainly a European project, such as Manjaro. Both by themselves are stories of success. So a soon combination of both would have a promising future, right?
(Even if there already is a marketing for the Pinephone in the US.)
Porting a phone from Android to Linux takes time and money. If you look at the current support for the Fairphone3 compared to the Pinephone from our friend PostmarketOS, you’ll see that even they didn’t do much for it yet …
I was interested by this smartphone but the Ubuntu system available in it seems not yet to the point for this hardware (according to internet reviews.). Also, I would prefer to have a Manjaro system on my smartphone as it is the system I use on my PCs and I enjoy the most.
The specs of the Volla Phone are much better than the Pinephone.
@nl.smart: A new model is out, the Volla phone X. See here. But not 5G supported.
Nice news, glad to see that linux phones initiatives are moving on.
Could you tell if Manjaro team developments related to Volla phone are based on Halium ?
Just a though, i find a little bit strange that Fairphone team does not involve Linux developers (from any distro) to make it compatible with their hardware.
It makes sense to have an ethical OS on an ethical phone.
By the way, does anybody know why mainstream kernel are (almost) never compatible with mobile devices ?
It makes me think of Microsoft strategy 20 years ago when they completely failed on mobililty.
I am using the pine phone as daily driver, and it works great for what I need. E-mail, xmpp, podcast, music etc all working fine and imporving over time.
Maybe Manjaro for Mobile is fairly new while UBPort is quite old and being maintained by an Not for Profit organisation so Fairphone seem to connect with UBPort team.
Because there is no documentation from the manufacturer so no developer put time and effort in reverse engineering the hardware and write drivers for it. Those who maintain the kernel for such devices are writing drivers which are very hacky and would not pass linux kernel standards. If only manufacturers share schematics and TRM for their hardware and open source their signed boot files then someone can pick it up and write codes, without that its all hard work using reverse engineering which takes years and its not even guaranteed that everything will work.
This is not comparable as Microsoft didn’t wanted to enter mobile market while in case of linux kernel they don’t have the resource needed to write drivers and support for the devices. As the same linux kernel with custom codes is used on all android phones as android uses custom linux kernel as the base.
About the fairphone 4: The price of the two models is too high (€579,00 and €649,00) and a battery with at least 5000 mAh could have been a better choice.
