Linux Phones

Anyone here have experience with linux phones? I know there are a few different OSs for phones like Sailfish and Ubuntu touch.

One linux phone I've been interested in is the Pinephone Pro. It's not highly powered or anything but it has a removable battery and hardware killswitches behind the cover.

PINE64 PinePhone Pro Meet the PinePhone Pro, our flagship smartphone and the best way to experience mainline Linux on a mobile device. Features and Specifications System on Chip (SoC) Rockchip RK3399S 64bit SoC – 2x A72 and 4x A53 CPU cores @ 1.5GHz GPU ARM Mali T860 4x core GPU @ 500MHz RAM 4GB LPDDR4 @ 800MHz Storage... pine64.org

I've also liked the look of the Librem 5 by Purism. It's vastly underpowered by many modern phones but it has physical kill switches right on the side and uses their own PureOS. I've heard it can take FOREVER to get your phone though.

Also the Jolla Phone.

Smokin' Silicone made a video recently where they got a Pinephone, I didn't know there was a modern phone that you could remove the battery in! I currently don't have a Linux powered phone, maybe I'll look into getting one over the Pixel when I can afford a new phone. But I'm still leaning more towards getting a Pixel and getting Graphene OS installed on it.

Forgive my ignorance, but aren't Android phones based on the Linux operating system? And if so, what's significant about a phone being classified as a Linux Phone?

On Jun 18, 2026, Senkusha said:

Forgive my ignorance, but aren't Android phones based on the Linux operating system? And if so, what's significant about a phone being classified as a Linux Phone?

Android is built upon the Linux framework but it's heavily modified and uses it's own libraries and run time events so it's technically not a Linux distro. https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/operating-systems/difference-between-linux-and-android/

Thanks!!