PinePhone (at least v1) is no longer maintained in Mobian due to changes in tech. It was a great Dev device for it’s time. The camera was terrible and it was awfly slow which isn’t a surprise at its humble $200-400 price.
The device is a SBC Single Board Computer meaning the modem is soldered on the same silicon as the CPU, RAM, Storage, etc…
All Cellular modems are made by 2 international companies last I checked who all have blobs in their modems – this is bad because it means open source can’t have a fair shot at competing when you need their “blessing” to use the Cellular Internet.
Librem 5 is better in some areas worse in others. The modem is a m.2. This allows the Mainboard to cut power to the modem as desired. The modem can’t be entirely turned off in other phones and as they are on the same SBC there is speculation secret commands could be used for data extraction or to activate spyware in cellphones as was recently discovered with Android and iOS. Separating the m.2 isolates the abilities of the modem module as a “firewall” being the closest comparison.
Librem 5 is also slow. The camera is better than PP. It can do phone and SMS okay but loading a webpage on it is not fun. Both devices have hotswap batteries so to speak so the charge is a nominal issue for me.
PPP is supposedly more battery intensive but manufactured in Hong Kong, which has been absorbed into China. For this reason the tech world is not as fond of their PPP as their initial PP before China absorbed them. Considering the last 4 years people are no longer “fond”.
Something newer than PP or L5 is needed. Something that can do basic tasks without binary blobs wrecking The FOSS Dream.
Framework is a little big but if you see what modders have done it is a good candidate.
Having the ability to add mics with physical kill switches and cameras with kill switches or being omitted entirely in my opinion would be optimal.
Not just having a " mute" button in the same way that when you press mute on zoom or “camera off” if the application has access to audio and video it can still capture all that audio and video when users think they are not being watched.
MNT uses RISCV and ARM SBC IIRC and modularizes a small form factor SFF device and maybe someday will rise to the occasion, or what I mean is modders have a better shot with that kind of thing.
Moving out of the Cellular space away from Phone numbers and to Element, or SIP or VOIP just makes sense for communications. It “cuts the cord” of the ATT / Bell monopoly that has plagued humans for decades.
Eventually we will see “phones” move away from cellular to satellite. This may be the jump we need to break free of all this blob nonsense cock blocking Linux.
There isn’t a optimal answer just yet, like do I build a phone out of a RPI5? when RPI5 and ARMs in general have blobs.
I think major headway has been made in the software front thanks to KDE, Gnome, Purism, Mobian, PostmarketOS and others.
I think the death grip is nearly over as more SFF production capabilities are commonplace now.
A winner hasn’t really been declared, hell a Steam Deck could even be modded (x86 too) to run off the shelf Linux tech and the OS could be on MicroSD and the modem could theoretically be in the m.2 slot. Purism does sell the modems for $50 on their store.
Anyways, there are more questions than answers, at least in the present tense – Who Will Deliver? Could this be the year of the Linux Phone? Maybe for some.