For those of us concerned about data
privacy and user control of technology,
there's a fairly promising development
on the horizon: the Pinephone, a US$150
linux phone. Its projected release date
is sometime in the final quarter of
2019. Developer devices are already
shipping.
The Pinephone initial release will come
pre-loaded with Ubuntu Touch (which is
maintained by UBports). There are plans
to shift the pre-loaded distribution
with each batch of phones produced
(possibly Plasma Mobile in the second
wave), but users should be able to load
any of the available distributions
without trouble. I have to wonder if
this is a better way forward for all of
the groups involved in the Halium
Project[1].
In addition to supporting open source
software (and Pine64 has committed to
contributing to the OS projects
financially), the phone will also
include a number of hardware switches
under the back cover, so that users can
manually (and selectively) turn off
radios and peripherals.
If you're interested and want to follow
the Pinephone's development, here are
the best sources of information I've
located so far:
There is a good Pinephone discussion
thread at UBports[2].
You can also find a lot of interesting
information and conversation about the
phone in the Pine64 IRC channels. When
you go to the page referenced below,
there's a "Channels" dropdown menu near
the top left. Select pinephone and then
browse through the logs by date[3].
Finally, the Linux Lads podcast
interviewed Pine64's community manager,
__Lukasz, on March 4, and he revealed a
great deal of information about the
specs, OS plans, and potential
accessories. There's even the
possibility of an attachable sliding
keyboard at some point in the future[4].
*If you're wondering about the 40-column
width, I'm experimenting with formatting
for mobile.
[1] https://halium.org/
[2] https://forums.ubports.com/topic/2403/pinephone/39
[3] http://irc.pine64.uk/?
[4] https://linuxlads.com/episodes/season-2-episode-4