LinBits 73: Weekly Linux Phone news / media roundup (week 47/48)

Seven days in Linux Phones went by, this happened: libhandy 1.5.0, Fluffychat 1.0, NemoMobile running on two more devices, postmarketOS adds support for another Snapdragon 845-based phone, LoRa backplate fun and more!

Software releases

libhandy 1.5.0 has been released, introducing support for managing color schemes. fixes to HdyPreferencesPage and HdyTabbar among other fixes.
Fluffychat 1.0 is out!

Distribution releases

Danct12 has put out another build of his Arch Linux ARM-based distribution for PinePhone, PineTab and PinePhone Pro, upgrading to a rc-kernel for all devices, as that has PinePhone Pro support.
Manjaro have released Manjaro Phosh beta 19, their first beta release to support the PinePhone Pro.

Worth noting

NemoMobile has been shown running on the Volla Phone and the Google Pixel 3a.
First benchmarks of the upcoming Rockchip RK3588 SoC have been posted to r/linuxhardware. This looks really promising. Power consumption should be fine, because this is going to be produced in an 8nm process. In all fairness, it’s worth noting that the Raspberry Pi 4 performance figures may be lower due to it running a 32bit build of Android.
The Shiftphones SHIFT6mq has gained some postmarketOS support!

Worth reading

Software progress

This Week in GNOME: #20 Colorful Characters.
Volker Krause: October/November in KDE Itinerary. Great progress!
Claudio Cambra: Kalendar v0.3.0 out soon, with improved stability, efficiency, accessibility… and a Windows version?? – Kalendar devlog 23.
TSDgeo: Okular PDF digital signature improvements coming "soon" thanks to NLnet. Okular is awesome. I really look forward to digital signature support coming to Okular-mobile!
GabMus: Block ads in WebKitGtk. I know that WebKitGtk does not have too many fans, but in a world where almost everything is Chromium and Mozilla dwindling while overshadowing their good work with colorful experiments, this browser engine deserves more love than it usually gets IMHO.

Hardware

Liliputing: Raspberry Pi brings an HP 95LX palmtop PC back to life. Retrofitting old hardware is quite difficult, so this definitely deserves a massive thumbs-up!
Martijn Braam for TuxPhones: A look at Popcorn Computer’s new Pocket P.C.. AllWinner A64 paired with a 1080p screen. Please read this if you always wondered why the PinePhone only has a 720p screen.

PinePhone Mainline progress?

Martijn Braam: Running the kernel.org tree on the PinePhone. This is rough, but not really surprising. The PinePhone runs Megi-line Linux, not Mainline Linux. [Please note: This remark is in no way meant as a criticism of Megi's amazing work!]

PinePhone Pro

MakeUseOf: Is the PinePhone Pro the Linux Phone Daily Driver We've Been Waiting For?. It sure won’t be initially. These things take time, and it’s super important to emphasize that you can’t look at experimental, community driven Linux Smartphones like you would at your regular smartphone that ships with a mature OS.

Discussions

GhettoComputers: Ask HN: Know any non Librem5 PinePhone for Mobile Linux? Legacy devices too!. While part of this is hard to read and may annoy you, there is some productive discussion of devices.

Worth watching

Librem 5 Comparison

The Conscious Resistance: Privacy Phone Review: Librem 5 vs. Above.Phone. Arguably, the camera can work now. It’s still in the process of enablement. That aside, most the criticism seems valid.

PinePhone LoRa fun

jf: Receiving LoRa messages on the Pinephone. Nice!

Criticism

Twinntech: Pinephone is a flashlight again. Sadly, non-working GNOME Software is stuff that I would not even notice, given that I just don't use this. The problem he has there sounds like it might require dropping to the terminal, something that's intimidating to Linux noobs.

JingPad

Massimo Antonio Carofano: JingPad A1 - Boot to Recovery (Fastboot, Bootloader, Factory reset..).
ShortCircuit: Is Linux The ANSWER??? - JingPad A1 Tablet. Nice video. Please note though, that this is not KDE Plasma Mobile, it's just based on that tech specs.

Shorts

NOT A FBI Honey pot: pinephone running waydroid.

Stuff I did

Content

Nothing.

LINMOBapps and Linux Phone Apps

This week I added

Shipments, a python library and a GTK3 mobile/desktop application for tracking multiple shipments, and
Add Hours and Minutes, a calculator adds times given in hours and minutes.

More is going to follow this week. Also, stay tuned for an announcement regarding this project soon-ish.

Read here what (else) happened on LINMOBapps this week. And please do contribute!