Weekly #LinuxPhone Update (16/2022): KDE Gear 22.04, postmarketOS v21.12 SP4 and ... never mind

In other news: Shitphones are smart, a new phone that's going to be available with Ubuntu Touch, fun handheld hardware, funding for GNOME Shell Mobile and a Squeekboard bugfix release.

Commentary in italics.

Hardware

Liliputing: Volla Phone 22 runs Ubuntu Touch or a privacy-focused Android fork… or both (crowdfunding). While its an unlikely target for mainline Linux, its nice to see another Phone that officially supports Ubuntu Touch. Unless I am completely mistaken, its based on the Gigaset GS5 phone, which is definitely decent.

Software progress

GNOME ecosystem

This Week in GNOME: #40: Rows and Containers. Nice improvements - and it looks like someone needs to add another app to LinuxPhoneApps.org!
Ergaster: Funding decentralised/local-first applications for GNOME.
chergert: Porting GNOME Builder to GTK 4.
Squeekboard had a bugfix release (1.17.1), fixing a rather bad scaling bug.

Plasma/Maui ecosystem

Felipe Kinoshita: Tasks. Nice little app!
KDE Announcements: KDE Gear 22.04. Nice improvements to Elisa, KDE Itinerary and Kalendar is now part of Gear!

Sailfish OS

flypig: Sailfish Community News, 21st April, Sailfish SDK 3.9. Must read for Sailfish fans :)

Maemo Leste

Maemo Leste: Sixteenth Update: November and December 2021, January - April 2022. Great progress! While the Conversations and phone app still require turning on the beowulf-devel repo, this is really impressive.

Distro news

postmarketOS: v21.12 Service Pack 4. Great, incremental improvements for postmarketOS's stable release!

Kernel stuff

Phoronix: MediaTek Preparing Stateless AV1 Video Linux Decode Driver For Newer SoCs.

WPE WebKit

Chris Lord: WebKit frame delivery. Nice performance improvements on Wayland!

Running Software for other architectures

Worth noting

If you've ever wondered how to use the real GNOME Desktop on a Linux Phone, PineFLOWn has some nice info for you!
Organic Maps is now on Flathub. Obviously, due to writing this update, I did not manage to try the app yet, but it's definitely exciting! Update 2022-04-23: Never mind. It's not for Linux Phones (yet).
GNOME Shell Mobile gets funding from Germany. Finally something useful done with my taxes! ;-)

Worth reading

Smartphones are shit

Jack Leightcap: Smartphones are Shit: the Case for LineageOS and the Pinephone. _Check the hn discussion if you feel like it.
Matthew Garrett: The Freedom Phone is not great at privacy. Wasn't there a tradeoff between freedom and security, anyway? On a more serious note: This is even worse than I expected.

Impressions of Ubuntu Touch

mr.smashy: Linux for Smartphones.

Sxmo on powerful hardware

Anjandev Momi: Sxmo on the poco f1. Nice notch-handling!

Impressions of postmarketOS

Jesse Smith for Distrowatch: postmarketOS on the PinePhone.

Tutorials

Neil Brown: A global "scale-to-fit" for the PinePhone Pro. It's quick and simple, but I still stand by my recommendation.

More Hardware from Germany (well, maybe)

TuxPhones: The PocketReform is a made-in-Berlin Linux handheld. Nice, but I am not sold on that keyboard.

Fluff

Purism: The Future of Social Media Depends on You.

Worth watching

Something missing?

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