Tuxphones covers Linux phones and handhelds, including Librem 5 and PinePhone comparisons, postmarketOS and ARM booting.
HN links it for its Linux phone comparisons and technical how-tos, such as using Linux as a second wireless display and booting ARM Linux.
International standards can also be zero days. For example, the international standard for called ID, uses a dial up modem protocol which means the hardware has to have capabilities to read this data which means the hardware has dialup modem capabilities. So if you can compromise the firmware of the modem, a backdoor into a device is via the very telephone network you later rely on to communicate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caller_ID#Operation
Chips fall into 3 categories, fused by manufacturer, fused by branding company, or not fused allowing future updates, like bios chips.
Even if the chip is fused, a backdoor may still exist, in some cases standard behaviour can be the backdoor.
With zero days appearing in hardware, software and standards, its very easy if you have the knowledge to get a persistent backdoor into a device beit a PinePhone, Librem 5 or Necunos to name just a couple.
https://forums.puri.sm/t/comparing-specs-of-upcoming-linux-phones/6827
https://tuxphones.com/yet-another-librem-5-and-pinephone-linux-smartphone-comparison/
Its probably why people like Cobham, Thales and other openly public military manufacturers make their own kits for militaries around the world.
https://www.cobham.com/
https://www.thalesgroup.com/en
I even think its possible to hack the communication systems of the new Lockheed Martin F35, because the manufacturers are walking a logical development path (their mistake), but I've yet to have a go at it, so cant say for sure…
It works pretty nicely on linux, you have "mobile" environments like phosh, KDE mobile and that are pretty seamless between handheld and docked "desktop" usage. They have support in app toolkits like gtk and qt for applications that change based on screen size to accommodate mobile users. It's pretty nice: https://tuxphones.com/convergent-linux-phone-apps/
The reason why it didn't work for microsoft is because adobe, valve, and aren't going to whatever framework just because microsoft wants them to. But in the linux world you can just fork and fix. Even apple has a lot of leverage to force developers to act in a certain way if they want that app store $$$.
Obviously the hardware isn't all there yet in the open source world (the pinephones are pretty underpowered), but in terms of software all of the right stuff is there. And don't tell me the UX is too complicated for new users. Gnome's design is literally a ripoff of MacOS and KDE's interface is pretty much Windows.
It's worth noting that the M1 does not use EFI like Intel Macs do, so the kernel would still need to boot on this proprietary new mechanism. Apple previously indicated that the M1 Macs boot using a derivative of the iPhone/iPad boot procedure. There's a reasonable chance it'll still have something like the EFI buffer allocation mechanism, but it'll not be using a mainline standard. While it sucks that Apple ditched EFI, the good news is that it's probably reasonably well understood since Linux has already been booted on an iPhone 7 using Checkra1n [1] (and apparently with framebuffer support too!).
[1]: https://tuxphones.com/iphone-7-now-boots-postmarketos-linux/
I don't really know to be honest.
But there's this that might be worth reading: https://tuxphones.com/purism-librem-5-vs-pine64-pinephone-linux-smartphone-comparison/
> On the other hand, Pine64 opted for a community-based approach: they provide the base hardware and OS to users and developers, and the community develops the needed software to make it run. postmarketOS and (Ubports) Ubuntu Touch developers have already ported their OS to the PinePhone development kits, and KDE Plasma Mobile will be the primary desktop designed for this phone. About $10 for each device will be donated to open source projects.
Create apps! This is the most needed. We created a tutorial for Kirigami here: https://develop.kde.org/docs/kirigami/. There are also a few tutorials for GTK/libhandy with e.g. https://tuxphones.com/tutorial-developing-responsive-linux-smartphone-apps-gnome-builder-gtk-libhandy-gtk-part-1/
Also join the developer channels on matrix: #plasmamobile:kde.org (not sure that the address for the GNOME one)
The PinePhone actually has more kill switches for finer grained control, but they’re behind the rear cover instead of exposed on the side.
PP: modem, WiFi, microphones, rear camera, front camera
L5: modem, WiFi, cameras+audio
Check out this comparison by Martijn Braam, a developer of postmarketOS:
https://tuxphones.com/yet-another-librem-5-and-pinephone-linux-smartphone-comparison