I have been daily driving a Linux smartphone for 18 months, AMA

I started out with a Pinephone Pro and Mobian but currently daily a Nord N10 5G (billie!) running ubports/Ubuntu Touch. It's a halium device, which I've found to be the best balance of kernel tuning for battery life and usability while letting me have full Linux on top.

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/s/q260LSL5cJ

#linuxphone #mobilelinux

@peja How's the camera? Inability to take good photos and videos is the only thing stopping me from using the PinePhone Pro as a daily driver.

@duncan_bayne This is post from reddit, I just shared, phones are not mine..

@duncan_bayne @peja @ubports

I run #Ubuntu Touch on various devices and the cameras work excellent, just as in Android (currently OnePlus 6T, but Nord N10 is a better device).

Macro shot of a bee orchid (“bee” is 1 cm diameter) attached to illustrate OnePlus 6T

#ubports

@peja @duncan_bayne I can confirm the camera functionality is excellent. I have the same device with ubports. There's a telegram group specifically for it that you can ask questions in

@davidoclubb @peja Hey that's not bad! <400 AUD from Amazon.

...

Makes me wonder (no snark intended) why the state of the camera on PinePhone / PinePhone Pro is so poor.

@duncan_bayne @peja I picked up two on eBay for a lot less than that! I won't go into the reasons the camera is worse on postmarketOS, you can look it up. Basically due to use of Android functionality through Haliun

@duncan_bayne @davidoclubb @peja It comes down to we aren't spending thousands of dollars on post processing. Sensors on smartphones are tiny so they get over it by processing the images. There's tons of research these companies do to improve the image quality that isn't happening or slowly happening in the open source world. The PPP has an ISP that we can program for so you can see the work libcamera is doing for processing in real time. Megapixels does it in post and works on all devices.

@davidoclubb @peja Ah! I was running Mobian, not PostmarketOS, but sounds like the ubports folks have bypassed their issues with an emulation / virtualisation layer?

I'm familiar with the approach, being a FreeBSD user. For a while, many FreeBSD users have used Linux WiFi drivers through a similar mechanism.

@duncan_bayne @peja I'm not a technical expert! I have played with these things a bit (https://clubb.cymru/2024/10/16/ubuntu-touch/).

By the end of 2025 I will be daily driving one or other Linux phone in preparation for my kids' first mobile device

@Luigi311 @duncan_bayne @davidoclubb @peja Cameras are hard :-(. For still images, you should be able to improve still picture quality without using ISP. Video is even more complex. Look at #Megapixels (and maybe #libcamera / #libobscura). Help welcome.

@pavel @duncan_bayne @Luigi311 @peja I'm hugely grateful for everything being done in this sector. My contribution must lie in promotion, advocacy and translation. I am no coder! But a constant warrior for open source

@davidoclubb @duncan_bayne @Luigi311 @peja Trouble is this is not only coding, but also research, and camera calibration. We'll need to find parametrs such as lens shading and camera conversion tables for cameras we'll want to support.