Linux Phones Eye Comeback as New Chips and Mainline Support Mature

Five years ago, Linux phones looked ready to break the Android and iOS duopoly. The Purism Librem 5 and PINE64 PinePhone had just launched, and the community was energized. Today, that momentum has faded, but new hardware and software developments suggest the idea is not dead.

A Market That Stalled

The Linux phone market stagnated after 2020. Problems at Purism and PINE64, weak Linux SoCs, and a lack of free and open source drivers all played a role. Plasma Mobile and Phosh were still immature interfaces, and there was no good distro option to run them on Android kernels with a normal integrated mobile SoC. The poor performance of the PinePhone and Librem 5, issues with the PinePhone Pro, and Librem 5 refunds sapped enthusiasm.

The SoC Dilemma

Linux SoCs are typically built for single-board computers, TV boxes, IoT devices, and embedded applications. They use older process nodes, so they are weaker and less energy efficient than smartphone chips, but they offer long-term support. Mobile SoCs with Android support are powerful but only produced for one to three years. Chipmakers like NXP, Rockchip, Allwinner, Amlogic, and Broadcom cannot justify the $400 to $600 million cost of a 3nm process for low-margin chips. Integrated mobile SoCs also combine WiFi, Bluetooth, cellular modem, GPS, and other functions, forcing Linux phones to use many more components. The Librem 5 contains 74 integrated circuits and 1267 components, making it the most complex phone ever created.

The RK3588S Changes the Game

Rockchip's RK3588 and RK3588S, released in 2022, finally offer enough processing power for an acceptable Linux smartphone. The Liberux NEXX and Dawndrums Divine D. are being designed with the RK3588S, and Purism has announced its next generation phone is actively being designed, likely on the same chip. The RK3588S is fabbed on an 8nm node, four generations behind the state of the art, and a low-end Snapdragon 4 Gen 4 at 4nm has 25 percent better single core performance. Still, for most users the extra power has diminishing utility.

Mainline Support and Remaining Hurdles

Rockchip took down its opensource site at the end of 2025 and no longer considers the RK3588 an open source chip, but Collabora has spent years adding mainline Linux support. The chip now works with the free Panthor GPU driver, a FOSS NPU driver, and a FOSS version of Trusted Firmware-A. A proprietary DDR timing blob and GPU firmware are still required at boot. Heat dissipation remains a challenge, and the RK3588S will need throttling to fit within a phone's power and thermal envelope. If these issues are solved, Linux phones could carve out a small but real market, much like Linux PCs did over the last three decades.

Sources: amosbbatto.wordpress.com