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Comment by CaptSpify | Hacker News Reader

I'm truly sad this failed. The Ubuntu phone was the first phone I've had that I didn't hate. I loved the idea of the phone, and it was nice to be able to use the same scripts that I use on my laptop on my phone. I'm really sad that Canonical never gave it a good effort.

I'd pay a lot of money for an actual open linux phone, but nobody wants to make one.

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There is SailfishOS[1]. It's real Linux. It has proprietary parts (e.g. Android drivers, UI widgets, core apps), but Jolla (the developer SailfishOS developer) has contributed a tonne to Linux on the mobile[2].

I use it as my daily phone, and I've developed apps for it, so feel free to ask me any questions.

SailfishOS should hopefully be available for the Sony Xperia X soon (within a month according to their blog posts).

[1] https://sailfishos.org/ [2] https://git.merproject.org/groups/mer-core/activity

I am interested in Sailfish, but I expect to be able to buy a phone running an OS on my carrier, and it doesn't sound like that is coming with the Xperia X or anything else anytime soon.

If you have to flash the OS to use it, they've already lost, and I'd argue that was one of Ubuntu Phone's biggest problems too.

It looks interesting, but I'm really not a fan of all the closed source stuff they put into it. I might give it a go someday

I'm in the same boat as you. In the meantime I'm keeping myself entertained with https://ubports.com/

Ah, I never did look into that. I never followed the Ubuntu phone development much either, though. How is that project looking?

I think is looking good and gaining momentum.

The acid test will be the jump from the legacy image (15.04) to the 16.04 LTS one.

Fingers crossed.

2018: year of linux on the phone?

Make it anything resembling viable and I'm there.

As I said in another thread, keep an eye in https://ubports.com/

Most likely the year Linux on the phone gets replaced by Fuchsia.

http://neo900.org is trying to upgrade the CPU and add LTE to the Nokia n900 (Maemo) keyboard phone.

The specs on that are crazy low. The pricing just now showed 0 euros, but last I heard it was also crazy expensive.

I'm not saying I won't try it, but it seems to me like it has a lot going against it already. I'll wait for reviews on this one.

The website doesn't make the stat easy to find. It's here http://neo900.org/estimate (spoilers: it's estimated to be 990 EUR before tax, or about $1100)

Thanks. That is insanely high for such low specs.

Not that I won't try it, but I don't see it taking off anytime soon.

Besides the fact that the Neo900 is still not available and might never actually end up available, its specs are way outdated. It might have served users back in 2013 when there was still hope the product will become available quickly, but at this point it’s like trying to resurrect Sharp Zaurus hardware and expecting users to not find it horribly antiquated.

(For comparison, the Jolla 1 phone has equal or better specs to the Neo900, but its users have been clamoring for better hardware for years now.)

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