Best Linux Smartphone you can buy right now.

Smartphones have become the most used devices nowadays. That’s why smartphones have become a channel to access our personal and most private information. If exploited this can lead to various privacy issues and affect a user’s privacy.

If you are in a line of work where security is a must or if you just like to keep your data private. Then you need to look for a more secure operating system and overall more secure device. That offers you data privacy and security.

As Linux is generally better in terms of privacy and also offers better control over the operating system. Linux can offer an open-source and more secure alternative to Android.

So here are Smartphones that you can buy with Linux installed. Or you can also look at this list of Linux distros that are available for installation on Android Smartphones.

PinePhone for $150

Pinephone is a fully open-source smartphone capable of running different Linux distros. The single-board manufacturer Pine64 has released this smartphone device PinePhone. At the time of writing this article PinePhone is available in Community edition UBports.

This PinePhone device comes preinstalled with Ubuntu Touch now maintained by UBports. And it also supports other Linux distros like Sailfish OS, Plasma Mobile, LuneOS. But the device is still in beta stage, it does support core functionality like calls and messaging but is still not ready for the regular customer.

It comes with a 5.9 inch IPS LCD and 64-bit quad-core 1.2 GHz Cortex-A53 with Mali-400 GPU combined with 2 GB RAM and 16 GB ROM. With a 5 MP rear camera and a 2 MP front-facing camera. It even comes with kill switches located behind the back panel, so if you want you can turn off things like Camera, Mic, Wifi.

So If you want a privacy-focused device or want to use a Linux phone then it’s quite a nice device considering it’s $150 price tag. If you want you can but it from here.

Librem 5

Librem 5 is manufactured by Purism. This device comes with a 5.7 inch IPS TFT display, with a 1.5 GHz Quad-Core A53. Combined with 3 GB of RAM and 32 GB of ROM. It also comes with kill switches like PinePhone, but unlike Pinephone these kill switches are placed on the side of phone.

It comes installed with PureOS but can also support Ubuntu Touch and Postmarket OS.

Although Librem is available for anyone in general, it still has quite features that are not yet working at present.

If you want to buy Librem 5 it costs $699 and can be brought from Purism’s official website.

Now for a comparison between the two, I would prefer Pinephone. Not only because of its value for money. But its also going to support more number of distributions.

As of now(at the time of writing this article) only these two mobile phones come preinstalled with Linux. But if you don’t want to buy these two Linux phones then you can always replace Android with Linux on your smartphone(if supported). So here are the Linux distros currently available for Android Smartphones.