Mobile phone privacy
Operating systems
Degoogled Android based operating systems
Very wide adoption and good maturity levels.
- CalyxOS [supported devices]
- GrapheneOS [supported devices]
- Lineage OS [supported devices]
- /e/ [supported devices]
- Replicant [supported devices]
Other Linux based operating systems for mobile phones
Sadly not quite polished and/or available on a lot of devices yet.
- Ubuntu touch [Ubuntu based, supported devices]
- postmarketOS [Alpine Linux based, supported devices]
- PureOS (Debian based, only Purism Librem)
- Mobian [Debian based, supported devices]
- KDE Plasma Mobile [Neon/Ubuntu, postmarketOS, Manjaro images for PinePhone / supported devices]
Phones
Surprisingly options in all price ranges.
All listed phones feature a USB-C charging port.
- Purism Librem 5 $799
PureOS, Mobian - Fairphone 3 €419 – €469
Ubuntu touch, Lineage OS, /e/ - Volla Phone €359 – €368
Volla OS (Android Open Source based), Ubuntu touch - Pine64 PinePhone $149 – $199
postmarketOS, KDE Plasma Mobile, Mobian - Pixel Phones
CalyxOS, GrapheneOS, Lineage OS
Purism and Pine64 seem to be most focused on privacy. While Purism looks very polished and ready for everyday use, PinePhone seems to be more targeted at the tech community.
Fairphone and Volla have interesting product philosophies and seem like a good alternative to the big Android players out there.
Conclusion
As much as I love Linux it seems to have a hard time cornering the smartphone market.
At the current state I would recommend:
- with a bigger budget: Purism Librem 5
- medium budget: a Google Pixel device (yes – really) with CalyxOS or GrapheneOs
- with a smaller budget: a phone with degoogled Android based OS (Lineage OS and /e/ seem to run on many devices)
If you are mostly interested in software please take a look at PrivacyTools which is a big collection of privacy focused resources in many different areas.