Don’t say, hey android has Linux in it, yeah no, idc, I want to know how far we are from buying a Linux phone at a price point of 200 USD.
A Linux phone is one which is built completely on Linux, uses Linux apps and most important has a terminal.
I don’t want a Linux Phone for privacy, although that’s a great reason, but I want it for the freedom it provides me. Hell, I don’t care if Android itself comes with a terminal and has similar features to Linux, I just want a Terminal which can install apps, where I can write commands and it will execute it. Complete Control on my phone and how it behaves is what I want.
I want to tell it when to sleep, when not to sleep, when to boot, when to edit a file and how, when to take a screenshot and what to do with it and where to save it, etc, etc. I hope you get the idea.
Pine phone and Jolla/Sailfish are the only real ones out there.
Librem is a scam, they don’t have a real product. (Go watch Louis Rossman’s newest videos if you care).
Pine phone is… not exactly usable as a main phone. It’s very much beta. But it is a Linux device in the shape of a phone, and even though it’s incredibly basic hardware, it at least exists, it can be bought right now and some parts of it work.
Jolla have been doing their thing for a while. Afaik they don’t sell their own devices anymore, but you can flash their OS onto other phones, like e.g. the Fairphone 4. That kinda works in some regards, but at the moment e.g. mobile data just doesn’t work on that phone.
More to that here: https://forum.fairphone.com/t/fp4-sailfish-os-4-5-0-18-for-fairphone-4/97052