Phone Makers or mobile OS with privacy in mind?
So I don't know how many of you guys have looked around for this, but as far as smartphones go, there is a dearth of market competition to both Android and IOS. I can easily see someone making a linux distro for phones that can be sideloaded or factory available with security at the forefront of the design. The snap package system would be the ideal system for applications as it is a universal package installer and porting Android apps could be potentially simple. We saw the Turing phone, and Ubuntu mobile projects fall face first, so I see this as an opportunity to pick up where they left off and take it in a more favorable direction. Anyone aware of anything like this out there?
Definetely check out Sailfish OS by Jolla, a company founded by ex-Nokians. They've only got two phones of their own (Jolla and Jolla C, latter very limited batch) and one half-failed tablet out, but they are collaborating with several other manufacturers to license Sailfish OS on others' phones. The most recent and interesting collaboration took a step forward as Jolla released instructions and files for installing Sailfish OS on Sony Xperia X. This is an official collaboration, so you'll have to pay for the OS image, but install it on your own following instructions (and using a Linux machine). Furthermore, they support fans porting the OS to other phones, so if you don't necessarily want official support and Android compatibility through an official emulator, you can look for fan-made ports. You can find a list of more or less supported phones here.
that's a really cool project. Thanks for letting me know. Now to find a cell providers that values my privacy or create some way to circumvent the service providers entirely.
There is the Librem 5 made by Purism. They are currently seeking crowdfunding for the project, which looks like a promising Linux based phone.
There is also CopperheadOS which is a fork of LineageOS that works on the Nexus 5X, 6P, and the Pixel/PixelXL phones. Ottulo already mentioned SailfishOS. I'm sure there might be more out there, but that's all I am aware of.