Imagine carrying a powerful computer that fits in your pocket everywhere you go. Unless you have just arrived from the past in a time machine, chances are that you do not actually have to imagine this scenario. Most of us have been doing exactly that for nearly twenty years now. But while the novelty of mobile computing has long since faded, mobile computing is still in a separate category because it is just not the same as a full laptop or desktop experience.
Sure, the raw computing power is there, but the interfaces and the operating systems are more geared toward casual scrolling through a social media feed than they are coding or serious writing, for instance. For tasks like these, people will put down their phone and pick up their laptop unless they are a glutton for punishment.
Preparing the phone for a new OS (đź“·: MWLabs)
It does seem like a shame to let all of that computing power remain so underutilized, however. For this reason, many people have come up with ways to turn their phone into a “real” computer so that it can be used to get some serious work done. As such, YouTuber MWLabs’ solution is not entirely novel, but it is simple and inexpensive, and there is plenty of documentation available to help others play along at home. So if you are interested in getting more out of your phone (or an old phone wasting away in a drawer), this project is well worth checking out.
To demonstrate the approach, MWLabs started with a OnePlus 6 Android smartphone. These can commonly be found on the second-hand market for well under $100, which is not bad for a device with eight CPU cores and 8GB of RAM. As the next order of business, a custom image of NixOS was configured and built. Once ready, it was installed on the phone. By using NixOS, one can get the full Linux experience — not just the slimmed-down Android experience.
When paired with a wireless keyboard, the setup feels much more like a full computing experience than a phone. MWLabs is planning to use it mainly for writing initially, but with very capable hardware and a full Linux distribution, the sky is the limit.
Getting this system set up is going to take a lot more than a little pointing and clicking. But even though it is fairly involved, the process has been fully laid out in the video and GitHub repository. With all of that information, others should not have too much trouble converting their own phones into full Linux machines.
