Fairphone 6's main camera now works under postmarketOS

The developer behind the Catcrafts blog has reported another milestone in porting postmarketOS to the Fairphone 6: the main camera now works. Building on the work of another project contributor (nondescriptpointer), who had previously gotten the wide-angle module running, the author wrote a driver for the main lens. Autofocus and color correction are now available.

According to the author, the result is still rough: the shots are grainy, and the stock Plasma camera app, which saves frames as JPEG, doesn't help matters. A comparison with a photo of the same scene taken on an Android Galaxy A16 makes it plain just how much work still lies ahead. Even so, the author decided to release a working version rather than wait for perfection. They've agreed to split up the job of sending patches upstream: nondescriptpointer submits the changes, while Catcrafts reviews them and helps out — “another soul dragged into the Linux-phone kernel rabbit hole,” he quips.

Testing emergency calls

A story of its own is the testing of emergency-services calls, which until now had gone unverified. Unable to find any public information, the author simply called the police non-emergency line and explained the situation. The operator gave him an address to send a request to, and, to the developer's surprise, he got a reply: the Dutch body that manages the 1-1-2 system (TB112) scheduled the tests for Tuesday, August 18, from 13:30 to 14:15. Afterward, it will be possible to say with confidence that you can actually reach an emergency number from a Linux phone.

Plans, finances, and limitations

Catcrafts thanks the donors and promises transparency: the finance page is generated automatically from the bank statement, and the spending on the upcoming Fairphone 6+ (about 650 euros) will be publicly visible. The author is negotiating with a notary about incorporating the project as a nonprofit (a Dutch stichting), where the law caps salaries at market level and all profit goes toward development. He praises Fairphone but remains wary: the company is, after all, commercial, and it continues to post on X.

Shipping limitations have also been announced: because liability insurance for the US and Canada can't be obtained in the Netherlands, there will be no shipments there, and shipping to Russia, Belarus, and North Korea is prohibited by sanctions. The list of confirmed carriers has grown to four (KPN, Telekom Deutschland, Phonero, Telia Norge).

In closing, the author shares a dream of building his own truly open smartphone. He considers it unrealistic to assemble an ARM device better than the Fairphone 6 — Qualcomm chips simply can't be bought — so he's setting his sights on RISC-V. Will it run hot, have poor battery life, and be expensive? Most likely, yes. But it would be as open as possible. The immediate tasks for the FP6 are refining color correction, the laser rangefinder for autofocus, the selfie camera, and the fingerprint scanner.

Source: Hacker News