Since Android uses Linux, you’d think it would be easier to run Linux apps on your Android phone or tablet. There are some solutions out there, but the experience is usually less than stellar. A new player, Lindroid, claims to provide real Linux distributions with hardware-accelerated Wayland on phones. How capable is it? The suggested window manager is KDE’s KWIN. That software is fairly difficult to run on anything but a full-blown system with dbus, hardware accelerations, and similar features.

There are, however, a few problems. First, you need a rooted phone, which isn’t totally surprising. Second, there are no clear instructions yet about how to install the software. The bulk of the information available is on an X thread. You can go about 4 hours into the very long video below to see a slide presentation about Lindroid.

While it appears Linux is running inside a container, it looks like they’ve opened up device access, which allows a full Linux experience even though Linux is technically, in this case, an Android app.

We are interested in seeing how this works, and when the instructions show up, we might root an old phone to try it out. Of course, there are other methods. Termux seems to be the most popular, but running GUI programs on it isn’t always the best experience. Not that we haven’t done it.

Over the past several years we have seen smartphones regrettably lose features which were once standard, such as FM radios, IR blasters, status LEDs, physical buttons, micro SD card slots, and of course headphone jacks. An interesting counterpoint here regarding the latter is the newly released Moondrop MIAD 01 smartphone.

As a relatively well-known manufacturer of audio equipment including in-ear monitors (IEMs), the announcement of a smartphone came out of left field, but the specifications make sense. Of particular interest are the dual audio jacks: one 3.5 mm TRRS and one 4.4 mm balanced TRRS, making it a good match for high-end headphones that support balanced audio.

While the smartphone hardware is your average mid-range selection, featuring a MediaTek Dimensity 7050 SoC — its main selling point are the dual Cirrus Logic MasterHiFi DACs, that power the dual audio jacks. It’s also the reason behind the name: Mobile Internet Audio Device, or MIAD for short.

Given Moondrop’s audio enthusiast market, this tracks. These are people for whom the mere mentioning of ‘Bluetooth Audio’ or ‘USB-C-to-audio jack dongle’ is likely to evoke a less than favorable response.

In terms of software, Moondrop says the phone will offer a “native” Android 13 experience, which hopefully means it will be free from manufacturer-specific changes and bloatware. You’ll need to manually install Google Mobile Services though, as is often the case with Android devices that aren’t from the major players in the industry.

As reported by Android Authority, the MIAD 01 is available via select outlets for $399. Details like software updates remain to be clarified, but this might be the most over the top audio-centric smartphone we have seen so far. It definitely gives Sony’s current range of Android-based Walkmans a run for their money, while even having phone functionality in the package.

Sometimes we get sent a tip that isn’t just a single article or video, but an entire blog or YouTube channel. Today’s channel, [Diy Otaku], is absolutely worth a watch if you want someone see giving a second life to legendary handheld devices, and our creator has been going at it for a while. A common theme in most of the videos so far – taking an old phone or a weathered gaming console, and improving upon them in a meaningful way, whether it’s lovingly restoring them, turning them into a gaming console for your off days, upgrading the battery, or repairing a common fault.

The hacks here are as detailed as they are respectful to the technology they work on. The recent video about putting a laptop touchpad into a game controller, for instance, has the creator caringly replace the controller’s epoxy blob heart with a Pro Micro while preserving the original board for all its graphite-covered pads. The touchpad is the same used in an earlier video to restore a GPD Micro PC with a broken touchpad, a device that you can see our hacker use in a later video running FreeCAD, helping them design a 18650 battery shell for a PSP about to receive a 6000 mAh battery upgrade.

These are the kinds of rebuilds you do to devices you value, and this is only reinforced by restoration videos peppered into the list. This Nintendo DS Lite restoration video is half an hour of [DiyOtaku] taking care of an old legendary handheld, with complete disassembly, cleaning the shell with a toothbrush, and then complete reassembly while not missing a single screw. Here’s a video on restoring a Nokia N73, and the next video is about giving it a USB-C charging port, so you’re not bound by old proprietary charger cabling – the kind of mod you would do for a device that matters to you.

The more we look into this channel, the more it keeps giving, and the level of care put into these devices is heartwarming. If you’re always looking for more videos to play as you solder your latest projects together, this channel is undoubtedly an underappreciated highlight, rarely breaking thousand views, but going on strong nevertheless. If devices getting a second life is what keeps you going, check out a near-hundred articles we have filed away under ‘restoration’.

If your thought repurposing DVB-T dongles for generic software defined radio (SDR) use was cool, wait until you see QCSuper, a project that re-purposes phones and modems to capture raw 2G/3G/4G/5G. You have to have a Qualcomm-based device, it has to either run rooted Android or be a USB modem, but once you find one in your drawers, you can get a steady stream of packets straight into your Wireshark window. No more expensive SDR requirement for getting into cellular sniffing – at least, not unless you are debugging some seriously low-level issues.

It appears there’s a Qualcomm specific diagnostic port you can access over USB, that this software can make use of. The 5G capture support is currently situational, but 2G/3G/4G capabilities seem to be pretty stable. And there’s a good few devices in the “successfully tested” list – given the way this software functions, chances are, your device will work! Remember to report whether it does or doesn’t, of course. Also, the project is seriously rich on instructions – whether you’re using Linux or Windows, it appears you won’t be left alone debugging any problems you might encounter.

This is a receive-only project, so, legally, you are most likely allowed to have fun — at least, it would be pretty complicated to detect that you are, unlike with transmit-capable setups. Qualcomm devices have pretty much permeated our lives, with Qualcomm chips nowadays used even in the ever-present SimCom modules, like the modems used in the PinePhone. Wondering what a sniffer could be useful for? Well, for one, if you ever need to debug a 4G base station you’ve just set up, completely legally, of course.