If you need a micro-manipulator, you probably already have a good idea of what it does. For example, you might be moving a probe over an IC die or wafer. You might be looking at something through a microscope. The key is moving something in very small, precise increments along three axes. An open-source design for a micro-manipulator has seen significant improvements lately. You can see several videos about the device below.

The device uses stepper motors, parallel kinematics, and miniature ball joints to achieve precise motion. The recent version 4.0 update fixes a few problems. According to the GitHub page:

• Self-collision during homing fixed.
• Connection of the ball joint block with screws only was not well constrained and could be rotated a bit.
• No reliable way to ensure consistent linkage rod length
• Unnecessary ball joint friction
• Accurate ball position heavily dependent on print quality and corner rounding
• Rubber bands could not be changed or removed once glued in.

We’ve covered earlier versions of this device, and we were watching the improvements to the ball joints. Since then, the project has updated much of its mechanical design and documentation, and it has also changed the API that drives it. It can even use tools in g-code now to support things like fine control over laser engraving.

If you prefer something old-school manual, consider a 3D-printed one.

It’s 6 a.m. on a cold January morning in 2002 in New Delhi. It’s still dark outside, and I’m in the kitchen preparing breakfast, packing lunches, and getting my two children ready to catch the school bus when, for the third time in a week, the power goes out. No lights, no mixer to finish my daughter’s puttu—her favorite rice dish—no kettle, no toaster. The bathroom is dark, and the kids are upset.

It will probably be hours before the power comes back on, so I grab a flashlight and light the candles that are set up around the house for these occasions. We’re behind schedule now. We pack the food we have, bundle up as the house turns chilly, and head outside, leaving a mess in the kitchen. We make our way to the bus stop in the dark—the streetlights are out, too—only to discover my daughter has missed her ride. Again. I’ll be late for work at Jamia Millia Islamia, a university where I am a professor of electrical engineering and teach power systems and smart grids. I just hope the power is on there.

This was a common scene for my family and all of Delhi in the early 2000s. Power outages happened almost daily and lasted hours. When the power was on, the quality was so poor that it would dim lights, flicker screens, and wreak havoc on appliances. Customer service at the power utilities essentially didn’t exist.

A child walks in July 2007 past a store in New Delhi specializing in reconditioned generators. The fear of power cuts during summer heat spurs demand for these generators so that residents can produce their own power.Nicholas Bradley/AFP/Getty Images

These problems had been getting worse through the 1980s and 1990s. The cause: an aging distribution grid bereft of crucial technologies, and electricity providers with little accountability. The situation became so bad that the city was losing more than half of its power through obsolete equipment and theft. These staggering losses meant that utilities got paid for only a fraction of the electricity they were trying to deliver. And the lack of funds prevented them from investing in better grid infrastructure.

But over the last quarter century, a remarkable effort by the government and the city’s distribution utilities has turned Delhi’s grid into a reliable, modern system. Power losses have shrunk from over 50 percent in 2002 to 5 to 6 percent in 2026—on par with France and Belgium, and better than Greece and Serbia. Delhi’s grid reliability index, a measure of how often electricity can be counted on, stood at around 70 percent in 2002 and has now topped 99.9 percent.

The bustling Main Bazar in the Paharganj neighborhood of Delhi increasingly uses more nighttime electricity, but reductions in electricity loss help counter demand. iStock

With reliable power, businesses across the city have blossomed. The streetlights are bright. The number of electric vehicles, including city buses, is growing daily. Quality of life has improved. Today, my family is comfortable year-round in our home despite Delhi’s scorching summers and cold winters. The chaos of losing power no longer hinders me from getting to work. The city still has problems—pollution, overcrowding, noise—but thankfully, reliable power is no longer among them.

The transformation of Delhi’s grid can serve as a model for other cities that suffer from decrepit power infrastructure. Regions of Albania, Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, Estonia, India, Kenya, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Uganda, and Venezuela are reeling from heavy losses in their distribution grids. Their problems look like Delhi’s 25 years ago. I believe it’s possible to improve electricity in these places by adapting the changes Delhi made. Here’s an inside look at how the city accomplished it.

Delhi’s Power Grid and Energy Mix

The city of Delhi hosts the capital of the Republic of India, and sits along the Yamuna River in the northern part of the country. It’s home to about 23 million people and is one of the most densely populated areas in the world. Delhi’s grid includes thousands of kilometers of power lines, and peak electricity demand reached an all-time high this year of 8,748 megawatts. The city currently buys 76 percent of its power from central generating companies and private players from neighboring states. Energy generation within the city is restricted to natural gas and renewable sources. Nearly 48.5 percent of the city’s power comes from coal, about 26.5 percent from natural gas, and the rest from carbon-free sources, led by hydropower at 15.6 percent.

Tata Power-DDL replaced about 5 kilometers of overhead lines with underground cables, which reduced electricity loss and improved the aesthetics of Delhi’s streets, such as the Janta Flats in the Shalimar Bagh neighborhood.Tata Power-DDL

By the early 2000s, Delhi’s nearly 100-year-old power distribution system was in serious disrepair. Everything was old—lines, transformers, circuit breakers, switches. New grid technologies were needed to keep up with new kinds of electricity loads, but there was little money to upgrade components.

The shabby state of the grid caused many problems, most notably high electricity losses, where electricity vanishes primarily as heat. The cause of the losses was a classic electrical problem: too much current flowing through a network that wasn’t designed to carry it efficiently.

To understand the problem, it helps to understand how modern power grids work. Typically, they include generation, transmission, and distribution. After power is generated, transformers convert the electricity to high voltage levels—typically 132, 220, 400, or 765 kilovolts in India. Transmission lines then carry the power over long distances to receiving substations that are closer to where customers need electricity. Transformers then step down the voltage (to 66, 33, or 11 kV in India) and distribution lines branch out, carrying the power to customers. The whole grid works primarily on alternating current.

Electricity Losses by Country, 2002 vs. 2023

Distribution networks carry both active and reactive power. Active power is the energy used to perform useful work (and is measured in watts). Reactive power is the power that flows back and forth in an electric circuit, building electric and magnetic fields (measured in volt-ampere-reactive, or VAR). Although it doesn’t perform useful work, reactive power is necessary for many devices, such as induction motors, transformers, and computers (typically any circuit or device with inductance or capacitance elements).

When there are a lot of devices consuming reactive power on the same line, the overall current carried by the line—the sum of the active and reactive current—must increase. The more current in the line, the more the line heats up and the more energy that’s wasted as heat.

In addition to current, resistance in the line will increase losses as well. Resistance is when electrons encounter opposition as they move through the conductive material (typically aluminum in a power grid). Longer lines with many branches and connection points will increase resistance. The rule of thumb is that line loss equals the square of the current multiplied by the resistance.

Reactive power creates a second problem: It causes the voltage along the line to drop. And when the voltage falls, many modern electrical devices try to maintain roughly the same level of performance by drawing more current. That higher current produces even greater losses in the line and causes the voltage to fall further.

Meter Technology Impacts Electricity Losses

In a healthy grid, the utility will take compensatory measures to lower the current and maintain the voltage all the way to the ends of the lines. But in Delhi, this wasn’t happening. The result was a vicious cycle. Reactive loads increased the current, the higher current increased energy losses and lowered the voltages, lower voltages forced devices to draw more current and further increased the losses.

In some parts of Delhi, the effect was so severe that residents took matters into their own hands. A colleague of mine who lived in a different part of the city constantly experienced voltage that was too low for her appliances to operate reliably, so she had to install her own voltage stabilizer. At my home, we bought an inverter and battery system to keep a fan and a few lights running during the many outages.

Electricity Loss and Theft in Delhi

The losses in Delhi weren’t caused solely by technical problems. Theft of electricity was rampant, by both the powerful and the powerless (in both senses of the word). Businesses, residential customers, and utility employees with vested interests would siphon electricity from the grid. It was easy to illegally hook into a streetlight or a distribution line running close to one’s house or factory. Utilities didn’t have the resources to identify theft or penalize offenders. Even if they could, the courts were already overburdened, and an electricity regulatory commission that could push for reforms had not yet fully formed.

Updated meters have made billing easier and more accurate. Tata Power-DDL

Making matters worse, the utilities and their employees were rarely held accountable for their actions, and so corruption plagued the system. Junior engineers and line workers, many of them lacking appropriate technical skills, were tasked with handling nearly every issue, including outages, flickering, and bill payment. This was too much authority in the hands of people with too little training.

On top of that, customers didn’t pay their bills. Meters were old, frequently faulty, and easily tampered with. Utility employees would take a meter reading by visiting the customer’s property, noting the reading in a book, entering it in a ledger or on a computer back at the office, and converting it into an electricity bill that would get dropped off at the customer’s property. This process left a lot of room for incorrect billing.

To pay a bill, customers had to stand in long queues at the utility offices, which had limited business hours. Not wanting to take off a half day of work for this, many customers simply didn’t pay. And there was no penalty for not paying—there were no regulations allowing the utilities to cut off a customer’s power. (I paid my bill by having a family member stand in line for me.)

The combined commercial and technical losses left Delhi’s utilities collecting payment for less than half of the electricity they were supplying in the early 2000s.

India’s Electricity Act and Power Reforms

Such problems weren’t unique to Delhi. On average in 2002, state utilities across India experienced electricity losses of nearly 37 percent. My country desperately needed systemic reforms, but authority over electricity was split between the central and state governments so any decision-making was fractured. States managed most of the generation, as well as transmission and distribution, while the central government oversaw generation that supplied multiple states, such as hydropower, fossil fuel plants, and nuclear plants. The central government could push reforms, but the states determined whether those reforms would succeed. Making matters worse, most states put a single organization in charge of generation, transmission, and distribution, giving that entity too much control and reducing transparency and competition.

A team of technicians with BSES Rajdhani Power maintains an insulator string on a large power transformer in 2011. BSES Rajdhani Power

In 2001, India’s central government began writing some historic legislation that became the landmark Electricity Act, 2003. Among the grand reforms aimed at transforming the country’s power industry, it unbundled state oversight of grid networks, creating separate entities for generation, transmission, and distribution. It also opened up the power sector to privatization. It allowed large electricity customers to bypass local distribution companies and purchase electricity from competitors or build their own power plants. It created a central regulatory agency responsible for determining interstate tariffs and promoting market competition in the power sector. And it created mechanisms for prosecuting electricity theft.

Hundreds of capacitor banks have been installed in Delhi to supply reactive power at strategic locations and help stabilize voltage.Tata Power-DDL

In 2002, Delhi was already taking drastic action to fix its grid. The organization overseeing Delhi’s distribution, the Delhi Vidyut Board, was broken up and two private companies—BSES (now part of Reliance Infrastructure), and North Delhi Power Limited (now known as Tata Power-DDL)—took over distribution. They faced a Herculean task. Tata Power-DDL, serving the northern half of Delhi, would have to tackle a combined commercial and technical electricity loss of 53.5 percent. BSES, whose territory was split between two subsidiaries, was facing 51.5 percent losses in South Delhi and 63.1 percent losses in East Delhi.

“The company inherited a deteriorated and overloaded network, massive power theft, weak billing and collection systems, inaccurate consumer records, and an aging, largely untrained workforce,” Dwijadas Basak, CEO of Tata Power-DDL, told me. There were over 100,000 unresolved billing complaints, 20,000 pending connection applications, and frequent supply failures, which had severely eroded consumer trust, he added. Both Tata Power-DDL and BSES devised sweeping reforms and human resource development initiatives. The companies followed their own paths over the years, but ultimately implemented similar changes, with similar results.

Delhi’s Electricity System Overhaul

Fixing Delhi’s grid was a journey that involved all stakeholders, including customers, city authorities, and utility employees at all levels. The utilities revamped their organizational structures, diminishing the power of junior staff and creating separate teams to focus on specific tasks. Long-term employees of the erstwhile Delhi Vidyut Board received training from the up-and-comers at the new companies.

On the technical side, both companies installed digital control systems that let them monitor and operate the grid from a central location. Known as SCADA, or supervisory control and data acquisition, the systems offered a bird’s-eye view of the infrastructure, including the status of equipment, voltage, current, power flow, and switch positions, with updates in seconds. This helped the companies identify areas of high loss and theft and make faster decisions based on accurate information.

The SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) system at Balaji Estate in Delhi’s Kalkaji neighborhood serves as the nerve center of BSES Rajdhani Power’s distribution network in South and West Delhi. It enables real-time visibility, remote control of grid operations, fault identification and isolation, and load management. BSES Rajdhani Power

The utilities also replaced aging transformers and circuit breakers and created extensive maintenance plans for equipment. In 2002, 11 percent of the transformers in the region were failing at any given time. That rate is less than 1 percent today, according to Tata Power-DDL. Crucially, the companies installed hundreds of capacitor banks, including some mobile ones, to supply reactive power at strategic locations. This improvement reduced the total current flowing in the distribution lines and helped stabilize the voltage. They also installed voltage regulators at points in the system where voltage tends to drop.

To reduce theft, the companies replaced bare distribution wires with insulated lines—a single cable for three phases—which made it harder to tap into the lines. The cables also reduced outages because they’re better at preventing ground faults, which can occur when, say, a tree branch falls on the line.

Workers received better sensors and tools to do their jobs safely and accurately. For instance, they were given helmet-mounted voltage sensors, which are safer than handheld ones, and thermal scanning tools to detect hidden defects in the insulation of high-voltage equipment that could otherwise have led to catastrophic failures.

To reduce inaccurate billing and meter tampering, the companies replaced the old electromechanical meters with digital ones that are read with handheld devices. In some locations, radio-frequency-based group metering systems were installed by Tata Power-DDL to consolidate multiple customers’ meters into one. The data is then wirelessly transmitted to a central database, eliminating the need for individual meter readings. The companies are now trying smart meters, which give consumers more control over their electricity bills and give utilities remote control of some equipment (with the customer’s consent).

To encourage people to pay their bills, the utilities installed kiosks that are available 24 hours a day, and they created a web-based payment system and mobile app. Incentives for early bill payment and community-engagement programs also helped. Assistance from Delhi’s law enforcement considerably reduced electricity theft.

Tata Power hired women living in the 223 slums it serves in the northern parts of the city to knock on neighbors’ doors and remind them to pay their power bills. These payment collectors [left and center], known as abhas, were photographed while speaking with a customer [right] in the Sanjay Basti area of New Delhi in 2017. Prashanth Vishwanathan/Bloomberg/Getty Images

In areas where theft was particularly rampant and losses were as high as 83 percent, according to Tata Power-DDL, the companies took a different strategy. These pockets of Delhi were predominantly occupied by low-income families. Tata Power-DDL, and later BSES, worked to improve the water supply for these residents and provide educational opportunities, such as instruction in reading and writing in Hindi as well as financial literacy. These efforts focused on the women, who were at home more, and paid them to collect electricity payments from their neighbors. Bill payment rates from these areas are now on par with those of other parts of Delhi.

In recent years, some customers have been installing rooftop solar panels to take advantage of subsidies and incentives. This trend can reduce electricity losses further because the energy generated at the customer end reduces current in the distribution lines. Customers are also installing more LED lights and energy-efficient appliances, reducing the load in the system.

BSES is using AI to help detect theft. The algorithms analyze consumption patterns in pockets where losses are higher than they should be. The company is also using AI to forecast demand, fine-tune operational efficiency, and provide chatbots for customers.

Quality of Life Improves in Delhi

Life in Delhi is better than it was 25 years ago. I’m not worried that the power may go out and force me to reschedule my activities. My uninterrupted Wi-Fi gives me peace of mind, and my heating and cooling systems keep me and my family comfortable. I rarely need to use our old inverter and battery.

The sharp rise of e-rickshaws in Delhi has increased demand on the power grid. Sajjad Hussain/AFP/Getty Images

The number of businesses in Delhi has increased substantially, in part because of the access to quality power. People can confidently buy products that depend on electricity. In fact, the city’s peak electricity demand has tripled since 2002 due to the increase in population, commercial activity, and use of electrical gadgets.

And then there’s the benefits to the planet. One unit of electricity that isn’t frittered away is one less unit that must be generated, not to mention the reductions in carbon emissions.

Still, there’s work to do. Some areas of Delhi continue to have high losses, driven partly by the illegal charging of e-rickshaws. Elsewhere in India, the states of Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Telangana still experience losses of about 17 to 23 percent despite the sweeping Electricity Act, 2003. There are many reasons for the ongoing losses: long distribution lines to remote villages, less digitization, and inefficiencies in billing and collection of payments.

These regions, and others around the world, can learn from Delhi’s grid comeback. Recently, power losses have increased substantially in countries such as Argentina, Greece, Jamaica, and Morocco, according to the World Bank, and some of the causes are similar to those that Delhi faced back in 2002.

Meanwhile, Australia, most countries in North America and Europe, and a few countries in Asia and Africa experience low electricity losses as they invest regularly in their distribution infrastructure and the ethical enforcement of rules. In China, for example, losses have gradually been cut in half, from 7.1 to 3.4 percent. In Latvia, losses plummeted from 25 to 5.8 percent.

What’s important is a comprehensive approach. Technologies like smart metering, AI, and analytics certainly help, but equally important is that people in the field are trained and take responsibility for their jobs, and that laws are enforced and payments collected.

“Sustainable loss reduction cannot happen through technology alone,” Abhishek Ranjan, CEO of BSES Rajdhani Power told me. “Technology is an important enabler, but long-term success comes from combining it with disciplined execution, operational accountability, and strong consumer engagement.”

This article was updated on 30 September, 2026 with clarification about the full name Tata Power-DDL.

IEEE TryEngineering is dedicated to inspiring intellectual curiosity in children.

The technologies shaping our world, including in the realms of artificial intelligence, electric vehicles, and ocean exploration, are evolving rapidly. Helping young learners understand the concepts is essential to preparing the next generation of problem-solvers, creators, and engineers.

TryEngineering has introduced a STEM book series for youngsters ages 8 to 12 through the Lerner Publishing Group.

The series, Tomorrow’s Technology With TryEngineering, Powered by IEEE, makes complex topics more approachable and engaging, with each book combining age-appropriate explanations, real-world examples, and design challenges that encourage curiosity and critical thinking. The series is based on ebooks and videos available at tryengineering.org.

For the series, TryEngineering partnered with several other IEEE groups including the Communications, Computer, and Oceanic Engineering societies and the Transportation Electrification Council.

Whether used in the classroom, a library, or at home, the books can help pupils connect STEM concepts to the technologies they encounter every day, including computers and smartphones.

Six topics in the collection

Here are the books in the new collection:

Artificial Intelligence: The Future of Smart Technology explores the systems behind streaming services, search engines, and health care. Readers learn how AI works while exploring ethical concerns such as bias, deepfakes, hallucinations, and privacy. Pupils can better understand one of the most influential technologies of our time as it evolves.

Communication Technology: From Morse Code to Smartphones teaches readers about smoke signals, semaphore towers, telephones, and wireless networks. The pupils can gain an understanding of how engineers are changing communications technology through innovations such as 6G and space-based networks. The book highlights career opportunities in the aerospace and telecommunications fields.

Electric Vehicles: Powering the Future of Transportation covers how e-cars, e-bikes, e-scooters, and electrified trains are transforming the way people travel. Readers can discover how hybrid and fully electric vehicles operate and how the batteries that power them work. They also can learn about the roles engineers play in developing smarter transit systems.

Ocean Engineering: Protecting Our Ocean Environments highlights the vital ecosystem role played by the world’s oceans, which require careful stewardship. play in our ecosystem. Readers can learn how engineers study the underwater world using submersibles and floats, how they address pollution, and how they protect marine environments.

Semiconductors: The Building Blocks of Modern Electronics focuses on the technology behind nearly every electronic tool we use. Microchips power smartphones, computers, and countless other products, all thanks to semiconductors. Readers can learn about insulators and conductors, how microchips are manufactured, and why semiconductor engineering is a fertile field for innovation.

Signal Power: The Hidden Waves Behind Modern Tech explores how engineers analyze and manipulate signals to make technologies work more effectively. Whether it is a phone call reaching the correct person despite background noise or a medical device monitoring a patient, signal processing plays crucial roles in modern life. The book introduces different wave types, the signal processing workflow, and careers in the field.

The book series can help children understand the technologies shaping the world around them while encouraging them to think like engineers and innovators. By connecting STEM concepts to real-world applications, the series can make learning more meaningful and engaging.

The Tomorrow’s Technology With TryEngineering series is available through Amazon, Bookshop, and Lerner. More about the collection may be found here.

The ‘biofriendly’ nature of poly(lactic acid) (PLA) filament often gets touted as one of its main advantages over alternatives like PETG, but even a modicum of research ought to inform a person that the biodegrading feature of PLA is only true for pure PLA without additives and at temperatures at or above its glass transition temperature (Tg). Thus the results of a year-long experiment by [I built a thing] shouldn’t be too surprising.

After burying said PLA in the garden like any self-respecting person does who tries to dispose of some evidence, the PLA suffered through a European winter and very hot, dry summer, before being dug up again recently for inspection and testing. Although not the first time that someone has tested this, it’s a good reminder considering just how much PLA filament is used each year.

In total three sample sets were used, one being the control, the other two buried in soil and compost respectively. A visual inspection showed no major difference, and a tensile strength test also showed no statistically significant change among all three sample sets. The experiment could have been concluded here, but instead calorimetry was used in a laboratory setting to see whether exposure to microbes as commonly found in soil does anything significant.

This isothermal microcalorimetry test was performed at the University of Basel, effectively to answer the question whether there’s anything in the PLA samples that can feed said microbes. As it turns out, the answer is a resounding ‘no’, with microbial activity within the presence of PLA dropping off even quicker presumably due to there being less volume available for nutrients.

When [I built a thing] contacted a large number of commercial biodegrading facilities in Switzerland, Germany and the USA, many would happily take PLA, but none of them would accepted 3D-printed PLA parts, which says a lot. The primary reason for this appears to be that even under industrial composting conditions it simply takes too long for these facilities to consider these to be economical to compost.

With PLA primarily degrading via hydrolysis, it needs to be exposed to the right conditions for this process to not take an eternity. You can of course use something like PHA instead, which doesn’t require this hydrolysis step to be biodegradable. Overall PLA is quite a crummy material, with it also suffering from embrittlement due to crystallization that will happily turn a spool of PLA into lots of sad fragments. This makes PETG into a very common and very attractive alternative to PLA.

There is a thread that runs between

• Contemporary left-wing purity politics (the “of course we don’t want people like that in our coalition” business, which has caused so much ink to be spilled of late)
• Contemporary right-wing immigration politics
• Contemporary anti-homeless politics
• The way that contemporary business leaders talk about hiring and retention

…which is, of course, the basic idea that you can deal with problem people (and the problems they cause) by just Not Having Them Around. The urge isn’t to reach for rehabilitation or reeducation, or for punishment, or even for exploitation or destruction, but for banishment.

I am not speaking out against this logic, in any kind of generalized way. There are obviously many situations in which you can, and should, address your problems by trying to put an access barrier between yourself and the problem people. A lot of my social advice boils down to Did you know that you can just build a walled garden?, and that’s probably more useful than any political advice I have to offer.

But it’s also obvious, if you think about it for a moment, that this logic breaks down at scale. The problem people might not be around your neck of the woods, but they have to be around somewhere. The more of the overall system you’re trying to manage, the less responsible it is to deal with problems solely by shunting them off onto someone else.

Like every age, our age is wedded to its own particular customs and social technologies, so no surprise that it’s got this kind of bias. But it would be nice to see more attempts to solve large-scale problems of this kind that don’t basically amount to access barriers.

[And of course this isn’t even getting into object-level questions like Which people are really the problem people? and What really constitutes a problem?]

Amos B. Batto has published an incredibly detailed look at the state of Linux on smartphones. It’s an excellent read you really shouldn’t skip.

Five years ago, Linux phones looked like they were poised to become a viable alternative to the Android/iOS duopoly that has an iron grip on the mobile phone industry. Sadly, after a brief flash of activity and community engagement with the release of the Purism Librem 5 and the PINE64 PinePhone in 2020, the Linux phone market has generally stagnated. This stagnation occurred partly because of the problems at Purism and PINE64, but also because the available Linux SoC’s weren’t up to the task of running a modern smartphone, and the hardware industry wasn’t providing any good alternatives with good free/open source drivers. In addition, Plasma Mobile and Phosh were still inchoate mobile interfaces at the time, and there wasn’t a good distro option to run these interfaces on Android kernels with a normal integrated mobile SoC. The poor performance of the PinePhone and Librem 5 and the problems with the PinePhone Pro and the Librem 5 refunds sapped people’s enthusiasm and willingness to take a chance on the next Linux phone.

Fortunately, all of these conditions are changing, and I believe that there is now the possibility that Linux could finally become a viable alternative to Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS in the mobile space, just like desktop Linux has become a viable alternative to Windows and Mac OSX on the PC over the last three decades. This isn’t to say that mobile Linux will fundamentally challenge the business of Google or Apple, but the conditions are ripe for a small market to arise for Linux phones, similar to the way that people can currently buy Linux PCs from a number of small companies, such as TUXEDO, System76, Purism, Slimbook, ThinkPenguin, Ubuntushop.biz, Entroware, Star Labs, Juno, Laptop with Linux, Linux Certified, ArkPC, etc.

↫ Amos B. Batto

I’m not quite as optimistic as Batto, and that’s almost exclusively down to how running Android applications through compatibility layers will remain an absolute necessity for anyone trying to use one of these Linux smartphones today. As long as crucial applications and services required to function in a modern society, like banking, messaging, government services, and so on, require the use of an Android application when using a Linux smartphone, I just don’t think any significant number of people will be switching over.

What’s needed is something that will force these crucial services to become available on platforms other than Android and iOS, since I don’t think any of them will do so of their own volition. The only way I can see this happening is if the European Union, spurred on by our desire to reduce our dependence on adversarial US companies, mandates that several services marked as crucial must make themselves available on platforms other than Android and iOS.

I doubt that will happen, but I honestly don’t see Linux smartphones becoming anything more than a mere curiosity you fiddle with at home, while carrying an Android phone or iPhone as your actual phone.