Image: u/Elian_D on Reddit · The PinePhone showing the new firmware's home screen
A from-scratch firmware that makes a PinePhone fast
An embedded developer used Claude Code to build a single LVGL program on Buildroot and a mainline kernel for the PinePhone, with calls, SMS, contacts, camera, music, an ePub reader, maps, a Telegram client, Doom and a Genesis emulator, all written from scratch.
Credits
Earliest dated source:
The full story
An embedded developer treated an old, slow PinePhone as an embedded device rather than a small desktop and, with Claude Code, built a feature-phone firmware for it: one LVGL program drawing straight to the screen on Buildroot and a mainline kernel, with most screens at the display's full 66 FPS. Every app was written from scratch, including calls, SMS, contacts, camera, music, an ePub reader, maps, a Telegram client, Doom and a Genesis emulator. Speed and battery life came mostly from 81 patches underneath, 72 written for the project: 46 to Linux (USB-C, cameras, charging, the device tree and waking from deep sleep on a call or SMS) and 23 to LVGL's OpenGL ES renderer on the Mali-400. The same UI runs in a browser as WebAssembly.
How it was done
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Sources
From a short post by the maker, so the details are as they tell them.
- Reddit: I used Claude Code to build my own operating system for the PinePhone, from the kernel upReddit poster: Elian_DPosted
The maker's post on the build and the patches below the app layer.
- The project: eliandoran.github.io
The project's guide, with a live in-browser version of the phone's software.