GNOME Mobile, or "GNOME on Purism's Librem 5"

[Matthias Klumpp <matthias tenstral net>]

[ Please keep the CC list for replies ]

Hello!

As some of you might already know from this years GUADEC or the media
coverage, we at Purism are planning to make a phone based on free
software, called the Librem 5[1] (if the crowdfunding succeeds).
We do need a UI for the phone, and using GNOME would make sense for us
since our laptops are already GNOME based.

Unfortunately, no GNOME Mobile UX exists yet, and I am not aware of
any concrete plans to change that at the moment.
I do think though that having a "GNOME Mobile" would be very
beneficial for the free software ecosystem in general, and I think it
makes sense to initiate a discussion about it, and see what actually
needs to be done to make GNOME work well on mobile.

Making a phone affects app development (we need dedicated apps for the
phone, e.g. a dialer/sms app), the toolkit (GTK+ needs a responsive
interface to adapt well to different screen sizes and form factors, as
well as maybe mobile-specific widgets), as well as the Shell and of
course a design of how a GNOME phone would look like and work in the
first place.

This is nothing a single company could just easily develop, because it
affects so many areas of GNOME, and is pretty much something the whole
project would need to be on board with.

So, is having a mobile UX something in scope for GNOME as a project
and the GNOME Shell?
Did anyone try to use GNOME on a smaller, phone-sized display already?
Is there interest in the community in actually making a "GNOME Mobile"
a reality (of course, Purism would help with that)?

I am looking forward to your replies!

Kind regards,
    Matthias Klumpp (PureOS developer at Purism)


P.S: I hope this is the appropriate list for such a discussion -
putting it here seemed like a good idea to me, in case it is not we
could move this thread to another list.

[1]: https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/