I still have a drawer full of OpenMoko. A couple Creative Labs Zii Eggs. Some OpenPandora, and even a hacked up FairPhone, donated to my parts bin, non-working.

I sure wish the Zii Egg had made it out of prototype stages. It showed the most promise - a bare-metal Linux OS, multiple cores, very, very easy to write apps for it - just plain C/C++ really.

Linux phones never happened because the distro's constructed for them were overly complicated, unnecessarily encumbered with 'smart features', and just generally (imho), sabotaged by the cult of collective development. Its the sort of project that requires a BDFL pushing things forward - none of the failed Linux phones ever had that.

These days, I'd rather see someone produce an ESP32 phone with LoRA and maybe SDR, and leave it at that.

But, there is another issue. The modems. It is always the modems. Until someone courageously open sources the modem chip and its firmware, there is no hope.