Specifications
I’m going to explore the specifications of the phone with the help of a few Linux tools. top, df, and upower are already present. But some of the apps (neofetch, inxi, and btop) I installed using Libertine, a confined sandbox where you can install deb-packaged desktop-based Ubuntu applications. Libertine lets you run CLI, TUI and GUI apps (but not server apps).
I’ll explore Libertine in a later article in this series.
Here’s the output from neofetch showing the operating system, kernel, packages, shell and other information.
I’m excited about Ubuntu Touch 24.04-1.0 which is slated for release on 24 September 2025. Ubuntu Touch 24.04-1.0 will be the first release of Ubuntu Touch which is based on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, a major upgrade from Ubuntu 20.04.
Processor
Driving the phone is an octa-core ARM CPU, consisting of 2x Cortex-A78 cores and 6x Cortex-A55 cores.
As inxi confirms the cores run up to 2000 Mhz and 2600 MHz. The overall CPU performance is better than many of the current generation single board computers I’m covering. The 8 cores make using Ubuntu Touch a genuinely pleasurable experience.
top can show you the cores present on the phone. It’s one of many small utilities included with Ubuntu Touch.
I stopped using top years ago. There are many better alternatives available. One of my favourites is btop. Thanks to Libertine, I can run btop on the phone.
GPU
The Arm Mali‑G68 GPU is optimized to provide smooth everyday gaming experiences with exceptional power efficiency, extending battery life for longer gaming sessions.
Storage
The phone has 256GB of storage. There is no space for a memory card.
Here’s output from df showing filesystem information.
The Ubuntu Touch images use multiple partitions. In the standard read-only configuration, the root file system is mounted as read-only, while a number of locations under “/” are bind mounted to locations on the writable “/userdata” file system.
Memory
The phone has 8GB of RAM. It’s LPDDR5.
Battery
Battery life is really impressive. I’m getting more than 36 hours of usage from a charge.
Here’s an extract of the output from upower -d
In the next article in the series, I’ll start delving into Ubuntu Touch.
Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Introduction
Page 2 – Specifications with Linux utilities
Complete list of articles in this series:
| Volla Phone Quintus | |
|---|---|
| Introduction | Introduction to the series and interrogation of the phone |
| Ubuntu Touch | A Brief Overview of the Apps Pre-installed |
| Libertine | Run Linux Desktop Applications on the phone |
| Waydroid battery life | Run Android applications on the phone |
| Lots more articles are currently being prepared | |
Hey Steve. Thanks for coving this. My ideal setup would be running Ubuntu Touch and being able to access an essential app like my banking app via WayDroid.
I’ve been testing Waydroid under Ubuntu Touch. I’ll be writing up an article on it.
Thanks, Steve.
Kinda defeats running Ubuntu Touch for users that then rely on Waydroid.
What if i broke the OS? can it be reinstalle by enduser (me)? More: Is it possible to install other than ubuntu touch? I am a pinephone user, with OS mobian. I will like to try to install mobian on this phone, just to test.
The series is looking at running Ubuntu Touch on the phone, so I’ve not investigated running other operating systems.
The phone has a read only file system so it’ll probably be difficult to break the OS. But I believe Volla will reflash the phone if the OS gets corrupted. For more details, Volla is best placed to respond. I have read that it is not impossible for a user to reflash the phone but that it’s non-trivial.
For users who get the phone with Volla OS (rather than Ubuntu Touch), it has a multi boot function which lets users install other operating systems. Again I’ve not looked into this as my phone (with Ubuntu Touch) doesn’t have a multi boot option, so I don’t know what operating systems (besides Ubuntu Touch) can be installed and their compatibility from a hardware perspective.