Plasma Mobile
Hacker ApprovedMobile shell in Phones & tablets
Praised as an improving mobile shell that is usable day to day and handles screen orientation well; critics say hardware support is poor.
Praised as an improving mobile shell that is usable day to day and handles screen orientation well; critics say hardware support is poor.
19 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 16
- criticize it
- 3
- approval share
- 84%
Recommended in 7 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 16 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 5.3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 7 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Praised as great and promising
“Plasma mobile has been really great for me”
Comment from 17 Sep 2026 in “Running Ubuntu on the Lenovo IdeaPad Duet” “Plasma Mobile looks very nice indeed.”
Comment from 19 Mar 2026 in “Android: Balancing Openness and Choice with Safety” “The future is Plasma Mobile.”
Comment from 18 Sep 2026 in “Android 17 is the first since 3.x to add new APIs without releasing to the AOSP” - Comment from 17 Aug 2026 in “Fairphone 6 and PostmarketOS working main camera”
Steady progress, usable for daily use
“They're _very_ close to releasing something for daily use and the whole KDE stack on mobile has come a long way.”
Comment from 10 Mar 2026 in “Jolla on track to ship new phone with Sailfish OS, user-replaceable battery” “It's not perfect but it's quite usable I think.”
Comment from 21 Mar 2026 in “Android: Balancing Openness and Choice with Safety” “it made insane progress over the last years”
Comment from 10 Jan 2026 in “Changes to Android Open Source Project” - Comment from 1 Oct 2026 in “Fuck Android Developer Verification Program”
Suits tablets and docked desktop use
“Both Phosh and PlasmaMobile turn into a "proper" desktop when "docked"”
Comment from 13 Mar 2026 in “Your Phone Is an Entire Computer” “quite a cool alternate DE that is more suited to tablets”
Comment from 17 Sep 2026 in “Running Ubuntu on the Lenovo IdeaPad Duet”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Diverts effort from desktop Plasma
“It would have just been better to continue doing the desktop specific things and let the Plasma Mobile enthusiasts make those changes.”
Comment from 11 Apr 2026 in “What is RISC-V and why it matters to Canonical” “Plasma Mobile has ate more time that could have went into making Plasma a better desktop”
Comment from 11 Apr 2026 in “What is RISC-V and why it matters to Canonical”
What people recommend instead
The same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plasma MobileThis page | 16 | 3 | 84% | 7 | — | Approved |
| Phosh | 15 | 7 | 68% | 4 | — | Approved |
What people said
22 of the 23 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“can be maintained by the community”
“get Plasma Mobile, Sailfish or whatever working on their phones”
“just give me Plasma Mobile on something the size of an iPhone 13 Mini”
“it's actually good - not perfect”
“My attempts to get Plasma mobile working, which is the shell I actually want, failed miserably.”
“it runs on precisely no decent hardware as far as I can tell”
“The future is Plasma Mobile.”
“quite a cool alternate DE that is more suited to tablets”
“Plasma mobile has been really great for me”
“Plasma is great in mobile”
“The keyboard was perfectly usable, apps were quick to load”
“with plasma it was much much better at least”
“In my experience (Pinephone) Plasma mobile was slower then Phosh by a very noticeable amount.”
“With plasma-mobile there is no need to mess with configuration about the orientation since it just flips the screen the way I'm holding it.”
“Personally I would recommend postmarketOS + plasma mobile instead”
“It would have just been better to continue doing the desktop specific things and let the Plasma Mobile enthusiasts make those changes.”
“Plasma Mobile has ate more time that could have went into making Plasma a better desktop”
“It's not perfect but it's quite usable I think.”
“Plasma Mobile looks very nice indeed.”
“Both Phosh and PlasmaMobile turn into a "proper" desktop when "docked"”
“They're _very_ close to releasing something for daily use and the whole KDE stack on mobile has come a long way.”
“it made insane progress over the last years”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.