Over the past 11 months, since the full production launch of UP Phone into the marketplace in May 2024, Unplugged and UP Phone have received outsized attention.
You can chalk it up to several major factors:
- The world’s governments and big tech companies keep expanding surveillance capitalism, censorship and disrespect towards their citizens and customers.
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We made a bold (some might say “crazy”) effort to take on the biggest, most well-capitalized companies in the world, and to bring a smartphone to market with its own operating system and our own app store.
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The public visibility of our co-founder Erik Prince, and his appearances on high-profile shows, such as Shawn Ryan, Tucker Carlson, Glenn Beck and dozens of other appearances across television, digital broadcasters and podcasters both big and small.
Based on the millions of visits to our website and the view counts of these shows, tens of millions of people have been introduced to UP Phone. The levels of traffic and the curiosity are extraordinary. Sales are healthy too, but we are just getting started on that front.
With that said, many potential buyers of the UP Phone have questions about what differentiates the UP Phone and why they should trust or consider it over the Big Tech alternatives. This is fair skepticism, and if we were in the consumers’ shoes, we would challenge the upstart company with its big privacy claims and promises too.
Some researchers, influencers and technologists in the privacy tech and cybersecurity communities have publicly cautioned or even attacked the UP Phone. Although this is unfortunate and rare, we realize we must earn the public’s trust over time with consistent product development and by our actions.
Now, with this preface, we are pleased to announce the first of a series of open-source announcements regarding the UP Phone software and the LibertOS operating system. This follows our announcement in January that we are unlocking the UP Phone’s bootloader – without voiding the warranty – an industry first.
Two weeks ago, we quietly posted the Unplugged UP01 Kernel Repository to GitHub. For the non-coder, GitHub is one of the most popular environments where open-source projects and code are posted and developed by the community.
By way of education, LibertOS is based on the Android Open Source Platform (AOSP). This means that UP Phone uses a fully open-source version of Android, completely devoid of the Google Mobile Services package and all the tracking, analytics and surveillance tech that comes with it.
The kernel is the foundational layer of a mobile operating system, acting as a critical intermediary between the device’s hardware and software. Its primary role is to manage and coordinate access to the device's core resources—such as the CPU, memory, storage, and peripheral hardware such as sensors and radios.
When an app or system process needs to perform an operation—whether it's accessing a file, allocating memory, or communicating with hardware, it doesn't interact with the hardware directly. Instead, it makes requests through the operating system, which interfaces with the kernel to safely and efficiently carry out the task.
The kernel also oversees the file system, handling low-level operations like opening, reading, writing, and deleting files, while enforcing security and access controls to protect both system integrity and user data.
In essence, the kernel is the backbone of the operating system: it ensures that software can run, hardware can respond, and everything operates in harmony. Without it, no applications or services could function. It's the invisible engine that powers everything from launching apps to saving photos.
A significant portion of the code in the kernel is specific to the UP Phone and customized for our device.
Together with bootloader unlocking, open sourcing the UP Phone kernel means:
- It empowers developers to customize the UP Phone operating system
- It empowers developers to port other operating systems to the UP Phone.
- It encourages collaboration and contributions from the community.
- It maintains transparency and compliance with our open-source licensing requirements.
- It allows security researchers to look under the hood.
This is the first of multiple announcements and releases. In addition to the kernel, we open sourced the UP Antivirus code in GitHub several months ago.
Our objective is to continue advancing toward a zero-trust model, one in which third-party observers, customers, and security researchers can independently verify our claims by examining our code, rather than relying solely on our word.
We rely on the privacy and security assurances of our own products, and we're working toward open sourcing more of our operating system. Our goal is to make the platform as transparent as possible.
We welcome contributions from the community to enhance the kernel’s functionality, performance, and security.
-Eran Karpen
CTO, Unplugged
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