Using Ubuntu Touch on a Pixel 3A Phone

27 Oct, 2025

Ubuntu Touch began as a project under Canonical in 2011. The idea was to create a mobile operating system alternative to Google's Android and Apple's iOS. Ubuntu Touch was shipped on a phone and then a tablet around 2014 in Europe, but, as we now know, it wasn't the type of commercial success needed to compete with the two established platforms.

In 2017, Canonical ended funding for the project, at which point it was taken over by a young Norwegian programmer called Marius Gripsard. The project is now known as the charity foundation called UBports.

Ubuntu Touch has been on my radar for a while now; I want to see good open source alternatives to the established commercial giants in the mobile space. I bought a PinePhone, which is a Linux phone, several years ago and experimented with Ubuntu Touch (UT) then, but found a lot of basic hardware functionality wasn't working, so I put that to the side.

Recently, however, I read that UT has now become fully optimised for Google's Pixel 3A:

UT on Pixel 3 UT fully optimised for Google Pixel 3. Source: https://devices.ubuntu-touch.io/device/sargo/

Having set up a Pixel 3 (and a Pixel 5) for my kids in the past, and as they are fairly affordable, I decided to look for a second-hand phone. My online search led to an interesting in-person meeting with a fellow privacy advocate, W., who gave me a few tips about Android app compatibility on UT. This was the first time I had met someone with a similar mindset towards digital privacy in person!

After paying W., I took the phone home and was ready to install Ubuntu Touch.

Installation and initial setup

One of the benefits of picking a hardware device that has a high compatibility with any given alternative operating system is that you can often use an easy installer. This was the case with Ubuntu Touch for the Pixel 3A. I downloaded the installer and plugged in my device. While the installer did not recognise the phone automatically, I could select it manually:

Installer

Next, you can select the operating system to install. Unfortunately, the 'daily' build comes up as the default operating system in the drop-down menu:

Installer 2

I learned the hard way (and several frustrating days later) that 'daily' is an experimental build, with lots of incomplete elements. Regular users need the 'stable' build, which you can select yourself:

Installer 3

I have raised this issue on the UT forums and on their GitHub page, and I hope they'll fix it soon.

Other than this, installation worked mostly without a hitch. Do read the instructions carefully before installing to make sure your phone is compatible and ready. During installation, I had to switch to another USB cable, and at one point got stuck on a message stating that adb was 'waiting for devices', but it disappeared when I unplugged and re-plugged the USB cable. After that, everything worked well, and the installation was completed in under 10 minutes.

What worked well

There are so many positive things to say about Ubuntu Touch. For starters, the documentation is excellent, and the community supportive (links below). UT has its own 'OpenStore' which has an attractive user interface and many apps available. These are helpfully categorised as Apps, Web Apps and Bookmarks.

As promised in the compatibility chart, all hardware elements worked under Ubuntu Touch, from fingerprint recognition to camera, from Bluetooth connectivity to the headphone jack. I had previously always had trouble with the hardware functionality of the PinePhone under the different Linux-based mobile operating systems, so for everything to just work right out of the gate was a novel experience.

Navigation takes a little getting used to and bears little resemblance to navigation on mainstream systems. On UT, you swipe from the left to see all installed apps and from the right to see currently active apps. The active apps then appear as a neat assortment of slanted windows, kind of like separate books in a 3D space, which you can kill individually by swiping up on a chosen app. Whenever you are working within a specific app, you can always slow swipe from left to right to go back to access all installed apps (similar to swiping up in regular Android). As mentioned, your fingerprint can be used to unlock your device, but a pin or password is also an option.

Layers upon layers

The OpenStore has a lot on offer, but if you are coming from a mainstream OS, you may miss certain applications. On rereading the UBports website for this article, I now see that the various options for trying out Android or even Ubuntu Desktop apps were all clearly outlined and explained there, but I must admit that I discovered these by trial and error, and by asking for help from other users on the forum.

In short, aside from using the OpenStore, there are three additional ways to run applications :

You can run Waydroid within UT to run regular Android apps
You can run Snap packages for Ubuntu desktop with Snapz0r
You can run Debian packages in a Libertine container

It took me a week to figure all of this out and get comfortable with it. Please note: if you are going to install Libertine to test out regular Debian packages, be aware that installation pauses when your phone goes to sleep. I initially thought Libertine took an incredible 24 hours to download and install when in fact all I had to do was adjust my power settings.

Libertine containers are installable through the main Settings menu, whereas Waydroid can be easily installed with the Waydroid Helper app (see also the Waydroid Stop app to kill Waydroid running in the background, as it takes up power). Snapz0r can be downloaded as an app in the OpenStore.

I found all these layers interesting for experimentation. It is kind of amazing to see regular Android apps run within Waydroid within Ubuntu Touch. Libertine is a neat feature, but takes some trial and error, and I found apps designed for desktop (Ghostwriter, for example) don't scale well on mobile. (There is a dedicated tool to address this, but this all felt like too much tweaking to me.)

Libertine and Snap apps just show up on your homepage amongst the other applications. Waydroid needs to be started up manually and boots as its own environment. Helpful here is that you can use the slide left move to see (and kill) the active Waydroid environment as its own active app.

All in all, these extra tools make Ubuntu Touch feel like a powerful environment for those who are not afraid to experiment and have time to do so. I was impressed that there were specific helper tools to familiarise new users with the different software layers.

What did not work well

The complex layers structure is what made me go back to GrapheneOS. Ubuntu Touch itself communicates with the Android hardware using a layer called Halium. On top of that, you have UT, and then within or on top of that you might have Waydroid, Libertine and Snapz0r in order to create a comfortable user experience. This is a high amount of conceptual complexity for the regular user to understand and manage. As a result, I found myself playing around with UT quite a bit, but never really using it as my daily driver, even though I had started with the intention to do so.

While I have not been able to compare this to regular Android or GrapheneOS on a Pixel 3A, the battery seemed to run out quite quickly. When I left the phone in sleep mode without any apps active, the battery ran out in two to three days. Activating Waydroid increases battery usage.

Potential new users who don't want to install these extra layers and only install apps from the OpenStore will have to adapt to the fact they're going to be missing certain apps. Signal was an example of this for me. While I think it is possible to adapt to a new operating system with its own set of apps—after all, we all got used to Google and Apple platorms, despite our frustrations—it might be difficult to maintain all the social and professional connections, and conveniences you are used to. (It is possible to install Signal on Waydroid, but I was not able to transfer my data with the QR code and decided to leave it there for now.)

An simpler approach is logging into your online accounts via the browser. The OpenStore encourages this by enabling the download of Bookmarks and WebApps, and I found the Webber application useful, for example, for accessing my KeePass database through KeeWeb. However, when I first began working with UT, the development was between two major builds, which meant that a lot of the browser's functionality wasn't working. The main browser is called Morph Browser, but on the advice of several forum members, I ended up using uWolf more. In any case, these issues were eventually fixed, but it was frustrating to run into these roadblocks with while I was first exploring UT to see whether or not I could use it as my daily driver. If a new version of UT means waiting a few months for browser functionality to catch up, then that's not a good thing if your workflow primarily leans on WebApps and Bookmarks.

Lastly, I found the functionality of apps in the OpenStore unpredictable. The store has a good rating system to give you some idea of the popular apps, and it features 'New and Updated Apps' on the main page, which is a useful way to discover more about UT. But there were also apps that promised alternatives (Axolotl for Signal, and a KeePass compatible app, for example) that did not work and these ended up wasting quite a lot of my time.

I got around some issues by connecting to my own Nextcloud server to try and pass files between my pre-existing systems and the UT phone that way, but still had trouble with syncs and downloads, even though the OpenStore has a number of apps designed specifically for working with Nextcloud.

In general, after installation, there were a lot of little issues (such as not being able to download a file from my Nextcloud server to the device) that collectively took up a lot of time. I didn't mind this for testing purposes, but can imagine it might be frustrating if you just want to use your device and not spend hours finding different work-arounds.

Verdict for now...

I wonder what would happen if this UT Pixel phone were my only phone and if I had to make it work. I suspect that I would get on quite well with UT eventually, and perhaps find satisfactory solutions to the issues described above. I would find it frustrating, however, if my working setup were to stop working properly between major OS updates, as I experienced this time.

My Pixel 8 with GrapheneOS was always within reach, and too often just seemed the simpler option. I realise these are two very different concepts of deGoogled mobile operating systems, but, for the moment at least, I can just open Graphene and experience a private and secure mobile environment where everything works and can be compartmentalised. This is in contrast to Ubuntu Touch, where you as the user may need to learn how to run several layers of extra software in to get applications to work. The community is constructive and friendly, and the documentation some of the clearest I have read, but using UT as your daily driver feels like more work—and more things to keep track of—right now.

I will continue to support projects like this by testing them out, writing about them, buying the hardware (PinePhone) where possible, donating to the project and even having my kids try them out. There have been some recent 'wobbles' in the custom ROM field that have made me realise it is not good for privacy-focused groups to be over-reliant on companies like Google for access to hardware, and I'm also learning that developers can take hiatuses or even leave projects altogether.

As a long-time Linux desktop user, I still believe something like Ubuntu Touch is our best hope in the privacy mobile space, especially if hardware makers begin to feel incentivised to design mobile phones specifically for Linux operating systems, which could lead to more simplicity in operations and greater security.

Considering what Linux has done for creating a freer internet and giving regular users like me agency and autonomy over their own PCs and laptops, I am hopeful that the Ubuntu Touch project will continue to grow and that one day I will be able to buy a smartphone in a regular store exclusively built for Ubuntu Touch.