The Nokia E6 is a smartphone from back in the old days when Symbian was a thing. [fluffleswaffled] has been doing the work to get the ancient handset running Linux instead, because that’s ultimately cooler than what the phone shipped with out of the box.
There isn’t an unlocked bootloader on the E6, so instead, [fluffleswaffled] used an altogether different route to boot Linux. A Symbian app is used to load the kernel and device tree into RAM, at which point the MMU and caches are turned off and the device jumps into Linux. It’s a one-way trip, from which there is no way back to Symbian without a power cycle. The setup nets a terminal on the phone’s own screen, and the hardware keyboard and touchscreen are functional. The display is controlled by a Broadcom VideoCore III, with [fluffleswaffled] capturing messages from Nokia’s original display driver to create a custom kernel driver that replays them.
There’s an issue, though. The phone doesn’t stay in Linux land for long — it always resets within a couple minutes of booting into the alternative OS. [fluffleswaffled] believes this is because the phone’s baseband chip is supervising the application processor, and killing things once it’s detected that the Symbian mobile stack has stopped running. They’re hoping that someone with experience with Nokia basebands or the relevant hardware can point them in the right direction to get this hack running for more than 3.5 minutes at a time.
There probably isn’t a great deal of utility in getting Linux running on a 2011 smartphone, but we love the hustle nonetheless. We’ve seen this done before, though, and it’s always interesting to learn what it takes to get the OS booting on a new platform. If you’re whipping up similar hacks in your home lab, don’t hesitate to let us know on the tipsline.
