From the places I have lurked in so far, a lot of effort goes into reverse engineering the drivers etc... on these SOCs. If you were to spend weeks/months tryin

From the places I have lurked in so far, a lot of effort goes into reverse engineering the drivers etc... on these SOCs. If you were to spend weeks/months trying to figure out those details, it kind of makes sense to get mainline linux to run on these devices as opposed to a custom OS with no existing software. If truly custom OS/Kernel is what you want, someone was trying to run NuttX RTOS on Pinephone: 1) Booting NuttX: https://lupyuen.github.io/articles/uboot https://lupyuen.github.io/articles/uboot 2) Writing an LCD Driver: https://lupyuen.github.io/articles/dsi2 https://lupyuen.github.io/articles/dsi2 3) Getting a basic terminal running using LVGL: https://lupyuen.github.io/articles/terminal https://lupyuen.github.io/articles/terminal I'd still recommend trying to port PostmarketOS/Ubuntu touch/Sailfish OS etc.. to your phone first. That can be a good beginner friendly way to understand what happens on your smart phone: the boot process, software stack etc.. and then you can go deeper by either customizing the software (Boot into a little web browser and call it a web phone etc..)/drivers to your liking (Adding features like double tap to wake)/trying to port mainline kernel to them.