Mandrake Linux founder creating an opensource smart phone

"The original creator of Mandrake Linux (which evolved into Mandriva and subsequently Mageia and OpenMandriva), Gaël Duval, has decided to create a new fork of Android which is restricted to the use of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS); the new creation is called eelo."

https://www.neowin.net/news/mandrake...ree-android-os

https://eelo.io/

Well I am not sure I would use the word "evolve" for a couple of those but Mandrake is where a lot started, including ones like PClinuxOS which originally forked from Mandrake 9.2. I miss Mandrake. I think the last one I used before the merger with Conectiva was Mandrake 10. I will be keeping my eye on this. It looks promising.

"Less than a year ago, I posted a series of articles “Leaving Apple & Google…” [part 1, part 2, part 3] to announce that I was planning to create a smartphone OS. A new OS that would:

be free from Google (no Google services, no Google search, no Google Play store, etc.)
be far more respectful of user’s data privacy
be attractive enough so that Mom and Dad, children and friends would enjoy using it even if they aren’t technophiles or geeks

Today we release a first beta of what we have done so far to make the initial vision a reality...."

https://hackernoon.com/leaving-apple...e-89e39f492c6f

What brand(s) of phone does he plan to use? Too bad there isn't FOSH (free open source hardware) and even if it were available, how would one verify the presence, or absence, of malicious hardware (malhware?) ?