While Replicant has some money to buy devices and from time to time does use it to do that, it's very time consuming to look and find the devices we are looking for.
Giving device directly to Replicant (paid and volunteer) developers would enable them to focus as much of their time as possible on development instead.
To this end, we very much welcome device donations.
Since we spend a lot of time researching which devices would be good for our project to port to, the types of devices we are interested in obtaining is somewhat limited.
If you have any of the devices below, please contact the Replicant project or developers.
Replicant developers can typically be found on the #replicant IRC channel on Freenode, or in the mailing list. It's a good idea to contact them through such means to donate devices. We also have a contact address for the project but it's often better to post to the mailing list if possible as more people might be interested in specific devices for doing specific work, especially when Replicant developers already have enough times the device you want to donate.
As Replicant developers also go to conferences it's also possible to see that with them at the conferences and give them devices there. This can save time as it can avoid shipping the devices.
As the Replicant project evolve and developers comes and leave, it is hard to precisely predict in advance which device model we will need and how many we need at a given point in time, but we still have some idea of which devices are needed or might be useful.
To make a Replicant release, it's a very good idea to make sure that at least one developer that is actively working on the release has at least every supported devices.
Without that we would need to wait (potentially indefinitely) for someone to test the release before it's released, or hope that the other devices are similar enough and that everything will work fine.
A list of maintained devices is available on the supported-devices page
Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli still lacks the following devices:However this is not crucial as he already has a Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 (P3100) which is similar enough. He will also get a Galaxy Note 8.0 (GT-N5100) soon.
Replicant has been tested on very few variant of a given device. For instance for the Galaxy Note II, we only support the GT-N7100 variant. Having more variants would enable us to test Replicant on them, and if some more work is needed and that we can find the time to do it, to also port Replicant to them. Though right now most people are probably busy with Replicant 6.0 or Replicant 9.
Some Replicant developers also probably lack the Galaxy SIII 4G (GT-I9305) and are really needing one to work on the Replicant 9 port and/or the modem.
Two new Replicant developers are working to understand if we can find a way to run fully free software bootloaders on the devices that have an Exynos 4412 like the Galaxy SIII (GT-I9300). Even devices with broken screens or completely broken devices are useful for them.
Both devkits have an mPCIe connector, which enable to test way more easily the modem isolation by replacing the modem with an mpciE to USB adapter and plugging various peripherals like a keyboard for instance.
Once Replicant 9 will be ready we will be able to add support for new devices.
We're really interested in the following devices:Some developers are probably interested in getting them before having a Replicant 9 release as it's possible to add support for them in parallel.
The following developers are also interested in getting them after the Replicant 9 release:Sending them before the release also works, but the work will probably not start before the release.
The Galaxy S (GT-I9000) and the Nexus S (GT-I902x) are supported by Replicant 4.2 that still builds with Trisquel7.
This could help testing libsamsung-ipc with such devices.
Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli is interested in getting the following devices:When the devices were paid for by Replicant's money, it was common practice to ship devices to people that are already working on Replicant or related projects, to limit the risk of not having any work done.
However if the devices are donated by individual or companies it's up to decide to whom to give them to.
If you need a device to work on specific tasks, you can ask packetup[m] from Insurgo on the #replicant IRC channel. It's however up to packetup[m] to decide if it's worth spending time and money to find, buy and ship the device(s).
The advantage of this method is that it saves Replicant developers lot of time.
It's also possible to use Replicant fund to buy devices as it was done before.
The people on the steering commitee have to approve the usage of the funds for that.
Once it is approved there are several possibilities: