Pinephone – “BraveHeart” Limited Edition Linux SmartPhone | Hacker News Reader

Pinephone – “BraveHeart” Limited Edition Linux SmartPhone

store.pine64.org

90 pointsmike-cardwell69 comments

$150 is a pretty nice price point compared to a €450 Fairphone or a $1000 iPhone. When the price is low, the expectations are low, which I find increases the amount of fun you can have with a platform.

It’s not about the raw technical specs, it’s about what doors a platform can open. Kind of like what Arduino did for making hardware fun. The phone would have to actually be usable though.

The last time I did anything like this was a few years ago with a £30 Alcatel device that I repurposed as a GPS tracker, but which I couldn’t get root on.

I Want To Believe

Yes, I recently someone hack an e-ink reader to add GPS and show maps. I can't find the link anymore. :)

Other avenue for fun is buying broken stuff on auction sites, and reverse-engineering/fixing it.

It has a removable battery, storage "expension", and a headphone jack! To me, that puts it ahead of the majority of smartphones today...

I have a several-year-old generic Chinese smartphone with very similar specs, although it's a Mediatek 32-bit SoC which has a built-in modem for all the communications (GSM/GPS/WiFi/BT/FM combo chip). The Allwinner A64 is not a smartphone SoC so I wonder what the battery life will be like, and what it will actually have for a modem.

It has a Quectel EG-25G according to the specs, which is even a Verizon approved module.

Librem 5 didn't go with a smartphone SoC either. My presumption is that you can't get as open a platform as they wanted to go with the traditional ones?

My assumption is this creates a boundary in which the phone manufacturers can physically sever, as both have physical hardware switches for camera, Wifi/Bluetooth, Cell, Mic. Additionally, I have seen the SoCs with integrated modems require proprietary blobs in order to even boot.

I am getting a "Birch" Librem 5 and I just ordered a Pinephone, so I am curious to see how they compare to my Google Pixel 3a. I really hope one or both can be a daily driver.

And switches ...

> Privacy Switches: LTE (include GPS), Wifi/BT, Mic, and Camera

I read somewhere that those switches are actually accessible only if you remove the battery, so they aren't that useful. Still better than not having them at all though.

You only have to pop off the back cover, you don't have to remove the battery.

The more I see these kinds of products coming out, the more I realize that Creative Labs, of all people, had something right when they designed the Zii Egg .. if only they'd put some weight behind the platform and finished PlaszmaOS, which was a Linux OS on par with iOS at the time - but alas cancelled "because Android":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zii_EGG

I really have to wonder what could have been if CL had the balls to finish this project and make it available to all and sundry to serve as the basis for commercial products. It was a delightfully cheerful little system for the time ..

I'm really looking forward to getting one of these when the non-Brave Heart editions ship later next year.

Planning to run Leste[0] on mine.

[0] https://maemo-leste.github.io/

Can anyone here comment on the maturity of the supported OSes? UBPorts and Sailfish(!) look like the farthest along of the bunch from a read of the docs.

sailfish has been production quality for years. it'd pick it again without hesitation.

As a total aside - perhaps worth noting that the phrase "Brave Heart", at least in a Scottish context, has quite an interesting story that is nothing like the movie and actually comes from the alleged last words of Robert 'Black' Douglas during a battle in Spain against the Moors where he is supposed to have shouted: "Lead on brave heart, I’ll follow thee." and thrown the casket containing the heart of Robert the Bruce at his foes before diving into the fight:

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/robert-the-bruces-heart:

It is tempting; I have been waiting for a while. Having just moved to Europe I don't know what getting the delivery here will be like. Anyone have any reasonable indications about customs etc?

Better to check rules for your specific country, but usually you have to pay VAT tax (about 20%) plus customs fees. This page provides some info: https://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/individuals/buying-goo... - but I'd start with asking locals and then google for "${country_name} vat".

> Anyone have any reasonable indications about customs etc?

Depends on the country, in the uk you get the package, then if you are unlucky a few months later customs will send you a bill. 90% chance they wont send anything and you won't have to pay customs.

In Portugal it works something like this. If it's below 100€ it's very likely not to be taxed (but not sure if it's a hard rule) if it's above it gets stuck in custums you have to send the purchase documentation and you're charged for VAT (23%). Any other costs if exist are very low value compared to the rest.

I'm really excited about a true Linux, non-Android, phone, but how far are we from something that's actually usable? There's Pinephone and Librem 5 on the horizon, but any news about their release comes with a lot of caveats. "Early adopters and developers only, experimental software, use at your own risk," etc. I'll happily buy one once it can reliably be used to make and receive calls and text messages and browse the internet, but how far away is that?

I don't see it having a problem browsing the internet or sending SMS. Making/receiving/managing calls is more complicated, and I haven't seen it demonstrated, yet.

I really like that they're trying to break the chicken-egg problem and kickstart the actual community oriented development of SW. I think this is better in the long run than trying to do SW inhouse.

I'm putting off buying a new phone in general until we get a decent Linux variant. Currently rocking a Samsung S4 running LineageOS.

I've concluded that any linux phone will lack the frequencies my provider (t-moblie) is using for the next few years so I'm trying to figure out what to get for the next two years. I'll probably buy a pine-phone sometime after the full release though.

So this Pinephone has everything but T-Mobile LTE band 66 and 17. That's pretty good and puts it on par with something like the old OnePlus 5T.

I use my phones in areas where it is 2g, or LTE bands not covered by the pine phone (or my current phone which just died so I need to upgrade anyway). Thus my concern.

> I'm putting off buying a new phone in general until we get a decent Linux variant.

Me too. I want a smartphone which can run an up-to-date OS for more than 5 years, just like my laptop.

LinageOS dropped official support for my current phone a couple of month ago, which means no more updates for this phone... EOL... The phone was released July 2016. The hardware works just fine. I would use it for many more years if it was still receiving updates. What a waste of resources and time.

Once again I'm looking for a new phone, because my old one died of planned obsolescence.

Does lineageOS run faster on older hardware? I have a Samsung S5 Active that I loved, and when lollipop came out it really dragged it down. My new S8 active already has cracked screen and screwed up case, while my S5 is in perfect physical condition.

I'd love to install some other OS and make it usable.

I don't know what the status is on the S5 Active in particular, but the S5 is/was one of the most highly used and well developed of all Cyanogen/LineageOS phones. All the rest of the Samsung phones after the S5 had locked down bootloaders and other crap, but the S5 has incredible support. You should definitely go find out what the status is on it. The S5 Active probably has some minor differences that requires a specific image version but I don't know.

And if you don't want to mess with it yourself you could probably sell it for $80.

These went on pre-order this morning.

How is this not a scam?

I’ve bought other Pine64 products before (ARM SoCs) and they were high quality and well supported. I don’t expect my recommendation to mean much, but for $150 I’ll be taking a punt on this phone too. Even if it ends up as a brick I’d be happy knowing I’d supported Pine64’s efforts to make commodity hardware like this succeed.

If anyone has experience otherwise I’d be interested to hear.

I've ordered a Rock64 board from them before, and it has been fantastic. I justed ordered the pinephone, and I'm excited to get it. :)

Why would it be a scam? They have a variety of products that are well regarded by the community, an active forum, etc, so why would they betray that trust for a $150 phone sold in a relatively small batch? They are also upfront about not providing software support, so their liability ends when they deliver a phone that meets the relatively modest specs they outlined.

How is this a scam?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1IKlwePuCg

Will I have to pay extra to get it shipped to the US? I know that there will be a 10-15% tariff on smartphones starting Dec 15.

This introduces some interesting new terms, like the "early adaptor" or "Expension". Quite amusing.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Expension

Making fun of non-native speakers' mistakes is so cool, it makes you look very clever.

I have sympathy for people making a sincere effort to market to foreign audiences but basic language mistakes like this damage professionalism, and when you're trying to get money from people it can make one question whether this is a scam or not.

> basic language mistakes like this damage professionalism

Thats just like your opinion or whatever. I care about professional results I'll meet people half way with their communication.

Do you also complain about error messages from your compiler after a syntax error? A dictionary / thesaurus is only a mouse click away. There are even rumors about editors with built-in spellcheckers. Is an effort to get the language right in a marketing document too much to ask?

> Is an effort to get the language right in a marketing document too much to ask?

Yes, expecting some one who doesn't speak your language to speak your language as fluently as a native speaker is too much to ask.

English is the most widely-spoken language in the world (although not the most common first language) and is the lingua franca of the Internet. While language mistakes shouldn't be seen as evidence of technical issues, it should be common practice to ask a skilled native English speaker to review a group's public statements and marketing materials.

There are services and people even in their own company that can do better. There really isn't an excuse here.

I don't know. I think it's a valid point.

I speak Spanish poorly. If I were running a company and creating a website or marketing materials I'd hire someone fluent in the target language to proof my material.

And, as stated below it raises red flags. So many phishing and scam attempts are littered with bad spelling and grammar.

Not saying this project is in any way untrustworthy, but it isn't professional.

Is the early adaptor included?

Well the mistake is so consistent I started to wonder if they have created a new archetype: someone who not only adopts early but also adapts to the challenges of a beta product...

people will be adapting software to the device, in the next few months :) so it's a nice freudian slip

only if you adopt it

I think you are mocking the site authors’ English language skills? Even if you are just being light hearted and don’t mean any real harm, comments like this foster an environment where it’s acceptable to mock foreign language skills. No one here wants to live in that kind of world.

> No one here wants to live in that kind of world.

A little melodramatic don't you think? Aren't there much bigger fish to fry than a modest jab at the authors misuse of the word?

True for personal communications. Not true for a product launch. Proofreading is as important as code testing.

This is not a product launch intended for the general public.

I couldn't care less about whether they proofread their copytext. Hell, it's probably good that they didn't spend money on any professional design work on their page, it contributes to the affordability of the product.

They're also apparently not taking a profit, so that makes me more likely to give them some leeway on things like typos and grammar mistakes.

Good point.

When it's a product launch, I believe it's perfectly fine to criticize it.

Basic mistakes like that make it look like unreliable amateur work.

If you can't find anyone to help you proofread, pay someone. And I'm from a third world country, I know paying people might be expensive. But in the case of some basic copy like that, a $5 proofreader from Fiverr would be enough.

Agreed, but mocking is only slightly related to criticizing. There's better ways to get a point across than slighting.

I dunno -- I've been mocked for spelling mistakes in business contexts, and my non-English speaking colleagues have mocked each other over spelling mistakes, too -- and then it turns into fun as the original author purposely goofs in later text to continue the joke.

It all depends on context.

If you're after precision, it's not really a product launch. It's more like a pre-release for developers and testers.

Yep. OP is. So was I when I first read the text. TBH, at first I thought they were taking about some kind of adaptor, not adopters. This is a kind of basic mistake that should have been caught before it made it to the website.

Pine64 can do far better, and have done far better in the past. There's not much of an excuse to be had here -- especially when similar copy was written for the watch.

Seeing as how its aimed squarely at developers, this seem at least as correct (and maybe more-so) than the way a native speaker might expect this idiom to read.

I'm already thinking of all of the things I can adapt this platform to do for me.

> Small numbers (1-3) of stuck or dead pixels are a characteristic of LCD screens. These are normal and should not be considered a defect.

Wait, what?

While it's stated very explicitly here, it's also in the manual for every monitor you've ever bought, you need >n dead pixels before the monitor is seen as defect and good for warrenty replacement.

Scroll to the bottom of the page, and you’ll notice it weighs 0.50 kg, or approximately ONE POUND. Just NO!

Lots and lots of ‘finger errors’, as they call them in Formula 1.

The Pine team members aren't native speakers of English, so a few errors are understandable. I'm sure that if you e-mail them they'll fix em.

That is probably the BOX

BODY:

Dimensions: 160.5mm x 76.6mm x 9.2mm Weight: 185 gram

'developer and early adaptor' 'storage expension'

guys, english proof reading, please!

$150 is the price I pay for a Moto Z3 play (of course after a discount from Motorola, which is applied to everybody). The Z3 play might not be as "open" as this one, but it's a very nice phone, rootable, able to install TWRP. So $150 for this phone is a little too much.

To me it seems quite cheap. I paid 150€ for my current huawei with all sorts of the usual spyware installed (from google huawei, facebook) that I can't really get rid of. Paying a smilar price for a phone that I can fully control seems a great deal

Perhaps you haven't read the product description. Here it goes:

An Open Source Smart Phone Supported by All Major Linux Phone Projects

Perhaps you’re in a line of work where security is a must, or a hard-core Linux enthusiast, or perhaps you’ve just got enough of Android and iOS and you’re ready for something else – the PinePhone may be the next Phone for you. Powered by the same Quad-Core ARM Cortex A53 64-Bit SOC used in our popular PINE A64 Single Board Computer, the PinePhone runs mainline Linux as well as anything else you’ll get it to run.

The purpose of the PinePhone isn’t only to deliver a functioning Linux phone to end-users, but also to actively create a market for such a device, as well as to support existing and well established Linux-on-Phone projects. All major Linux Phone-oriented projects, as well as other FOSS OS’, are represented on the PinePhone and developers work together on our platform to bring support this this community driven device.

The Moto Z3 is not competing with this phone.

Being deeply in this open smartphones thing for more than a decade already, $150 for PinePhone is insanely cheap, with practically no profit margins. But I guess somebody will always complain regardless of how low it gets ;)

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