Pinephone – “Community Edition: PostmarketOS” Linux smartphone | Hacker News Reader

Pinephone – “Community Edition: PostmarketOS” Linux smartphone

store.pine64.org

387 pointsfsflover209 comments

Sad not to be mentioned, despite the update talking about a lot of my independent work last month or so. (discovering the HW issues, suggesting/verifying the fix, writing the USB-C/HDMI driver enabling the whole convergence thing) But I'm very glad about the progress PinePhone is making. The momentum is incredible.

If anyone is interested in original info from the author of the USB-C/HDMI work, I also put useful information/observations from my work on the kernel and PinePhone here:

https://xnux.eu/devices/pine64-pinephone.html

The current thing on my radar is writing a power manager for the modem. :) That will improve the standby from 24h with the modem active to ~90h.

EDIT: All is well, btw. There's just a lot of pressure on pine64's small team, and it's hard to keep up with everything.

Awesome work! Thanks so much, should've definitely been mentioned in the post.

"All the current PP variants (1.0–1.2) have a major issue, that prevents CC pins from working correctly. It's therefore not possible to perform any kind of negotiation and communication over the CC pins. It's not fixable in SW, other than via a manual selection of power and data roles by the user. There's a HW mod that you can do to fix CC pins from being hogged by the VCONN switches by removing the switches."

It's a pity this requires tricky surface mount rework.

Not necesarily. I've read someone just pulled those two switches off the board with a screwdriver stuck in between them and twisting.

Thankfully, just removing the switches will fix CC pins and PP will be able to work with many USB-C peripherals after that.

I have two pinephones that work nicely with two different USB-C docks and an USB-C 4x USB-A adapter just with this fix.

There are probably not that many interesting peripherals/cables that would benefit from supplying power over CC pins. (which just removing the switches makes impossible) A lot of peripherals will make do with VBUS power.

Thank you for your great work.

Is it possible to manually configure the port to work with HDMI or as a host (in sysfs), or is the hardware change required (on preorder/braveheart phone)?

Is there a single place with the most up-to-date kernel sources with usb hardware drivers, audio support for modem, etc.?

There's no single place. Ideally this question should be answered by "use the mainline kernel", and eventually it will.

I'm aware of three maintained kernel trees specifically for PinePhone:

Samuel's: https://github.com/smaeul/linux Mine: https://github.com/megous/linux/ Pine64: https://gitlab.com/pine64-org/linux/commits/pine64-kernel-5....

I think at the moment all of those are pretty much equivalent feature-wise, except for some mild differences.

It's not possible to workaround (in software) anything that requires CC pins to work properly, that includes setting up display port alternate mode.

Thank you for your work! I am so glad that you are doing what you are doing, because I personally want something the Pinephone project to succeed and its success makes me think that there are forces for good in the world.

You are doing our work and I am grateful

Thank you so much! A lot of us have been tracking the steady progress on the PinePhone with great excitement, so much love from all of us, and thanks to you and everyone else for all the hard work.

Thanks for all of your work! Your blog was one of the first I found after mine arrived and it's been a great resource.

Just as everyone else has said, I just want you to know that I appreciate your hard and well documented work.

As a late-but-early adopter of other phone projects the thankless work that you do is what allows adopters like me to even get started. Thank you.

Booting to Arch Linux and being accessible on WiFi in ~5 seconds

Booting to my custom init process, initializing the system and running my UI app in ~1 second

Try that with any other smartphone...

Yeah, I've improved it a bit with UI in the bootloader (still fits in 32KiB sram, even with GUI) + flickerless/seamless display pipeline passover to the kernel in the meantime too. :)

I've also experimented with booting to electron and having the whole phone UI written in it...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ce9vZj1r_-E

shouldn't electron UI then eat up much of the battery gains made from the modem code?

Probably not. Electron just sits there doing not much other than 2-3% CPU load from updating the information in the header each second.

https://megous.com/dl/tmp/a1017dd38ca6ce10.png

Batter gains in standby are something else. Main CPU is off, and no processes are thus running, so it doesn't matter what SW you have, for those gains.

"Any other" is rather too strong, as same could be (and was) done on devices like Openmoko phones, Nokia N900, GTA04 and now on the Librem 5 as well.

But yeah, this category of smartphones definitely is something special :)

I'd be interested in seeing Librem booting that quickly. Any videos? :)

I'm not so sure about booting into custom init in <= 1sec since nobody really looked into optimizing the boot process that much yet, but Arch in 5 secs should be easily achievable since booting Jumpdrive on Librem 5 with regular u-boot takes about 5-6 seconds already with no effort put into booting speed whatsoever. Just getting rid of initrd would already shave quite a lot of time.

Librem 5 has a slightly faster CPU, more than twice as fast RAM and pretty much the same eMMC speed as the PinePhone. Boot times should generally be similar, with Librem 5 slightly winning, and that matches my observations so far with similar distros running on both devices.

No videos yet though, I may record some in the future :)

Great work! Some day I might have a smart phone. Still using a $12 flip phone. For power conservation, could there be a hybrid mode, that comes out of sleep once per (user defined) interval to check messages, then go back to standby?

Even better, the phone can just sleep and modem will wake it up when (SMS) messages/or calls are received. No need for polling.

You can also set up RTC to wake up the phone periodically and perform whatever polling you need and put it back to sleep afterwards, all automatically.

I have the ubports version of the pine64 and it is still pretty rough around the edges but the phone itself is very solid. It was recently announced that there was an issue with the usb-c port preventing it from being able to correctly negotiate with devices, but they have already worked out a fix [1] which I have carried out on my device and can confirm that usb is now working. Furthermore they are working with makerspaces to help people find someone who can do the soldering if they are not able.

Coincidentally, they also announced a soldering iron called the 'Pinecil'[2] which is based on the venerable TS100 but with a risc-v microprocessor running freertos for $25.

[1] https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php?title=PinePhone_v1.1_-_Bra...

[2] https://www.pine64.org/2020/07/15/july-updatepmos-ce-pre-ord...

How long does your battery last? I have heard it drains very quickly?

This was a thing before the crust firmware was implemented. With crust it should last up to 24hrs and when you disable the modem up to 100hrs.

Wow. That modem is a hog. Do you know if there is still room for it to be optimized, or is this about as good as it will get?

Not sure, but given that this work is extremely recent my bet would be that there's some room for optimiztion still, but probably not anywhere close to the 100hrs mark.

My guess would be the modem is the most power hungry component of practically any smartphone and 24hrs is already in line with mainstream smartphones so any additional % squeezed would be amazing indeed.

EDIT: Maybe 90hrs? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23852043

I'm not entirely sure if modem sleep was used in that 24 hours calculation.

I'm pretty sure it was not.

Modem in sleep, according to datasheet, consumes ~10mW.

Current state of the art power consumption of the whole phone without the modem on at all is 110mW. (this is the value on which the 100h figure is based on)

So when the modem will be actually in sleep, it will not add much to the equation.

Well actually looks like I was way too conservative with my original comment, apparently lots could be done:

"The current thing on my radar is writing a power manager for the modem. :) That will improve the standby from 24h with the modem active to ~90h." [1]

1 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23852043

Neat. I had no idea it could improve that much.

Amazing. That's 4x what I get on a Pixel 3. :)

Standby, not screen-on time

When I first bought a Moto G3 for my dad, before I got a sim for it, or connected it to wifi, I left it on, it lasted a week

Lasts about a day, but there are further software fixes on the way to enable lower power states. Really excited to get usb host working, pecking away at the touchscreen (with no haptic feedback yet!) was getting very old very quick.

The first night I had it, running UBports OTA-4 (the latest at the time), I charged it up to 100% and roughly 12 hours later it was <30% with the modem disabled. Battery life is not anywhere near what you're used to on Android or iOS because in addition to SoC suspend functionality, the wireless/cellular drivers also need work re: sleep.

Worth noting that there are other distros which seem to be further ahead as of now than UBPorts is, for example Mobian[1]. They recently got even the camera up and running.

1 - https://mobian-project.org

Mobian is especially interesting because its work might go upstream into Debian. Being able to run pure Debian on a phone would make it even more of a Universal Operating System.

> more of a Universal Operating System.

not to say more trusted.

Or secure.

I own the Pinephone UBports CE, which I've run UBports, postmarketOS, and currently have Mobian installed.

Mobian is definitely my favorite of the three so far. Set-up was really easy, I'm perfectly okay with the Phosh UI, and being able to do package management with `apt` vs. `apk` is huge, since I'm much more familiar with Debian's setup than Alpine's. It didn't seem like something that would matter a bunch, but it's ended up being a big quality-of-experience improvement for me.

Documentation seemed better for Mobian too, and getting everything set-up was very easy (user set-up vs. the pmOS "demo" user). Plus, at least the image of pmOS I had (about two weeks ago fresh .img file, plus regular updates), Firefox support wasn't great because of auto-scaling vs. the Firefox ESR on Mobian that just works. Like, open it up, log into my Firefox account, then start playing a Youtube video with zero tinkering just-works. I ended up calling a family member across the country and talking with them for about 10 minutes soon afterwards as well, with no issues. Plus, I was able to SSH into it from my laptop and build/run a Rust binary. On a phone. That was quite a fun moment. Still definitely a beta, but for me it's the closest to a daily driver of the three.

I don't see myself switching back to pmOS or UBports unless they suddenly make a huge leap.

Looking at those updates the pinecube looks pretty sweet! I was thinking about trying to create a security camera using pi zeros, but he cube looks way more cost effective and has pretty much everything I could want!

Yeah, PoE power on a camera that cheap is a huge deal. I could afford to paste these suckers all over the place.

Says it's passive PoE though

What is the price of the Cube? It isn't yet listed as available on their site.

In the update the estimated price is $24.99

That's very competitive with the Raspberry Pi version (which I also was considering).

I would say it comes in cheaper as the pinecube is fully standalone device. Where you would still have to buy the pie on top of the camera.

It wasnt really 100% clear in the article. Does the USB issue apply to current/new orders from them as well?

> It wasnt really 100% clear in the article. Does the USB issue apply to current/new orders from them as well?

The new PMOS version gets a new hardware revision, 1.2a, which is when the issue was resolved. The earlier versions (including the Ubports/1.2 and Braveheart/1.1 revisions) both have the issue.

I own the 1.2 (ubports edition) version of the phone, and I really want the external display capability, but I've never been any good at soldering something so small! It sounds like there will be some volunteers helping to fix the issue on the earlier versions, if you send them the device, which I very well may do.

The UBports version of the Pinephone isn’t just rough around the edges – that suggests that it will be a smoother experience one day, but it still needs work. Rather, my impression is that UBports is a dead end technologically. It is based inextricably on some 2014-era Ubuntu-specific software that even Ubuntu moved away from. The experience of SSHing into it, tweaking system configuration, etc. doesn’t feel like the "ordinary desktop Linux on your phone" that everyone was hoping for.

As a former Nokia N900 owner, I was solidly disappointed by UBports. I suspect that, for example, the PureOS port to the Pinephone may eventually give users like myself what they are looking for. Luckily, even if your Pinephone is branded for a specific operating system, you can replace that OS with whatever other OS of your choosing.

The beauty of the PinePhone is that there's literally nothing tying it to UBPorts, I've flashed Mobian[1] on mine an am supper happy with it. The Arch builds are also coming together nicely. [2]

1 - https://mobian-project.org

2 - https://github.com/dreemurrs-embedded/Pine64-Arch/releases

You're right that it doesn't feel like a Linux desktop port which is its primary selling point: doing a mobile-centric Linux. They do seem to have a vision for where they want to go once they get fully updated to the final Canonical release (they are already starting to diverge from Ubuntu Touch with the current release), but it's definitely not going to be for everyone.

One nice thing now that I actually have my Pinephone is that I can start seriously exploring and answer the question: 'what do I want in a mobile Linux device and experience?' Which I suspect is the real point of the Pinephone: to stop theorizing and figure out where we want Linux to go on (relatively modern) mobile devices.

My biggest complaint right now is the rough state of power management on all the distros. The good news is progress is being made on this front very quickly.

That's an interesting point. I don't think I would agree that Ubuntu Touch is at a dead end but I think you're right that you won't be able to change everything you want via ssh. You will have to use the GUI for some things.

FWIW I think the variety of available operating systems can only be a good thing. There's more going on to attract contributors and presuumably work done on things like drivers can carry over to other OSs.

I wonder how Pine64 is going to handle the new HongKong situation, it dissolved its company in California[1] last year due to 'Legal Mafia' and re-established it in HongKong. The website claims to operate under China & Malaysia laws[2].

Irrespective of HongKong situation, it was already tough to receive pre-built smartphone shipped from China in India without paying extraordinary import taxes; Now due to China goods blockade there's no way I'll be able to receive this PinePhone and I'm very sad for it.

I hope Pine64 starts shipping from their Malaysia front(Which seems to be office of their Chinese manufacturer - Syabas Technology[3]). I really want these pure Linux phones to succeed, I'm tired of this duopoly in the smartphone ecosystem as a consumer, developer and as an entrepreneur.

[1]https://www.reddit.com/r/PINE64official/comments/g8dqx9/pine...

[2]https://store.pine64.org/terms-of-use/

[3]https://www.reddit.com/r/PINE64official/comments/gbliyw/some...

Personally speaking, I received a Pinebook Pro a couple of days ago and I live in Sweden. I didn't pay a penny in customs/taxes and the delivery of the computer was 100% on time. Obviously shipping locations and times are delayed at times, as mentioned in their big update yesterday - https://www.pine64.org/2020/07/15/july-updatepmos-ce-pre-ord... - mentions improvements on shipping to the EU, and also impossibilities in shipping to certain countries.

I feel good for you albeit bit jealous; Scandinavian region seems to be the best place to live as far as current world affairs/Geopolitical tensions/Pandemic is concerned.

Except maybe Sweden re pandemic.

Deaths have flatlined.

Meanwhile, in the reality: https://covid.observer/se/#per-capita

Still growing by 2.9‰ (current 10 day average).

Thanks, looks like there was something wrong with the data I had.

No. The numbers of new deaths are sinking, but they do, too, in the US and in many different countries, but not in Serbia, for example.

That's probaly not relevant to many EU customers though. VAT is required on import of goods above 22 EUR (incl. shipping costs) in most places, and things are also going to change soon:

https://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/business/vat/modernisi...

Also declaring customs is not free. If you used DHL, they'll charge you ~22 EUR extra just for the privilege of them forwarding some info to customs.

PostmarketOS is an incredible project worth supporting: http://postmarketos.org/

They're trying to do for smartphones what PC-compatibles did for home computers: deliver a standardized general-purpose operating system across different hardware.

Aral Balkan recently demonstrated running a web server from his new Pinephone using the site.js framework he developed and live-chatting with his viewers with it. Really cool.

He said the phone is definitely still not ready for everyday use, but great for devs obviously.

https://ar.al/2020/07/12/live-stream-a-web-site-on-your-phon...

The possibilities with an open phone are awesome.

I don't think you need an open for this, you could just install nginx under Termux, or even not under it.

You do as Google is breaking termux in the next Android.

Your link doesn't work.

https://github.com/termux/termux-app/issues/1072

Ah, crap

On the contrary, the termux folks refuse to adopt solutions that would make it work how Android applications are supposed to be written in first place.

Use Java framework and NDK APIs instead of pretending Android is Linux with another UI shell.

Luckily (lol) my phone is never going to get that update.

We need open computing in as many segments as possible with major corporations embrancing the AppStore model and deciding increasingly directly what you can't and cannot do with your own devices, often in the name of "security".

The ability to run the exact same OS on my phone as I do on my laptop with a nice, mobile friendly UI while retaining all the power is a remarkable achievement for the free software community.

Plus with their announced usb-c hub, it seems that one could connect to a screen+keyboard+mouse and work on things for a bit if one forgot the laptop.

That's what I look forward to most.

I do this via DeX mode on my Samsung S10e, but linux for DeX was killed off unfortunately. I really wish convergence via a linux phone had made more progress by now considering how close it felt back in 2010. Still excited at the progress devs have made so far with the pinephone.

Nokia was doing it already with Symbian, big deal.

This is what I had hoped Android would be when I first heard about it before it was fully available. It looks like the OS still needs polish but not bad. And only $200 with a dock.

Here is a video walkthrough I found on youtube. I am not sure how up to date it is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjaJJ6o-mbM

Me too. I just assumed I would be able to treat it like the computer it is. For some reason everything has to be different just because I can make phone calls with it?

Modems and ARM did complicate things.

I guess, but I can treat my raspberry pi like a normal computer. And I still don't what having a modem has to do with anything since my computer in the 90's had a modem.

You can't treat a pi like a normal pc? You can't put a usb drive in a new pi and boot into an OS installer. You have to use their custom system of flashing the sd card. That's after someone specifically crosscompiled a distro targeting pi hardware.

This is an awesome piece of kit. I have one.

I used to have an N900. This is better.

Our community of doers who celebrate freedom by doing are amazing. This is almost, but not quite, the last piece of our autonomous puzzle.

Very soon now we'll have fully distributed jurisdictional priority, and we'll use this kind of tech to measure we're doing it right. We will demonstrate right of appeal to each other.

I love hacker news

> I used to have an N900. This is better.

I've had a couple of them, they were way ahead of their time. The hardware had a few bugs but the form factor and keyboard were amazing, and the camera was very nice. I actually preferred the resistive touch screen on a slider like that, it made for fewer accidental touches, and it was very precise for stylus use.

There's a (stalled?) project[1] to swap out the main board with a modern, supported replacement, keeping the rest of the hardware the same. I'd love to see the interest in the Pinephone cause that project to wake up again. PostmarketOS would be a good fit for the Neo900.

[1] https://neo900.org

Ah, the HN hug. Poor site.

I have a lot of optimism for this phone. I don't know whether to buy one of these, or wait for the "GA" version to come out. I'm most interested in running Plasma Mobile but being able to "distro hop" on a cell phone is pretty awesome.

1.2a feels to me like GA. There's not much HW wise that I'd consider an issue anymore.

There are things that could be better, like having a different WiFi chip, that would have a better [actual mainline] driver support with working power management. Not sure how likely that is. Probably not much.

As someone not in the free smartphone world (yet) - what is going on? What are those UBports and Braveheart versions people are talking about? How's the software stack. Is GTK/QT usable with touch? How's the battery life? Any progress on making open modem?

The Braveheart edition was pre-release (v1.1) hardware with no OS preinstalled. The Community Editions (CE) are based on release hardware with $10 of the purchase price going to the distro that gets preinstalled. The first one, that many here have in hand currently, was the UBports CE which was the v1.2 hardware with UBports preinstalled. The model you can currently order is the PostmarketOS CE which will be based on the v1.2a hardware (fixes an annoying USB hardware bug and I believe a low-brightness flickering bug as well in v1.2) So while they're different revs of the hardware, it's still the same phone with h/w bug fixes.

Define usable ;-) The distros are all very much a work in progress as even basic things like power management and device drivers still under very active development. The hardware of the Pinephone feels pretty solid and the software is just about at a 'hacker friendly' stage where you're not having to deal with fundamental annoyances at the system level. It's still a long way from being 'daily driver' ready though.

Maybe I'm showing my age, but this is the first release of a phone I have been eagerly awaiting.

I'm young, and this is the first release of a phone I've been eagerly awaiting.

Count me in. I refuse to buy into the Apple ecosystem anymore after "courage" and the last few years of laptops, and I develop in linux anyway, so I'm extremely interested. Perhaps I just need to make the plunge?

My current daily driver is getting old but it still works. I'm going to buy the pinephone and try to use it as a replacement for my daily driver. If it's not convenient enough I will switch back and still have an interesting device to hack on.

There was a Nokia Linux phone I remember being really excited for and went to demo it in a store. This was maybe 10 years ago.

That would be the Nokia N900, which used Maemo, a Debian-based distro. It runs PostmarketOS, as well [0].

[0]: https://invidio.us/watch?v=eux9IcB2lfg.

Or the Nokia N9

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N9

His eagerness and excitement at the time could have been more closely related to Nokia N900's novelty (2009), since the N9 was released two years later (2011), and the concept wouldn't be as surprising. That's why I went with the N900 with my guess. In any case, considering both phones flew under almost everyone's radar, you might be right: it could be either one.

N9 wasn’t much of a “Linux phone”, no more than Android is in terms of experience.

The internet tablet line from Nokia 700 through to N900 on the other hand was by all means an “Xorg based” device, though only N900 could make calls(IIRC)

It was wonderful. It's too bad we had to wait this long for a replacement.

Openmoko Freerunner ;)

Had one many years ago. Great idea but not a livable-with phone. Put me off dev phones possibly forever.

Didn't stop me getting an N900 at launch though. Great little piece of kit.

Ha, Openmoko Neo Freerunner was my first smartphone :) It managed to play the role of "livable-with phone" well enough for me though (but not without some effort of course). Then moved to Nokia N900 and only now I'm switching from it to Librem 5.

> now I'm switching from it to Librem 5

Do you actually have the Librem 5 yet?

Based on the mediocre battery life I'm hearing about on the mntre reform 2, and the need for such a heat sink there, I'm very curious what the Librem 5 situation is. They share a common SoC.

Yes. I have backed it during the original crowdfunding and since a year ago I'm actually working on it at Purism.

The battery life and thermals got much better in the last few months, and there's still plenty of stuff to improve on in the software stack there. With my early batch unit with smaller battery (2000mAh) I'm now able to reach 6h of idle time with modem and WiFi on without utilizing CPU suspend at all (so the phone stays reachable all that time and you can, say, ssh into it - the high figures from the PinePhone blog post rely on putting the phone into suspend). There's still plenty of work left, but I'm pretty happy with how usable Librem 5 comes to be right now.

iMX.8M can be a power and thermal hog, that's right, but once you tame it in the kernel it becomes much more approachable ;)

Wow you kept that N900 alive for a long time!

Mine effectively died after about three years, the USB charging port came loose and the only way I had to charge it was removing the battery and charging externally.

The freerunner was just a little too pre-market for me. I remember installing various different OS and frontend packages and trying lots of things out. It would have been fine but for one failing - whatever I installed, incoming calls would often just be silent. A phone that can't take calls is a step too far!

Well, I have cheated a bit, it's a third one if I count right and I still have some spares... :D

Freerunner sure needed some attention to make it work, but with workarounds and hw fixes for the infamous #1024 and call buzz issues it was a pretty great device. I would have used it longer if not for unbearable GPU performance that drove me towards N900 (damned glamo :))

whoa! I had to give up on my n900 in 2012, when it was clear they were not going to fix two major bugs (GPS often never got a lock, and calls got dropped because the phone app took so long to swap in). it was still one of the best phones I've ever had though; I'm looking forward to seeing what the pinephone can do.

FWIW the swapping issue was massively improved by CSSU-Thumb community update, and AFAIR GPS just needed a correct SUPL server to be set, since the Nokia's one had a SSL certificate that expired soon after the official support has ended.

good to hear about the swapping issue, but the gps definitely have any simple fixes - i spent a good while trawling through forums and trying out various suggestions (i'm pretty sure changing the supl server was one of them), and none of them worked for me.

I sure remember getting AGPS to work by running a SUPL proxy on my own server, but I have no idea whether that was a simplest solution or that I simply wanted to play with running a SUPL proxy :P

I had the cheap FirefoxOS phone, which I thought was going to be a miserable dev phone experience. But it turns out it was actually a very solid phone that did everything I wanted. I'm still upset that that OS was discontinued.

I ordered the UBports version a few months back and it recently arrived. At the moment I'm running Mobian, basically Debian for the PinePhone. There are a lot of rough edges still, but it just feels great to have the ability to tinker with your phone in the same way you tinker with your linux box.

Are you using it as a daily driver?

No, I'm stillnusing my OnePlus 3 as a daily driver. I'm in the process of finding similar programs to the ones I regularly use on the PinePhone so I can eventually try using it for a day.

If you do find suitable software it's good to know that you could then install Ubuntu Touch on the OnePlus3 for a higher powered experience: https://forums.ubports.com/topic/3253/oneplus-3-3t/542

I honestly don't want to do that for two main reasons.

1. Apps like Revolut and others I rely on don't work on Ubuntu Touch to my knowledge.

2. Ubuntu Touch is not 100% customizable either. The rootfs for example is mounted as read only with no ability to change that. My ext4 sd card could not be mounted through any gui from what I tried. Mounting it through the terminal worked, but when I put it into fstab (and imo "fixed" the read only rootfs) the changes were reset on the next boot. That was the point where I decided to switch to mobian.

If you are wondering, what you can already do with this phone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bH3RbrwhNd8 (but this is Ubuntu Touch)

Has logo on back and comes with a usb-c hub:

https://www.pine64.org/2020/07/15/july-updatepmos-ce-pre-ord...

imgur backup of the essential banner: https://i.imgur.com/XteJmBp.jpg

> Introducing PinePhone Convergence Package with postmarketOS CE featuring 3GB RAM/ 32GB eMMC and a USB-C dock for $199; available alongside regular PinePhone postmarketOS CE for $149

Here's also a demo of the dock in action I recorded a while back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBeza4UNOm8

Woah, USB C dock included with the Convergence version looks really cool. Definitely would close the convergence gap further than just using all the same cable for my devices to actually being able to use docks and similar distros/software!

Dang it, now I want that.

Anyone want to buy my Braveheart?

Sounds like you can patch the braveheart if you have a soldering iron and bravery:

> While we’re discussing this topic, let me tackle the elephant in the room and acknowledge that a design flaw in PCBA rev. 1.1 and 1.2 prevents this functionality (please see relevant documentation related to CC pin) on Braveheart and UBports CE phones. Thankfully the fix to the problem – the removal of two small components from the PCBA – is relatively simple to perform for someone with good soldering skills. At the same time I recognize that many community members, myself included, are not capable of completing this operation. To this end, we will set up a chain of local (in your geographic area) workshops, makerspaces or individual technicians capable of performing this fix, so you can send your 1.1 / 1.2 phone to them to complete the repair.

(https://www.pine64.org/2020/07/15/july-updatepmos-ce-pre-ord...)

> Anyone want to buy my Braveheart?

Maybe we can work something out. My email is in my profile.

The preinstalled postmarketOS software build which ships with this edition of the PinePhone is an Alpha software build. This effectively mean that while core functionality of the PinePhone – such as telephone calls, SMS messages, LTE, GPS, GPU acceleration, etc. – is operational, it is also an ongoing effort, and thus the device cannot be considered as a consumer-ready product.

Still waiting for my UBports CE pinephone to arrive, which they sent a shipping update for weeks after I tried canceling my order which they completely ignored without any acknowledgement.

Right now I am incredibly disappointed with pine64 in terms of their customer relations.

It's worth noting that it's a fairly small team doing an increadable amount of work. They've mentioned being overwhelmed with queries, even it this update. It's not Apple or Samsung. I'd be patient, maybe ping them once more just in case they missed it, try the forums instead of email as well.

This looks really sweet, hopefully they succeed, but

>Device Warranty: 30 Days

that's not legal in the EU right? minimum is 1 year for businesses and 2 years for consumers?

> EU consumer rules cover goods and services that have been bought in the EU. However, if you buy from a non-EU online trader who has specifically targeted EU consumers you should also be covered by EU rules, but you may find it difficult to assert your rights with a trader who is based outside the EU.

IANAL, but it seems to me like PINE is not "specifically targeting EU consumers".

Nonetheless, such a short warranty period is rather embarrassing for a niche product sought for mainly by folks disappointed with mainstream products' profit-oriented fragile design and poor support cycle. Heck, it even has "postmarket" in its name :P

Source: https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/sho...

More information: https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/gua...

Is there a way to run Debian on the PinePhone?

I don't mean a debian based OS that is maintained by someone else, but something that is maintained by and can be downloaded from Debian?

If it boots and gives me a shell, I would be happy. I don't need a GUI or phone specific software. If I can have a real linux computer in my pocket, that would be great.

There Mobian which IMO is as close to a supported Debian OS on Pinephonr as you can get. https://mobian-project.org/

Regarding to my question, that means "No", right?

As far as I can see, Mobian is maintained by Matrix.org whom I never heard of before.

The reason I would like to use Debian is that it is maintained by the Debian foundation who have an excellent history of trustworthiness and reliability.

Why can't one install Debian on the PinePhone?

Because nobody has done that yet. Go over to debian-devel, talk to the Debian ARM people and the Debian installer people, and you can help bring Debian to the PinePhone.

Actually, mobian does exactly this... That guy isn't THAT interested to spend 5 mins of his time to solve HIS problem.

https://gitlab.com/mobian1/mobian-recipes/-/blob/master/root...

Both the Pinephone and the Pinebook Pro recently received mainline Linux kernel support with version 5.7. Debian recently added support for the Pinebook Pro as well as the RockPro64. They have daily builds available here for most of Pine 64's devices: https://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/arm64/daily/netboot/SD-c.... There's no Pinephone build yet but IMO it's only a matter of time. That being said, "Mobian" is just a DEBOS recipe with some custom software included that a user by the name of A-Wei has been maintaining. You could clone their repo and build it yourself if you'd like, it's super polished! Here's the Mobian repo: https://gitlab.com/mobian1/mobian-recipes

>As far as I can see, Mobian is maintained by Matrix.org whom I never heard of before.

I am not sure who is maintaining Mobian, but it is surely not Matrix. Matrix.org is the website of a chat protocol, where they have a support channel. Here you can see some members https://liberapay.com/mobian

So, ehm, Mobian is just an ARM build of Debian. It literally pulls from the same upstream package archives etc. Also Matrix.org is a well-regarded free software community making an open, privacy first, federated chat software. It's the sort of people you'd want if you care about free software, privacy, openness etc. I am honestly a bit shocked you haven't heard of Matrix.org - they're fairly well know in the community at this point.

Mobian is nothing to do with Matrix.org.

There are a lot of choices

https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/PinePhone_Software_Release...

not directly from the debian project no, you can put a generic ARM64 debian rootfs on it, but you'll need the kernel and u-boot specifically built for it. There is pinephone support in mainline linux but it'll probably 5.8 or 5.9 before you can really use it on the phone.

Comment upthread claims it was merged in 5.7: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23850034

yes the DTB is in 5.7, but if you compare the dtb file merged there and the one in the kernel fork that's being worked on you'll notice that a lot of stuff is not in mainline yet, so those components are left out. For example in 5.7 it doesn't support display yet.

A patch has already been accepted in linux-next for the driver for the display and will be in 5.8, ther are a bunch more components that are missing with a pure mainline kernel.

UBPorts, technically it is Ubuntu and not Debian, but Ubuntu is based on Debian. https://ubports.com/

Ubuntu is derived from Debian and UBPorts is derived from Ubuntu, but by the time you get there it doesn't look the same; ex. UBPorts has a read-only root filesystem (https://ubports.com/blog/ubports-blogs-news-1/post/terminal-...)

Debian aarch64 port rootfs + custom kernel. That's how I run Arch Linux ARM on PinePhone.

There's really nothing else that's needed other than the kernel to make any aarch64 distro run on the phone.

Here is a hands on review of the recent ubports community edition of the pinephone: https://boilingsteam.com/pinephone-community-edition-ce-revi...

Would this be killed by security requirements? My company allows email on my Android only if I install MS Intune which made me choose a longer passcode and doesnt allow unlocked screen while charging. Banking apps prevent rooted phones. Will major apps boycott this platform?

It's not android. I wouldn't expect major apps on this at all, at least not any time soon.

GloDroid may work: https://github.com/GloDroid/glodroid_manifest

I have an android phone with a custom UBPorts build maintained by an XDA forums member. It runs many android apps very well within anbox. I have tested many apps from F-Droid with success. Even the android buttons (recents, go back) work which is very convenient in android apps.

Right now the performance is better than on my pinephone but there are also some issues, like Libertine not working correctly.

The main issue with anbox right now is that video/audio playback does not work. Apps like NewPipe and AntennaPod run fine except that no playback is possible (results in blackscreen).

Dual booting a linux distribution with something like glodroid seems like a promising solution!

Does Whatsapp work through anbox?

I will have to try that out... wish I had a spare phone number.

My guess is that major apps will simply ignore Linux phones, until they get noticeable adoption.

The web is the only saving grace for any of the upstart mobile devices and new operating system projects, when it comes to compatibility with incumbent/major apps.

That's also why open protocols/APIs/formats, data portability, are important. So that people who care can write an independent clients. One of the banks I use has an open, docummented JSON API for end users (as a basic feature of the regular bank account, that everyone gets access to by default). I can easily write a bank app for that, to be able to do some basic account overview and wire transfer payments.

It's not a locked down platform, so if security means that everything has to be signed/verified/locked down and unmodifiable by the user, then it will not pass.

Which bank is this? I've been looking for one that exposes an API for years.

In theory there is EU regulation so all EU banks should expose this. I'm not sure where it went in practice though.

I think that (PSD2) only applies to having an API that allows users to grant access to their account to third party apps. Actually using that API yourself seems impossible, as banks want only vetted third parties to actually use the API.

It means you get the freedom to choose a different pre-approved proprietary app to access your bank account (which will probably make its money from selling a nicely detailed advertising profile based on your transactions), not the freedom to interface with your bank with an open API.

Also, because of the strong authentication requirement from PSD2 (amongst others), you won't get to do banking in an app except on an Android or IOS smartphone. Add to this the ongoing drive from banks and governments alike to push authentication even on a normal computer to smartphones (i.e., you use their proprietary app on an Android/IOS smartphone to authenticate when you access them via a web browser on a normal computer), and the picture becomes really bleak for any alternative smartphone OS.

The current trend, at least seen from the Netherlands, is: you submit to an Android or IOS smartphone, and you get to do things like banking or accessing your digital healthcare dossier online. If you don't, then you are classified as digitally illiterate, and are nudged towards having people near you assume those tasks in your name by delegation — basically the strategy for elderly or the mentally incapable. The third option, authentication using discrete hardware such as card readers (currently an option for many banks) or something like WebAuthn is something banks would really like to get rid of because of the cost of maintaining multiple authentication methods, and hey, everybody owns an Android/IOS smartphone anyway, so why not .. ?

Pretty much. I had some hope about PSD2, until I read about it.

Very useless, unless you just want to give your data to more third parties.

In addition EU also broke all my bank scraping scripts (except for the mentioned bank, that still has the same API it had for years already and doesn't require two factor auth, just an api key) by enforcing two-factor (well not really, just SMS auth, it's not like I can use any other 2nd factor, or make my own).

So in addition to helping third-party data slurpers, they also broke the first-party data access with the latest regulation.

It's fio in czech republic. Probably not much useful to you.

It's not the EU enforced API (that's not intended for end users anyway - I tried asking other banks for API access too, and failed). This bank had this API for years.

I purchased mine a while ago, but the excitement with Covid resulted in me still waiting ( although it is on the way now ). I am excited. I am not sure it will be a daily driver, but we need something outside current practical duopoly.

Very happy too work done on an a phone with open boot loader. That you can run Linux on Pinephone. A smart phone is just a smaller sized computer. Computers should be allowed to boot any operating system to be promoting computational freedom. Further consumer competition laws should Be changed to mandate open boot loaders and hardware specifications. With open source software hardware devices can be used longer and its thus better for the planet and environment. Closed source is not so environmentally friendly in that it will more often lead to hardware not getting software updates.

Great work Pinephone team!

How hard do you think it would be to configure the phone using Guix or NixOS?

https://mobile.nixos.org/devices/pine64-pinephone-braveheart...

No idea how usable out of the box that is of course...

Nice! I regularly dig through NixOS docs, follow them on twitter, chat on the IRC channel and this is the first time I've come across the mobile-nixos stuff!!

Could PWA's be installed on a phone like this, through browsers like chrome or firefox? That would greatly lower the barrier to entry to "develop" for them!

Many OSs have put effort into supporting these devices.

I don't like the "powered by Linux" and "postmarketOS" branding in the device.

What if I buy it to run netbsd on it?

I assume at some point they'll sell less branded versions, but the Community Editions are meant to provide some love (and fundraising) for projects that have worked with them.

You can buy an unbranded back cover separately [0], but for now they're doing production runs to support the different software projects.

[0]: https://store.pine64.org/product/pinephone-back-cover/

I thought this is The One. The I saw the specs: 5.95 inches display.

Another brick.

Please, please, please: make phones smaller. The Nexus 4 was the largest that actually fit a pocket.

> The Nexus 4 was the largest that actually fit a pocket.

Depends what you mean by "a pocket"? I think the iPhone 8+ is very close to the same size as the PinePhone and noticeably bigger than Nexus 4.

It fits comfortably into the pockets on most pants, shorts, jackets and sweatshirts I own. Maybe I tend to wear things with big pockets? If so, it's not intentional.

I actually started to measure pockets with my phone and buy based on that. (5.5' OP3, but the PinePhone usually fits in the same pockets)

> The Nexus 4 was the largest that actually fit a pocket.

My S10+ fits in the pockets of my clothes. I'm sure there are pockets that the Nexus 4 is the largest phone to fit—and pockets too small for it—but it's hardly as if there is a single universal consistent size for pockets.

So I’m done waiting, and just had to order one. Even went for the convergence edition.

Not expecting a daily driver, but probably the most fun tech gadget of 2020.

Is there any kind of navigation app for this?

I haven't had a chance to try it too extensively, but I've heard good things about Pure Maps [0] (linking to UBPorts app store since it has screenshots).

[0]: https://open-store.io/app/pure-maps.jonnius

Google maps in the browser should work, no?

I'm really looking forward to get one of these things when they come with decent warranty and without dead pixels. I'm as eager as anyone to get away from the walled garden duopoly, but since it's not suitable as a daily driver yet, maybe I'll be able to restrain myself and not buy it.

Site is dead slow...

    PS C:\> Measure-Command {curl.exe -I https://store.pine64.org/product-category/pinephone}
    TotalSeconds      : 23.2096005

Yeah, their site has always been abysmal to use.

edit: to be fair as others pointed out, it's likely that I've mainly ended up on their store after/during the hug of death from hn/reddit.

It's not usually _this_ slow though

I've only ever seen it slow directly following an HN/Reddit post.

It may never have been _instant_ loading, but it's always felt fairly responsive to me.

You sure it's not just powershell?

After some troubleshooting, it looks like it was actually your computer that was slowing everything down. If you could just stay off the internet forever I think it will be fine.

(I guess now's a good time to actually register for HN -- we end up on here often enough...)

Hi, Pine64 sysadmin here... yea, our store doesn't like the big surges of traffic we get around product launches. As I speak, we've been getting about 600 concurrent connections for the last 30 minutes, and at least 450 for the last few hours.

We've done some optimization behind the scenes in anticipation, but it's clearly not enough. We're going to be doing some heavy upgrades right after these preorders close.

It looks like a Wordpress site, but caching or a CDN should resolve a lot of what feels slow, right?

P64 Sysadmin here: We are using heavy caching, on WP and also browser-side. It's still not enough.

We previously used Cloudflare, which obviously fixes most of these problems, but people in these types of circles tend to get pissy about CF.

I wonder if you can serve directly on a different domain and put CF on the primary?

PHP 5.4..?

I'd recommend setting up WP Super Cache (which you're using now) to serve static HTML files (not sure what caching method you are using). Then you need to configure Apache (or switch to nginx) to actually look for those files, otherwise the plugin won't do much (it generates PHP files by default which are taxing on the server). Another option would be to switch to the Cache Enabler plugin (along with Apache or nginx configuration) - static HTML page caching as simple as it gets. Oh and upgrade PHP.

Edit: For Cache Enabler, check suggested advanced configs at https://www.keycdn.com/support/wordpress-cache-enabler-plugi...

Edit2: CF would just by default cache your CSS/JS, wouldn't really solve the issues you're experiencing (most likely heavy PHP/MySQL load due to poorly configured caching). That said I haven't looked into the site that much, might be that you have a lot of portions of the site that can't be properly cached but then again most users shouldn't need to be logged in so doubt it.

since it's a webshop it will mostly be cache misses anyway for the static generated pages, not sure that will help a lot.

Yeah that was my only reservation, but the per-user customisation shouldn't be an issue unless you're logged in or have stuff added to the cart, so a general spike in traffic shouldn't (theoretically) affect it.

Trust me, PHP 5.x is going to be one of the first things to go in a few days. Moving to PHP 7 should fix many of our issues in one go -- I hope. Along with a move to nginx (which the rest of our web infrastructure already uses). There's a long story as to why all this hasn't be done previously.

I'll look into changing the caching once we're over the worst of this. Forgive me if I don't want to make significant changes during a massive traffic spike. ;)

Haha, of course. :) Hope it turns out well!

Maybe it makes sense to load off as much as possible from the static assets to another host, e.g. gitlab pages as "static.pine64.org" or similar?

I mean, most of the WP related assets do not have to be served through PHP necessarily, so they can free up some connections very easily.

If you need help with the webdev side of things to optimize/simplify more on the CSS/JS side, I'd love to help out in this project.

What hold me and most of my friends back from switching to a phone like this is that Signal is unlikely to work on it for quite some time.

Ubports Ubuntu Touch has a Signal port up and running. It's called Axocotl: https://github.com/nanu-c/axolotl/

It's not fully functioning but you can see what's working fairly quickly;

Thanks!

The Purism story is that you should be transitioning to a Matrix client such as Element (nee Riot) now that it supports end-to-end encryption, and abandoning the Signal ecosystem.

Not qualified to have an opinion, myself.

Yeah, I personally use scuttlebutt and would rather folks use it for encrypted group chat, but it seems that everyone I know has settled on Signal for now.

Does anyone know where they're manufactured?

Is there a way to do GPS navigation on a PostmarketOS device like this?

Hopefully this will lead to an improved PineTab as well!

I would love that. and a future eInk device.

> Device Warranty: 30 Days

rip

That's an instant turn off.

This is not a consumer product at this point. It's for hackers, by hackers.

No NFC? I guess Google / Apple pay could never run on such a device. :(

I don't understand. Do you want an open hardware platform only to install gigabytes of google/apple crud on? Why???

Moreover, neither will NFC U2F dongles! That thing alone already disqualifies the phone for me. Both PINE and Librem lack this and some other essential functionalities. If anyone ever manages to create a sufficiently modern free smartphone, I'm buying it right away. I think it might happen in China, as recent ban on Google Play may force Chinese companies to fight for customers disappointed with Apple's and Google's unethical policies. I wouldn't be surprised if I woke up one day and hear of China launching a fully operative postmarketOS variant of one of their flagship phones made exclusively for export to the West.

There’s been work on adding wireless charging to the phone using the pogo pins on the back, maybe something similar could be done to make a back cover with NFC?

Can someone give me a TLDR on the OS? (The website isn't great, it's more about hardware specs). Will it run Andorid apps? I bought an Ubuntu phone but it was a bit disappointing, mainly because of the lack of software available.

I want to support open phone development and alternatives to the Google/Apple smartphone duopoly. Can I use this phone with US carriers like Verizon?

Who will let you activate this phone on their network? I know that my provider won't even if the phone is compatible (Comcast/Xfinity). but I am trying to move away from this cancer company.

As someone that has been waiting for their RMA process with a Pinebook Pro for more than a month now I am incredibly disappointed with their customer service.

Getting any kind of response from then can take two to three days and all you get is "thank you for your understanding and patience" while they "wait for the manufacturer to provide replacement parts".

While that's unfortunate, I think it would be best if you re-calibrated your expectations. The Pinebook Pro is not a consumer product; it is an enthusiast product being sold with minimal profit margins. The PBP is produced in China and shipped out from Hong Kong in batches rather infrequently (maybe about once per month). To the best of my knowledge, they don't really have a "customer service" team. Taken together, these things obviously do not lead to an optimal consumer experience, but this is to be expected for such inexpensive low-volume niche products.

> When fulfilling the purchase, please bear in mind that we are offering the Pinebook Pro at this price as a community service to PINE64, Linux and BSD communities. We make no profit from selling these units. If you think that a minor dissatisfaction, such as a dead pixel, will prompt you to file a PayPal dispute then please do not purchase the Pinebook Pro. Thank you.

From their store page.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com