I am looking to purchase either (or both) of those phones. Would you recommend buying one of them now or waiting until a future release? It seems that both companies have extended the release dates a bit.
I do not think either the Pinephone nor Librem 5 will have any more significant hardware changes, so the Pinephone/Librem 5 you buy now will be the same one you buy in a year.
If you're unsure, I think buying a Pinephone is a safe bet since its $150 for you to try, and if its not for you, you can probably get your money back by selling it.
What do you want to use it for?
For me, Mobian/Pinephone does everything I need it to do for typical daily usage except for Chatty supporting MMS (and hopefully this will be fixed within a month or so).
If you go with a pinephone get the 3 GB version, as anbox takes up a fair bit of RAM.
Combined with software improvements that will hopefully give a relatively smooth experience.
Then again, the PinePhone is so cheap that it's not a big risk either way.
You mention Anbox in another post here. Don’t expect that to allow you to run banking apps on Librem/PinePhone, as banking apps increasingly require the Android phone to pass Safety Net, and Anbox doesn’t.
Source? Even anecdata?
Less apps are required, in lieu of web apps on their websites.
> Less apps are required, in lieu of web apps on their websites.
Some banks require you to install their phone app for 2FA – they have phased out separate code cards or code calculators now that everyone is assumed to carry a mainstream smartphone. So, even if you want to log into their online-banking website, you need an Android or Apple phone in order to authenticate.
But you said increasingly. I disagree, I'm hearing less bitching about this than ever from people running Graphene or Lineage.
I'd never use a service that forced themselves into my device like that.
Still going to recommend them as a best practice! =D
I run FVWM and Firefox on mine and it works very well.
Online banking 2FA and some other apps sadly tie me to Android.
Although that might change if Anbox works ( https://puri.sm/posts/anbox-on-the-librem-5/ ).
If you order a pinephone today, they estimate they’ll ship it to you in late April.
Also, their “beta phone” is the Nth revision of shipping hardware.
If the phone hardware arrives defective/broken, that's one thing. If the issue is the state of whatever Linux distro you're running (including missing features/applications), that's not their problem.
Mine is from the first batch of 'final' hardware (i.e. the UBPorts CE) for over 6 months and the hardware is solid. The distros (all of them) have come a long way but still have a very long way to go.