Ask HN: How’s the PinePhone? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How’s the PinePhone?

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I have been considering leaving the Apple ecosystem for quite some time, but I often fear there’s no real alternative. Google is every bit as bad (if not worse), and therefore it makes little sense to jump to Android. OTOH, the PinePhone appears to be a fully functional, if low spec, smart phone running GNU/Linux. I’ve not seen recent reviews or status reports from credible sources. Do any of you have knowledge about it and care to comment With your experience? How functional is it? How reliable is it? Do you miss any calls or texts for example? Battery life?

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I was very excited when the PinePhone came out and I bought the Manjaro edition with the Convergence package. Unfortunately I found it really slow compared with my high spec Android phone. I'm happy I bought it since that way I contribute to the improvement of the implementation of the idea of the Linux phone but I don't think it's there yet. Hopefully there will soon be a new PinePhone or another Linux phone with more powerful hardware than can better serve the needs of more users. The PinePhone is really important because it helped create a community that has improved the state of Linux for Phones a lot, which is great. But I don't think the PinePhone is there yet for daily driver. That said, I'm sure it has improved a lot with newer versions of Linux and software for mobile. For instance, I read the battery has dramatically improved, since when I bought it it was abysmal.

I own one and want to use it as my daily driver. I also want out of the Apple/Android ecosystem.

It is unusable as a real phone. It's a fun toy and I would buy again to play with, but it doesn't work.

The radio dies all the time. The battery can't last more than a few hours.

Buy one to play with, but don't expect to actually use it.

I actually ended up giving it to my hardcore Linux friend (the i use arch btw kinda guy) and he doesn't use it either.

Not sure, but I bought the PineTime the other day and I think I've fallen in love. The build quality is excellent, the watch OS feels like a Pebble, and the battery life is long enough to take on a weekend trip while leaving the charger at home. At only ~$30 it feels like a steal...

Software support for the PinePhone is quite decent, but only if you count it as a feature phone mostly. It just doesn't have the battery life to act as an "connected 100% of the time on all platforms" device. Especially if you consider that a bunch of the closed platforms are downright hostile towards open clients.

PinePhone Pro is an upgrade specs wise, but the hardware has even more power management issues and the software support backing isn't really there, seems like development has slowed down a lot on it in general.

I've been spending way too much time making content about the hardware, and still would if my new job would not absorb so much of my time and energy. I still write a Weekly Update on the PinePhone and similar projects on https://linmob.net.

I also still have a PinePhone (postmarketOS CE 3GB, 32GB) for my second SIM, and I don't miss calls or texts (SMS, MMS aren't popular in germany) as far as I know - e.g. I've never noticed 2FA SMS not coming through. I am running postmarketOS stable and use the open source modem firmware by BiktorGJ. But: This depends on your mobile carrier, and it may work different for you or impossible, e.g. AT&T in the US has gotten really strict about whitelisting devices for it's network and PinePhone is just not on that list.

Now, about battery life: If you use it as phone, and don't have too many calls, it's fine. It can even last two days, if it's mostly chugging along in standby. But: As soon as you do compute-heavy things, like browsing the modern web, ... Well, it lasts a few hours, depending on how much you do (I sadly did not find the time to do a battery rundown test since mid 2020 (when things were early and terrible), but don't expect more than 2 hours of Firefox use). It's definitely not up to modern iPhones. Also, PinePhone is really slow. I love it, but it's really not fast and never will be.

Regarding a credible report, maybe check out the latest episode of the postmarketOS podcast [1].

In terms of hardware, I keep recommending the Xiaomi Pocophone F1 [2]. It's fast and has decent battery life (being based on a chip actually designed for phones helps). I had to use Windows to unlock the bootloader, after that, installing postmarketOS was easy. You loose the camera and the option of not really usable kill switches, it also does not run all the distributions that PinePhone can run, but other than that, it's as good as it gets IMHO.

Also, keep in mind that the app ecosystem is limited, I try to track it on https://linuxphoneapps.org.

Overall, if you can afford to buy a PinePhone or a used Poco F1 (plus a new battery ;-)) easily, just give it a try. You'll find out quickly whether it's for you (you should like to tinker a bit) or not. :)

PS: If you have further question, feel free to send me an email - I might not see replies here.

[1]: https://cast.postmarketos.org/episode/25-Interview-Alyssa-Sp...

[2]: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Xiaomi_Poco_F1_(xiaomi-be...

FYI; PinePhonePro : https://www.pine64.org/pinephonepro/

PineTime : https://www.pine64.org/pinetime/

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