PinePhone review after a month of daily driving
yaky.dev
yaky.dev
Mine is still sitting in a drawer. I take it out twice a year to update it and see if the lock screen (a static image with a text field) still lags and misses inputs
Yeah as soon as I got my pinephone and the lag on the lock screen happened I had a sinking feeling it wasn't going to be that great.
Also, I tinker with many of my devices but it would be perfectly valid if the pinephone I purchased I wanted to just work out of the box, at least to the extent where the first screen doesn't lag on keyboard input.
That's a huge sign of immaturity at least in the QA process (if one even exists).j
Mind you, I really want things like Pinephone to work and be a viable alternative to the general ad/spyware infested crap on the market.
The Pinephone home and order pages had a warning in figurative blinking neon signs clearly stating it's not for consumers and squarely targeted at developers interested in making the software better.
my budget for a phone is about $150. i have been thinking about getting a pinephone (with a keyboard) but that would have been twice my budget, and after i saw a friend with that having trouble getting the keyboard working, i passed on it. before i had a fairphone 3, which i had received as a gift, but its performance was worse than the $150 phone i had before that. now however i got a very good deal (slightly over my budget) on a refurbished 3 year old oneplus nord that new would have cost $400. and boy, i have never had a phone that was that good. not only is it much faster, the battery lasts longer too.
i can now understand why people like to spend money on a high end phone. i still won't spend that much but thanks to refurbishing services i don't need to.
i really appreciate what fairphone and pinephone are doing. we need these alternative phones. i had my share of them, firefox phone, geeksphone. a sailfish based phone from india, a samsung phone running tizen. i even got a second hand openmoko very cheap because the owner was unsatisfied with it. and i can really see the evolution.
the problem is that these phones are a few years behind the curve and that the apps are written for high end phones. (the fairphone was really struggling to run wechat)
so actually, in theory you should be right. there should be software that is snapping fast even on these phones. i mean even the openmoko had usable apps. but in practice, sadly the hardware is simply a limitation.
perhaps in a few years phones will reach the same state that desktop and laptop computers have now. they can only speed up by adding more cores, and individual applications can't really go any faster, so a 7 year old computer still performs fine, even for my kids as a gaming device.
That's basically what I did: https://announce.asheesh.org/2022/09/i-switched-to-iphone-fo...
I didn't see issues running wechat on a Pixel 3a, which is slightly older than the Fairphone 3. I replaced my 3a with a 6a, but not for any performance-related reasons.
Maybe there's something weird about the Fairphone 3?
I am reading HN on it right now, still going strong!
Admittedly I have never used it as my first phone. The mechanics and probably the battery (still the first one) would not have lasted.
Yes it uses the GTK toolkit but that has nothing to do withe GNOME-Shell or its performance problems.
I corrected the Wikipedia article.
It's because you're not their employer, so they can do (or not do) whatever they want.
There are some people who do not notice things like this. Or they don't give them importance. Fill your team with them and get prepared for the shitfest.
I believe PinePhones ship with Manjaro and Plasma Mobile, which is notoriously slow and unstable, and is part of the reason why I went with Phosh.
For a more feature-phone experience, there is an ongoing project to put NuttX RTOS on PinePhone [0].
For a very performant and customizable but unusual (button navigation, terminal-based) experience, there is SXMO [1]
Editing text is very frustrating (but it sounds like the 1st iPhone was on-par). The keyboard doesn't always appear or disappear when you'd expect (but you can manually open or close it in Phosh). The biggest frustration here is that the text editing context menu (Copy, Paste etc) doesn't appear at all consistently.
There's also a bug where the context menu appears when it shouldn't (https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/5540), which makes several apps more awkward to use.
Phosh as a shell is mostly fine. The spatial model doesn't really make sense, so it's not as nice to use as the mobile version of Gnome, but that's still pre-alpha for now. Phosh hides the window's close button for some reason, and overrides that setting on every restart, so until apps switch to the new dialogs (which landed yesterday), even closing a dialog is awkward.
Overall it feels very cobbled-together for now. Files and Camera don't work properly yet, so Mobian has replaced them with Portfolio and “Camera (Dev Preview)” (which is actually a completely separate project called Millipixels that looks like a tech demo). Firefox has been heavily modified, including the bizarre decision to put the headerbar at the bottom of the window(?!) unlike any other app, and hide a load of menu options.
And then there's the general fit-and-finish I'd expect from Debian (compared with Fedora). There's a useless “Advanced Network Configuration” app that appears in the app grid, but apparently isn't a real app, because when you try to view its details Software says “Sorry! There are no details for that application”, so you can't get rid of it, whatever it is. Also, Evolution Alarm Notify; but at least I know how to prevent that from starting. (There's less of this sort of thing than with Ubuntu, though — there aren't 3 separate apps for installing software, updating software, and everyone's favourite pastime, configuring software repositories.)
It is possible to use it for basic tasks, and for me personally, I'd rather put up with good-faith bugginess than have to deal with something that assumes I want a Google account.
I used a Nexus S running CyanogenMod more than 10 years ago. Lagging and missing inputs were not problems. The Nexus S is notionally still supported by LineageOS today, but trying to actually run LineageOS on it is unbearably slow.
With that said, I think 3GB RAM feels very low for a device running this kind of software. Even the Nokia N9 had 1GB RAM.
Such a collection of hardware can't realistically compete with mainstream phones which have very tight hardware and software integration to achieve the most performance with the least power draw.
It's a bad phone (and bad portable computer), but mine might work for as long as LTE and my desire to recompile exist. Schematics, opensource and spare parts being available are the crux of it. It's the phone for those wanting to build their phones and it's pretty good at that.
I also got lots of shifty looks using my phone on the train as if I were a hacker terrorist or something.
It's been much smoother using LineageOS on a very old OnePlus One than the Pinephone, but I still keep it around to try out new OS updates.
https://xnux.eu/log/videos/libreelec6.mp4
Could 2005 Nokia do that?
I am quite happy with my Pinetab (I am typing on it now). I see the Pinephone as a smaller version of that. My Pinetab has replaced my phone for quite a lot of things - I use my phone a lot less.
If the market was still free, the future would be a BB committed to trust reciprocation. But it's too late now. So aside from de-googled provided by some specific vendors, just fuck phones.
> The "killer feature" of PinePhone is that you can SSH into it as any other Linux machine
OP, you might be interested in Android I think. It runs a Linux kernel, you can enable root access, and then use something like Linux Deploy to install a distro of your choosing that runs as though it's a normal app. I've been using that since my first Android device and have been able to ssh into my phone "just like any Linux machine" this whole time.
Indeed, I find it a killer feature and don't understand not more people want to access their DCIM folder via sshfs (bookmark it in the file manager for easy access, never get your phone out of your pocket anymore to send a photo to PC) or make full-system backups via something like restic. I also use qalc as calculator on the command line whenever I need more than simple multiplication. Fully recommended.
(Do use ssh keys instead of a password to avoid needing to type some super strong password on the phone to connect to localhost, since phones get taken into all sorts of untrustworthy WiFi networks)
> don't understand not more people want to access their DCIM folder via sshfs
I agree. I sync my camera folder with Syncthing[1], so as soon as I take a photo it is available on my laptop.
And you get to own your data instead of relying on Apple
(Not really relevant anymore since I don't own any Apple devices)
I, too, had a stage where I was obsessed about some electronic thing that had significant usability issues in day-to-day life.
In my case, it was a tri-band EU phone that could only do GSM1900 on a North American network with shitty indoor reception, and cost a pretty penny compared to what was on the market at the time. Never again.
Edit: I misread the parent comment, and didn’t realize the SSH part.
On average, that's not really true. Android uses badly modified and unmaintained versions of Linux (the kernel), and both root access and the ability to install a replacement operating system are immensely variable depending on the vendor and the exact model. Pine products typically maintain some degree of downstream patches, but they are trying to run mainline Linux and do actually keep up with kernel updates, while also giving the user root access out of the box by default, no caveats.
If you can enable root access depends on the boot loader though, which is a different story. If you want to be safe, get a Pixel.
For manufacturers where you need to apply for an unlock code, do it within the legal return window of the device (minimum 14 days in the EU (or EEA?) for online purchases), so then that's also a safe bet. Don't need to use the code straight away, though I'd recommend it as it typically (as an extra hurdle¹) wipes the device and you don't want to be doing that once all your data is on there
¹ user safety security blah blah yeah. If it were about my privacy, it could show the same consent prompt as it does for uploading my pictures and live location and rest of my life to a megacorp. If anything, that decision should have an unlock code you need to apply for and supply on a command line to avoid making a mistake in haste
Updates. The closer you are to mainline, the easier it is to move to newer versions as they come out (and the more quickly, which especially helps with security patches).
The thing is that, despite owning rooted Androids, pinephones, and jailbroken iPhone (old days), I have found no real use personally for all the unlocked potential of those devices, beyond the fun and coolness of tinkering.
I need to access some photo from PC maybe once every year. I don't edit photos, or categorize them, and if I were to share them, it's likely that the channel already is on the phone.
Writing programs on the go? I have installed vim and emacs and set up a lot of crazy stuff on phones, but at the end of the day, I'd rather just carry a laptop. It's too hard to type on the phone regardless of what program you install, and if connected to a external keyboard, the screen is too small. I just don't have a scenario where I want to write programs while not able to bring a laptop.
In other words, the hardware and form factor is so limiting, that I don't find unleashing the software to be much of a use, even after spending a lot of time setting them up. I hope I can find some practical reasons, because I really like the tinkering, but I haven't.
(This is, of course, highly personal. A lot of people might find many practical use cases.)
The iPhone gets better and better but I jailbreak for a clipboard that isn't a single paste.
0. get ssh working
1. type into the location bar of the file browser: sftp:// and then whatever the ssh command would use, e.g.: sftp://root@samsung-0bd2c41
2. there is no step two, you've already got a mounted filesystem
Of course, there's some details hidden in step zero, but if KDE Connect uses sshfs as well, I'm not sure how it gets simpler than this to "expose" (this means mount, right?) the filesystem. Does KDE Connect do it bidirectionally or so? (I wouldn't actually want that, as my laptop is the trusted device of the pair)
The phone icon shows up in your file manager without you having to do any additional configuration. Click and browse like any networked folder.
Advantage is KDE connect also brings a lot of useful features alongside just accessing phone files. Can share clipboard, notifications (can even reply from desktop), execute commands on pc from phone and vice versa and a lot more
Ah wait, probably there's a companion app on the phone side that uses root and one side listens for broadcasts on the network. Is that what you mean? That does sound simpler than setting up ssh indeed
One may be able to get root, but the resulting system isn't very useful. Many apps query Google's attestation and integrity APIs to detect this and then refuse to function.
Basically it's a thing of the past.
I remember hearing many more issues with apps trying to detect it and do fearmongering in the past. I'd say your argument is the thing that's slowly getting a part of the past
Sounds like exactly what I want. It has been well over a decade since I used my cell radio for anything but data.
I suppose if you have some reliable VoIP setup, it might work.
Regardless, it's shoddy, dumb, and shouldn't be celebrated.
Anyway, I think reading this comment kinda gave me my answer: be selective about when I take my phone. Kinda the inverse of the murderer not taking their phone when they go to hide the body (I'm not planning to murder anyone); I just don't take my phone unless I plan on being in a situation where there will not be a good alternative to having my own means of communication, e.g., a road trip or vacation. Traveling within my city of residence will likely be feasible, especially if I try to do so primarily with a vehicle smaller than a car.
But yeah, if one has this idea, keep in mind that people started taking their phones everywhere because they're useful in many situations.
My 'phone' has been really useful to me so I take it basically always with me, unless I specifically know I don't need it (such as going for a swim). I don't take calls if I don't feel like it, but very few people call me.
Do you not use you phone for other things than communication?
Also, something weird happened when I regained the ability to avoid looking at a device in my hands: I started to see that everyone is addicted to their phone. Used to be that any time I had to wait for any length of time, my first instinct was to pull out my phone. Now I just look around and see everyone else do that. The decision to leave my phone at home (with exceptions) is an extension of that change in my habits.
messaging is there too, but my phone is always on silent, so like you i mainly use it for urgent stuff.
911 is a free call, no sim needed. So if that is your only concern a phone that you don't pay for may be fine.
A regular phone without a sim could work though
I've also been in a situation where if we did not have a sat phone in our group, someone very well may have died from heat stroke/way to many sunburns.
And now actually, I don’t even need service with satellite SOS.
What an absurd claim.
During the holiday break I installed Lineage OS on my father's 10-year-old Motorola Moto G. Turns out in order to unlock the bootloader you have to fill an online form and get a code that unlocks it via email.
Additionally initially no custom recovery would install due to an outdated bootloader. I managed to patch it using a script some lone developer wrote for personal use.
This is to combat groups of people who flash malicious OS builds to phones and resell them to innocent people who have no clue the phone they got is compromised.
The companies are trying to avoid the blame by creating a paper trail, if someone modifies a phone to illegally broadcast protected frequencies.
Cost $27 plus $12 shipping. I upgraded the firmware via Bluetooth - the newer firmware is said to do BPMs better (I checked before and after, and it does seem to). They sell a dev kit for the same price, although you don't need the dev kit to develop unless you're really getting into it.
It's very developer friendly - you can write your own OS for it, or modify InfiniTime which is the OS it is shipped with. Source code is on Github. Have been happy with it so far.
I also have a PinePhone Pro from when it was affordable. It totally fixes the lags and is fast, making it difficult to use the regular PinePhone again. However, it heats too much and doesn't last long enough on the battery.
The PinePhone in general should not be expected to replace your main phone unless you know otherwise. It is still a prototype Linux mobile phone for testing and developing Linux stuff.
I still use it daily though. Still useful as a GPS device, to display train tickets and QR codes, to watch videos, listen to things and casually browse e.g. in bed (make sure you don't wrap it in your sheets though).
It's not generally practical yet. An Android phone will beat it. It is one of the most practical mobile devices if you care about FOSS and need some smartphone-like features besides calling. Is also occasionally use it as a 4G access point, I also just use my feature phone as a 3G access point through bluetooth for the pinephone when I both want both the calls to work and the smartphone feature or when I'm lazy and don't want to move the sim card but this can be slow.
It is an essential device that may make it possible to have an actual fully working Linux mobile device in a few years.
I really want a product like that to succeed, but I'm just not seeing anything reasonable being produced.
Every time someone tries to make an open/pro-privacy/pro-consumer phone and doesn't produce a perfect product they get heavily criticised, but I think they are up against some fairly fundamental limitations. The fact that there isn't really a satisfactory option out there despite numerous attempts suggests to me that the problem is not with the specific products or companies but something more fundamental. I don't think it will ever be feasible for ethical phones to compete with non-ethical phones on cost.
Honestly even if one exists it’s a luxury until there’s (other) hardware and software that actually works.
1. Get it to work 2. Sell them 3. Profit 4. Reinvest in hardware
That’s what Apple did.
> barely functional
> insanely priced
> I'm just not seeing anything reasonable being produced.
It's not reasonable to offer an affordable phone that also runs an open source baseband OS that has been tested to work reliably with the most popular carriers.
The problem is the drivers and documentation for those chips are very limited and short-lived. One simply doesn't get it without signing an NDA and buying some high thousands.
Without documentation it gets harder to optimally program them. On top of that add the know-how. Due to both NDAs and pure difficulty of working with low power systems, it is really hard to hire engineers who are both very knowledgeable and not bound by NDAs and willing to work on community projects that doesn't pay the significant wages that the consumer tech giants do.
Desktop Linux can get away with it if the desktop computer consumes slightly more power or laptop battery life is 2 hours shorter. People accept it. For phones any extra operations cause significant power usage. Everything in the stack needs to be optimized for it and regular Linux desktop stuff often isn't. Android has much tighter controls but it is 5-10x harder to program in the lower levels which again limits the supply of the engineers.
This is just getting a simple SoC and running Linux on top. Add similar complexities for every single peripheral.
Which is why we need new chips to replace qualcomm/samsung/mediatek entirely in open devices. It's kind of crazy that nobody is willing to even attempt it. I'd gladly take the inevitable massive hit to performance if it meant fully open, documented, and auditable devices.
Anyone that gets halfway interested in trying to make an open baseband, necessitating a custom radio front end, gets quickly uninterested once they look at the development costs and then needing to get a license.
It's also never going to be the default Pine64 ships with, because no OEM wants to tell the FCC "We asked the users nicely not to send erroneous signals. No, this was not lab-tested, nor verified by the FCC to not interfere with other devices."
Considering the legal limitations, I think this is an absolutely amazing point to have gotten to. OP may have issues, but he mentioned even his Android handset had similar issues. I have a pretty good carrier (for a carrier), amd have pretty well no issues using my Pinephone Pro as my actual smartphone. I just carry a spare battery :)
Yeah.
Soon a thing of the past. I worked on a ModemManager patch to fix this, and a MM maintainer reworked and merged it last month [1]
> When GPS is enabled, it takes 10-15 minutes to get a precise location.
You can manually inject AGPS data to get an instant precise location. Not ideal but this shows the situation is fixable. See instructions for this also at [1].
As for offline mapping, PureMaps with OSM Scout Server works well enough.
[1] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mobile-broadband/ModemManager...
My Pinephone seems to still have an issue with crashing randomly all the time.
2. It's mobile
3. It's Linux
It did not reliably make phone calls *for me*. There are plenty of people on forums and Reddit who use it.
But then vendors acted like assholes, and labelled phones as "open" without any possibility to get the source, let alone develop anything for their devices due to lack of working build tools.
Unfortunately, like the current "smart TV" situation, it's going to be hard to find a PDA-like device without a built-in modem, since most people do want the built-in modem. There are tablets, but even them seem to be gaining built-in modems nowadays.
Unfortunately, without popular apps being readily available, there is zero chance this goes mainstream. Desktop Linux has a better chance of surpassing Windows.
So if it was early revision, I can understand the frustration.
That's really cool actually!
Also think of making backups: just plug the sdcard into your laptop and copy the data.
But then also this..
> [...] repeated, unpredictable problems both placing and receiving calls [...]
> Notifications TLDR: Only calls and SMS notifications are truly real-time.
So the only way someone can reliably reach you is via SMS, which basically means sending an explicit money-costing notification to me whenever I'm not already online and hoping I hear the single ping.
That suits a pocket computer, but not for a phone :(
The keyboard descriptions are also interesting: no suggestions makes it basically unusable unless it comes with a physical keyboard or you want to have typos in every sentence. I've got a "hacker keyboard" enabled on my android as well, but only turn it on when doing terminal things. I tried typing normally on that and I don't think it would reasonably work after a lot of practice either
Cool on paper but SD cards have abysmal write endurance, as any Raspberry Pi user will attest to.
Unless you trust the entire software stack to keep writes to a minimum I wouldn't trust the SD card to last.
It hasn't happened anymore recently, and I feel like there's more awareness/support for this type of usage pattern with the higher-end sdcards that are somewhat recent (like, introduced in the last ~8 years, so after the lifespan of an old cheap sdcard, I'm still on my first new-style one and I'm not yet sure it's not randomness that keeps it alive)
I have a few portable handy recorders, a Zoom, a Tascam and a Sound Devices, and all of them handle the same SD cards for years, rarely complaining about format errors or losing files.
It's cool but it's wrong: SD cards are unreliable.
I don't think you can put a binary label on this (right or wrong): reliability is a number, such as MTBF or write cycles, not a boolean
Netherlands (the market I'm actually familiar with):
https://www.youfone.nl (virtual provider, cheapest in recent years) Homepage shows 200 minutes/SMS are now forced with every subscription, that's new since I last renewed about two years ago. You used to pay something like 1.5€/month extra if you chose these 200
https://www.odido.nl/mobiel-abonnement/sim-only (budget network, most popular mobile carrier in NL, about 1/3rd of the market) forces to include 120 minutes/SMS
KPN.nl (the K stands for royal; historically state-owned and had the best coverage, now the premium "I want to pay more for nothing" provider) includes unlimited call/SMS with every available subscription apparently. Prepaid would be pay per use, but those offers are even less attractive (I used to have prepaid as an adult because it used to be cheaper and they'd just automatically book a data bundle off the balance and automatically top up the balance from my bank account; but then KPN bought the virtual provider and it became expensive)
https://www.simyo.nl/sim-only/bestellen forces to include 200. They also offer prepaid but not for an attractive price either (which is weird to me: no credit risk, no minutes or SMSes included, but those internet bundles alone cost more than a monthly cancellable subscription that includes a few hundred minutes/SMSes?)
https://www.ben.nl/sim-only forces to include 200
Besides premium KPN, a provider called Simpel (means in Dutch what it sounds like in English) seems to be the only one that includes flat rate minutes/SMS with every possible subscription. There's a few more niche providers but I think these are the well-known ones (besides one that gave me a CAPTCHA to view the website so I closed the tab) and should be comprehensive
So the market changed since I last renewed: more than a hundred SMSes are always required now. TIL
Unfortunately, true for any "pure Linux" phone out there since forever.
I used to have a Nokia N900 and root for it very very much, but the dialer freezing and that infamous kernel bug when lots I/O could make everything sluggish made it a necessity to also carry a feature phone with my primary SIM around, too, just in case.
> Unfortunately, true for any "pure Linux" phone out there since forever.
Not true for Librem 5, which is my daily driver. See also: https://forums.puri.sm/t/librem-5-daily-driven-in-profession...
Just needed something as good as my old iPhone 6s… but not quite there yet. :-/
Also assumed there’d be new hardware by now. Skipped the Pro, when does a new one come out? Been four years I think, which is worse than shipping a phone ten years out of date at launch.
[0]: https://fosdem.org/2024/schedule/track/foss-on-mobile-device...
The pinephone would be great in comparison to a Nokia 3310. Everything that came after, even the i models with Bluetooth, would be better daily drivers than anything running on the pinephone. The bluetooth disconnects alone make me throw this thing into the trashbox, because my 5$ usb mp3 flash stick can handle that better these days.
This includes SXMO, phosh, and all the rust weekend projects that nobody cares about.
We don't need type safety, we don't need GTK or QT, we don't need X on mobile.
These are all outdated ways of thinking about what a mobile computer can do, it's ridiculous that you have to even mention it.
There was a reason Android 2.3 moved away from anything related to X at the time. And the reason was: OpenGLES.
Nothing in the tech stack that GNOME and KDE provides is made for a quick and efficient shader pipeline, let alone a compositor that can be programmed/influenced from userspace.
Just use ANGLE and get over your damned opinions about how you can do it better.
If the pinephone had boot2chromium or sth like boot2electron, it probably would be a million times less sluggish.
Nobody needs an SSH toy terminal that they cannot exit if it cannot render a special character and crashes, because the process management has a single UI thread.
If I cannot make a phone call and cannot use WhatsApp on a phone in 2024, it's utterly useless and can only be described as an expensive brick.
I get that it's not the hardware, but the software folks seem to be busy reinventing their own opinions about how to do things without even looking for the reasons why thousands of devs before them with decades more experience might have a point.
Linux on the phone will fail as long as this cultural problem of "not invented here so I can do it better" isn't fixed.
Different people care about different things. I've never used WhatsApp in my life.
> Nobody needs an SSH toy terminal that they cannot exit if it cannot render a special character and crashes, because the process management has a single UI thread.
Er, is that a thing that can happen? I can't see any reason the software would be any less robust just because it's on a phone.
In general, it sounds like you're arguing the view that if everyone just reinvented the wheel your way it'd work, but most of those decisions were made for a reason; generally, either for software compatibility, or because just reimplementing Android seems like a questionable value proposition. (And also the usual thing that it's almost all volunteers, so the choice isn't diversity or uniformity, it's diversity or nothing.)
> If the pinephone had boot2chromium or sth like boot2electron, it probably would be a million times less sluggish.
The sluggishness of pinephone, i think, is probably due to slower sdcards (most of them tend to dual boot using an sdcard) and dated hardware for the kind of animated UI people expect these days.
There is still boot2gecko/firefox os/whatever they call it these days.
The only one I recall is "I love my PinePhone" (published last year I think). Most of reviews I've seen is variations on "interesting, but not there yet", usually with high expectations, if not outright complaints.
> The bluetooth disconnects alone make me throw this thing into the trashbox
Haven't used bluetooth on PinePhone much, but for comparison, my previous iPhone 12 Pro (a "flagship" at the time) had tons of bluetooth issues and disconnects and worked terribly with in-car speaker. YMMV.
> If I cannot make a phone call and cannot use WhatsApp on a phone in 2024, it's utterly useless and can only be described as an expensive brick.
While I agree about phone calls, WhatsApps's availability has nothing to do with PinePhone or Linux. I heard it runs through Waydroid fairly well. I bridge WhatsApp to my Matrix server and chat through Fractal.
> Linux on the phone will fail as long as this cultural problem of "not invented here so I can do it better" isn't fixed.
From what you wrote above it, that is also exactly why Android succeeded, going their own way instead of using what existed before.
And I fully understand that that isn’t the point. The point is the hard work that has gone into this and the selective-amounts of “freedom” (if we convince ourselves that the modems and firmware in these things being absolutely not free software or open doesn’t to a certain extent obviate the entire thought experiment) you get versus another platform. I get it. I’m glad people are working on this stuff and having fun.
And at $200, the Pine Phone is at least cheap enough to try out as a toy if you’re into that kind of thing (I think I’d rather jailbreak an older iPhone or use a modified Android device running an alt-OS, but that’s me). The Librem 5 is either $1000 or $2000 depending on what option you get, and that is to me, only for people who either enjoy setting their money on fire or who have been brainwashed by the marketing that it can do what it cannot do for 99.99999% of the population.
I dunno. I don’t like being a hater but I don’t see the real point of having a mobile phone that isn’t a usable phone and that is really only usable if plugged into power all the time and used as a stationary mini computer (and thus, no longer mobile), of which a person could build something much more powerful using a Raspberry Pi or other single-board computer or a used NUC.
Mind that a huge chunk of the $1000 price point is due to cost of mobile-friendly userspace development (e.g. phosh, phoc, libhandy, libadwaita), driver development, and mainlining drivers.
Paying for this is absolutely justified because it’s important work, and it benefits the mobile Linux community as a whole, not just L5 owners.