Is the Pinephone any good?

  • 🔧 At about Midnight EST I am going to completely fuck up the site trying to fix something.
SageInAllFields said:
The performance is decent, it does have trouble switching between networks if you're moving fast but even then it's still usable.
Click to expand...
Are these phones restocked? I have checked half a dozen times to find the same 'out of stock' flag.
Did your carrier give you shit about the Pine or was transition fairly seamless?
Thank you for all the info. TBH - sounds kinda shitty. Everything has a price. I need to ween myself from the Google nipple, and $200 plus performance seems to be the cost.

I love some Android apps, but I know they spy the fuck outta me. Shazam is one of the worst, but whaddaya gonna do when you HAVE to know the song name?
Also, Google's 2FA app is nice... Guess I'll transition to the web page versions (I think).

Answered my own questions by searching the Pine forums: see below...

mrboring Wrote: I'd like to take pictures, have good phone calls, send and receive messages, surf the web including watching youtube videos.
Click to expand...

First: Currently, the PinePhone is sold out, so you would have to get one on eBay or wait for the next Community Edition to be available or some stock coming of the postmarketOS CE being back. So you don't need to hurry and can take your time.

That said, taking pictures does not really work yet. Some distributions have working camera apps, but that's all at a blurry 2 mega pixel resolution with a 1 FPS viewfinder. I am sure that this will eventually improve, but there is so much else that arguably has a higher priority with many of the nascent software projects, that no ETA can be given.

Good phone calls. Well, phone calls have been reliable for me lately, but do they sound hi-def? No. Also, the phone get's hot, and most people report that calls longer than 30 minutes don't really work yet.

Sending and receiving messages. Which kind of? Texts have been working fine for me, but then, I barely use SMS anymore. MMS is an entirely different beast (and in my eyes a horrible technology that has no reason to exist, if you have mobile data, why not use email?), some people on some carriers on some distributions apparently made it work for themselves, so: Don't expect SMS. If you are using specific apps, well... I will look into WhatsApp on Anbox (an Android layer, which does not work reliable yet) this week, Telegram works either with Teleports on Ubuntu Touch or with Telegram Desktop on the other distributions, Signal supposedly works on Ubuntu Touch, although I did not try it and should be portable to other distributions.

Surfing the web. It works. But.. with most of the current crop of browsers, that mostly have not been designed for mobile from the ground up, multi-tabbing can slow things down or even crash the browser, as it runs out of memory. Watching YouTube works, even without MPV, but the experience on your Android phone with something like the NewPipe app is likely better.

There is a ton of videos on the web showcasing different mobile operating systems for the PinePhone, just watch them. Arguably, the most ready one that is a true mobile OS in general is Ubuntu Touch, and according to their website, the good old One Plus One which might cost you next to nothing is the device that is best supported (btw, PinePhone support for Ubuntu Touch improved a lot with the recent OTA update, I would not call it "experimental" any more, even though some features don't still work yet (Online Accounts wizard, Libertine with GUI..). Another popular option is Sailfish OS. They have a program called Sailfish X, where you can buy an officially supported image for certain Sony devices. These might be good options for you as well and would solve the "I don't feel in control" issue while still being able to take better pictures than with a PinePhone.
/SPOILER]
 
Last edited:
Orange Rhymer said:
Google's 2FA app is nice
Click to expand...
I encourage you to take a look at AndOTP (F-Droid and Play Store).

Most of the major benefits of PinePhone are available on other phones so long as they have good community support. The niche PinePhone is trying to fill is minimizing things like proprietary "Binary Blobs". The thing is, that it is nearly impossible to do away with them entirely and still have modern hardware.

I don't think you're losing a whole lot by just switching to another phone that has similar software support. Unless you are worried about criminal activity or higher levels of security (spy or some shit, IDK?)
 
  • Informative
Reactions: Orange Rhymer
Orange Rhymer said:
Did your carrier give you shit about the Pine or was transition fairly seamless?
Click to expand...
Idk I just pulled my SIM out and stuck it in the Pinephone, fairly straightforward. I live in the UK though so maybe we do things differently to your country.

Orange Rhymer said:
I love some Android apps, but I know they spy the fuck outta me. Shazam is one of the worst, but whaddaya gonna do when you HAVE to know the song name?
Also, Google's 2FA app is nice... Guess I'll transition to the web page versions (I think).
Click to expand...
There are people currently working on an Android ROM for the Pinephone: https://github.com/GloDroid/glodroid_manifest
So you can always keep an SD card with Android on it in your pocket if you need it, I plan on putting Instagram and NewPipe on an SD card with it installed when it's stable.
 
Orange Rhymer said:
Are these phones restocked? I have checked half a dozen times to find the same 'out of stock' flag.
Did your carrier give you shit about the Pine or was transition fairly seamless?
Thank you for all the info. TBH - sounds kinda shitty. Everything has a price. I need to ween myself from the Google nipple, and $200 plus performance seems to be the cost.

I love some Android apps, but I know they spy the fuck outta me. Shazam is one of the worst, but whaddaya gonna do when you HAVE to know the song name?
Also, Google's 2FA app is nice... Guess I'll transition to the web page versions (I think).
Click to expand...

Have you looked into Lineage OS along with the F-Droid store? I'm really excited for Pine's shit, but right now if you have the wherewithal to unlock the bootloader of one of the phones supports by Lineage, you can escape the spyware shit while having a phone that's more functional than the Pinephone is right now. It'd be a good stopgap until they get things like pictures and MMS working.
 
  • Like
Reactions: greengrilledcheese
Orange Rhymer said:
Thanks for the heads up, but I'm gonna pass. The Rossman video kinda sunk it for me. Anytime you need to solder in order to charge a battery....
Also, the absolute shit web-page performance and format.

I'm sure Pine will improve, but it's way too 'bleeding-edge' to use as my primary phone.
Click to expand...
You're probably referring to:
This is fixed in boards that are currently shipping and even before you could still charge your phone, you just couldn't send data over USB because it wouldn't know which way round the USB-C cable was. I have that board version.

Also I didn't realise Rossmann did a video on the Pinephone, here it is for anyone who's interested:
 
  • Like
Reactions: Never Scored, Smaug's Smokey Hole and Orange Rhymer
Never Scored said:
Manjaro announced a new alpha for Pinephone. The potential to run F-Droid and the apps within such as Newpipe is pretty enticing. If it's progressed even further by the time the Manjaro community edition of the phone launches I may take the plunge.
Click to expand...
Any idea how they've gotten F-droid apps running? Is it just Anbox or some kind of library they're compiling them with?
 
SageInAllFields said:
Any idea how they've gotten F-droid apps running? Is it just Anbox or some kind of library they're compiling them with?
Click to expand...

Sounds like it's just Anbox. I don't know what the performance is like. I could never get it to run on Manjaro for ARM on my Raspberry Pi 4.
 
Is Spotify an option on it? Pretty much the only thing I use my phone for.
 
Monkey Shoulder said:
Is Spotify an option on it? Pretty much the only thing I use my phone for.
Click to expand...
yes there are web browsers that work on the pinephone. some pinephone distributions even work with the headphone port
EDIT: (It should mostly work over Wifi, anyway, mobile data might be more problematic)
 
  • Like
Reactions: Monkey Shoulder
Sage In All Fields said:
You're probably referring to:
This is fixed in boards that are currently shipping and even before you could still charge your phone, you just couldn't send data over USB because it wouldn't know which way round the USB-C cable was. I have that board version.

Also I didn't realise Rossmann did a video on the Pinephone, here it is for anyone who's interested:
Click to expand...
Ah fuck. So that's what the problem was with my v1.1. I didn't have time to investigate. At least there's a fix, even if it requires soldering BGA which sucks ass.

Pinebook Pro is a solid piece of hardware, by the way. Everyone should get one if they can find it in stock.
 
Last edited:
  • Informative
Reactions: Sage In All Fields
So it's been two years since I commented in this thread. Wanted to drop an update;



@Sicklick was right, Pinephone was the way to go. I wound up returning my Librem 5 roughly two months after I received it. For the cost of $1200, it was abhorrent. I also have some serious concerns about the conduct of Purism as a corporate entity wrapping itself in the FOSS label for their own gain.

So after the Librem went back I spent $149 plus shipping for the pinephone; For that price, I find the small inconveniences of Linux a lot more palatable.

Mine is still running Plasma/Manjaro, though I've also used a handful of other distros over the duration. I've had it now for the better part of two years. Is it slower than mainstream devices? Well, yes. Can I multitask? Yes, with qualifications. Has it gotten remarkably better since launch? Hell yes it has.

In the last year I've had fewer than six dropped calls while driving (carriers in that time; T-Mobile and AT&T). The camera, while still hot garbage by Apple standards, is now at least fast and clear enough to take pictures of invoices for work in a timely manner. I can run my mapping application with music streaming in the background and as long as I don't throw more than a third application at it crashing is unlikely.

Would all this feel positive if I'd paid big phone prices for the Pinephone? Nope. But I didn't. I paid $149, and for that amount of money I've gotten a lot of miles out of this device over the past two years. I can't think of anything I realistically need my phone to do that this one does not. The Pinephone is not perfect but for a lot of people it will get the job done while not prying into every aspect of your life in exchange.

Seriously. In 2022, if you are at all interested in privacy or the mobile Linux space, $149 for the base model or $199 for the extra RAM is a very low bar of entry. The $149 sells out faster; I think right now only the $199 is in stock but the base model tends to come back in-stock reliably.
 
  • Informative
  • Like
Reactions: murdered meat bag, The Ghost of Kviv, Safir and 4 others
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back