The situation with phones is pretty bad now. The phones that have or support open-source ROM (Pinephones, Pixels etc), are usually expensive and cost like 2-3 normal phones. So it might be cheaper just to buy a non-free phone and keep it in airplane mode (and connect it only to a airgapped home WiFi network to transfer data), and a second dumb phone for calling. Or have one phone with your data, connecting to Internet via second $50 phone, which has connectivity, but no data, and DPIs all requests from first phone, basically serving as a portable router.
It's understandable that you earn more on expensive phones, and freedom is not free, but I don't want to buy a phone that costs like 2 cheaper phones + a guitar.
I bought one as soon as they were released, as well as the keyboard case. It never really worked correctly, but I loved the concept and wish they would have succeeded.
I know it's a niche product, but I'd love a pocket sized Debian device with cellular, decent standby time, and a physical keyboard. Anything out there I should look in to? I've tried to make various GPD devices work, but they are too big, and the standby time isn't great.
There's https://furilabs.com/shop/flx1/, but there don't seem to be many people playing with these. Perhaps someone on HN would be willing to share their experience.
I think that finding an aftermarket keyboard solution for a smartphone using the android virtualization framework to run a debian VM (i.e. the "Linux Terminal" on Android 16) is your best bet by far.
The economies of scale (and compactness!) in mainstream smartphones are very hard to match, and they tend to have superior power management.
Do heavy lifting by logging into a remote server for best battery life and compute power.
Some of them are UMPCs, some are sub-notebooks and some arguably are maybe netbooks. The GPD Micro PC 2 is not that fast and only has a 7" screen like the original Asus EEE PC. It's got less bezel, so perhaps it bleeds the line between netbook and UMPC but inflation adjusted it's pretty comparable in price.
Pretty cheap by some definitions, yes, but as best as I can tell (historical prices aren’t exactly readily available), the Micro PC 2 ($700 list price before tax) is still between 1.5× and 2× the price of the original (€300—presumably including about 20% tax—per the linked article, between $200 and $500 per the Wayback Machine, in nominal dollars before 10% inflation).
This is a bummer. If there was ever a time this sort of device was needed, it's now / in the near future when Google (probably) starts requiring all Android apps to be signed by approved developers and further locks down the Android platform.
I kind of regret not buying one of these instead of a Pixel 7 but, unfortunately, I'm pretty tethered to the Android ecosystem at the moment.
I'm monitoring support for PostmarketOS on Fairphone models, with a mainline Linux kernel. They actually have someone working on upstreaming stuff to mainline, which is quite nice.
The FP6 doesn't seem there yet [1], but the FP5 is close! [2]
The FP5 is a comfortable device. With call support completely figured out, Mobile Linux would probably be enjoyable on it.
You say that, but they're discontinuing it because they didn't sell enough of them. It may be the device we need, but it's not the device we're buying.
I never had a PinePhone Pro but I did buy an earlier model and the user experience was very far off what we have come to expect from modern phones. I'm sure the Pro was better but still probably not that close to an Android or Apple phone. That's not a sleight on the company at all, they faced some very high barriers and I respect what they did. But I don't think this is entirely on consumers for not putting their money where their mouth is. It's just yet another example that it's really hard to create something (in the phone space, at least) that is affordable, open and highly functional.
So if you come out with a typical android phone, you have to do X amount of work yourself and some Y amount you can just buy.
If you are doing something like a PinePhone, there's a multiplier on the X of work you have to do yourself ... a significant multiplier and that's the problem.
That's why if you have a something like a Pine phone that has the sales of say something like this: https://www.bluproducts.com/android-phones/ you're going to bleed money - you won't survive - it's too much of a lift.
That's also why almost all phones (that are financially viable) look and feel almost the same.
The product was never really attractive by itself. You had to be extremely patient and willing to overlook the serious problems with their software to even try to use it.
I would like to see some other company take a real swing at this product space but with a less strict approach around the hardcore open-everything ideals. They’re good in theory, but in practice people want a phone that works and you have to get to that stage first.
NB: Attestation has no security value here because if the phone isn't compromised then the owner having root isn't a security problem and if the phone is compromised then the user is entering their bank login into fake scam app that doesn't require attestation regardless of what the real one does.
But because the banks that require this are cargo culting some nonsense, they require iOS or Google Android but don't really care how old the phone is. Which means you can transfer your cellular plan to the phone you actually want to use and then just keep your existing phone indefinitely to run the bank app over WiFi or tethering.
The first is that your phone is not compromised. In this case there is no other app trying to steal your bank's authentication token. This is true regardless of which OS you use or whether you have magisk installed or what other code you put on your phone that isn't trying to steal your bank's authentication token.
The second is that your phone is compromised. Then what prevents the device from capturing your bank credentials is the same as if you use a compromised phone running Google Android: Nothing. If you enter your bank credentials into a compromised phone, the attacker gets them. Attestation can't prevent this because the phone is compromised, so the login screen isn't from a bank app that requires attestation, it's from a scam app which is exfiltrating your credentials.
Then tell your banks they have to support the PinePhone or they'll lose you as a customer. The PinePhone folks don't have access to the source code of whatever interface your banks provide on Android/iOS, so they can't do anything about it.
Pine has an attention problem, they produce a lot of different things but the ones that people really wanted like the PinePhone Pro just were never there, with they'd have just doubled down on something and made that REALLY good first.
I preordered the Pinebook, it was never really awesome but it was neat, I accidentally broke the screen and was never able to get a replacement (at least from the store - they were always sold out.) Turned into ewaste.
PinePhone Pro wasn't too good either, I really tried but had lots of flaky issues with basic phone functionality, eventually gave it away to a friend. It's collecting dust for sure and will eventually be more ewaste.
Pine’s approach has always felt like they wanted to make the hardware and then hope that the community would sort out of the software for it.
There isn’t a lot of motivation for the community to sort out the software for them when the products aren’t attractive enough to build a community around.
I wish they would narrow their focus, shift some resources into software development, and produce at least one very good product. As it stands, the Pine brand has become associated with buyer beware.
To be fair to them, they at least tell you that software support is largely community provided. However, you probably won't know how that is in practice until you experience it once or twice.
I really like the phone/desktop convergence concept. Mostly I think because I want the freedom / open experience of my desktop on my phone though, I think.
But I think most folks interested enough in the concept are also rich enough to afford a phone and a laptop, and if you want a keyboard for your phone you might as well just use a laptop.
I still think conceptually it's the right direction for tech that our devices should be so flexible, but it's hard enough in practice that it's not generally done.
I feel the same way, but while there are definitely actual hardware limitations preventing phones from being identical to computers, the problem is mostly a choice. Why aren’t ipads with keyboard cases able to be used exactly like laptops, for example? I think companies seized on the combined accessibility and restrictiveness of smartphones to justify design choices which are more about profit. Restricting the app library makes apple a great amount of money. Ads are hard to block across a mobile device, why else if not for more money? I think the circumstances of smartphone development gave them the opportunity to make these choices and we’ve gotten locked in since.
I think the convergence concept still makes sense in big corporations where most of your work happens on a VM in the cloud, while you just use your device as a thin client. Especially in places they don't even let you use a thirdparty browser >.>.
Earlier this year, I was actually tried to replace my bulky 16" MBP with a Pixel 9 for work. Android's desktop mode just wasn't there.. Maybe I will try it again next year...
All I really need was a browser and a drop down terminal anyway.
Huawei as well. Used to have a P30 Pro. It felt like a true downgrade when I bought a Pixel 8 Pro two years ago and it had no desktop mode and a worse camera to boot.
the problem with keyboards like this and the ones on the surface is that they have no connective hinge and rigidity. with my UMPC at least, I like to hold it by the base while looking at the screen. I really wish there would be a clampable keyboard that used nice membranes like the GPD but had a phone clamp on top like a selfie stick and a single swivel-hinge like those fujitsu convertibles
It costs 600 euros in europe (plus shipping?) I don't know why they expected that it would have sold more. Even the "200 dollars" PinePhone is 350 in euros.
It was on my list of devices that would have been fun to hack on, but not at that price.
PinePhone Pro's main drawback was the low-res display for a price of a midrange Android with far superior specs. I was thinking about buying one but it was barely better than the regular PinePhone.
That pile of garbage had crazy critical hardware faults they never fixed.
1. If the battery is discharged, then in order to recharge it, you have to take out the microsd and sim cards, press an SMT button, and plug in with battery.
2. If you bought the keyboard/battery, and you plug in USB on the phone, you fry the keyboard/battery. Shit burns up, haha screw you.
And if you say anything, you the user are at fault. You didn't read, or follow their discord, or whatever, because it is 'Your Fault' ™.
Pine's primary game here has been to paracitize off of FLOSS folks, pump out incompetent and/or broken hardware, and summarily blame FLOSS for their not-working. At minimum, they should be funding the projects they want to build on/paracitize. But they do none of the sort.
We would be better if Pine died as a company. Then they wouldn't be sucking the oxygen out of the FLOSS arena, and might get more respectable orgs here.
I do not understand why so many companies have that charging issue with Linux devices.
Anbernic has the same
issue with the RG35XX series. If the battery reaches 0, you may need to pull it out just to get the charging to work. And if you accidentally connect the wrong kind of usb-c charger, it won't charge, so you may have it plugged into the wall for days and come back to it being dead and needing battery surgery.
Great devices for hacking because they are cheap though — cannot understand why an expensive phone would have that problem too.
Anbernic cheaped out when trying to support USB host mode, as a result the device will not work correctly with an electronically marked cable. You can fix this - but you lose host mode - https://www.wirehead.be/2024/10/21/anbernic-rg35xx-h-charge-... . The article is for the RG35XXH, but pretty much all the XX devices have the same flaw.
Some of pre-HSDPA Nokia phones had the same issue. You needed a clip-on raw cell charger to revive them. It's manufacturer skill as well as a bit of cost issue.
You can buy eMMC cards that fit on the board. Their documents say you can boot from them. Like 10x performance of a mSD card and less wear-out.
I use a USB device to make the drive mountable from a Linux box, and copy the firmware as prescribed. I then unmount and load in the A64, and.... NOTHING.
Supposedly there's a uboot command that maybe enables it. Or maybe its autodetect. Or maybe (5 other ideas, that all fail).
I returned that shit too because they make claims that it works these official ways, and it never does.
Pine is a parasite. Always has been, but they make-pretend that they're some great FLOSS company.
Thank you. That was exactly my point - they camped in a niche they had no intent to do properly.
Worse yet, they screamed at users to lean on the community (read: unpaid FLOSS as support). They refused to provide even baseband images to do the things they were selling, like Pinephone Pro as as, you know, a phone.
At one point, I thought they were just an upstart trying to get off the ground. But in reality, its a complete grift that ends up taking community resources and nothing to show for it.
With the Android becoming a privacy nightmare, Pine was like the only hope for some FOSS phones. Their main drawback was the software. Now given the coding LLMs available these days, would generating a set of useful apps for Pine be a major problem? They can be pretty minimalistic but must be 100% reliable for the platform to take off. Right now they are super buggy and basic features work randomly.
Honestly the company is kind of a nightmare. When I ordered mine, they shipped it with no packaging from Hong Kong. Obviously it arrived broken, and when I told them they said I could pay to have someone fix it in CA. It ended up taking 2 months for my chargeback to go through, and they were threatening me the whole time. It was only after they lost (which of course they would, it's like they've never worked with a credit card processor before) they got really sweet and sent me a return label.
Just a terribly run company. I'm sure it's better if you're buying bulk boards from them but after my experience I wouldn't work with them again.
> When I ordered mine, they shipped it with no packaging from Hong Kong.
As I understand, customs (in your country) will typically check what's being imported, to verify the invoice is true for correct taxation, and also to check that it's something allowed. It might be that your customs authority didn't put it back in its package after inspecting it.
When they were "new" the tech was old already and then the lack of drivers for the camera for example which I can't talk, I'm not a driver developer. I thought it would make me get into developing drivers but I never did.
Or writing Qt/C++ apps vs. cross platform/web that I was used to.
For some reason I was obsessed with the thought of Dex/your phone being a computer if connected to a big monitor, it was cool using VS Code on the PPP but there would be problems. The external monitor I think was capped to 1920x1080 (if connected to a 1440P display a huge chunk was just static)
I had my fun with it
I was interested in the Pine 64 eInk tablet but that seemed to not be in stock at the time. I had the Remarkable 2 at one point, I want to get it again.
edit: looks like the PineNote is in stock right now
my consumer brain is getting tickled, might get a PineNote, what I liked about the RM2 is I didn't have to charge it for like a month was crazy, unfortunately PineNote doesn't seem to have that, and no tilt support on pen but ehhh. I don't know if RM forces you to have a subscription now, I didn't have it on mine when I got it in like 2022.
Yeah for these kinds of things to work the hardware has to be at least somewhat competitive and the overall device reasonably usable. It doesn’t need to be a flagship or anything, just relatively recent, and the experience doesn’t have to be perfect, just actually suitable as a daily driver. That’s what gets people interested, inspires devs to contribute and fill app gaps. This kicks off a virtuous cycle where less technical family of those devs see the device and want to try it, which in turn creates more demand for apps pulling more dev interest and so on and so forth.
It’s critical to be good enough to clear that initial hurdle, though. Without that, the device is relegated to the most curious of tinkerers which just isn’t sustainable.
As far as dev experience goes, from my limited dabbling I think GTK+Adwaita might actually be overall nicer for mobile development than Qt, due to furnishment of a full set of widgets without having to pull in anything else, as well as bindings to way more languages. It’s considerably more comparable to UIKit and Android Framework at the very least.
>> That’s what gets people interested, inspires devs to contribute and fill app gaps.
Alas, no, sorry. It's really not the number of apps that matters. Any phone OS could have less than 500 apps and be wildly successful. On the other hand you can have a million devs cranking out apps and the device would still be useless.
Turns out the only apps that matters are the ones everyone actually use. Your banking app. Facebook. Whatsapp. Uber. Airbnb. Etc. All the product of big corporates.
And my bank (to pick just 1) is simply not interested in developing their app for yet another platform. The effort in building it, supporting it etc simply makes no sense.
Facebook, Netflix, Twitter, ESPN, and the next 40 "must haves" simply don't care. And independent devs simply cannot fill these holes. Without these the phone is simply useless as a daily driver for anything other than complete techno fanatics.
Crumbs Microsoft couldn't convince this cohort to get on board. Some random Linux phone certainly won't.
I don't say this with glee. They're nice toys. But Joe public doesn't reject them because of the hardware specs. He rejects them because they're functionally useless in the actual world.
I think this is wildly more individual-dependent than you may think. Speaking personally, while I do have a number of big commercial apps installed, the number that couldn’t be filled either with a web app or the Android version via a compatibility layer is tiny. The native apps I find most difficult to replace are those by small to midsize devs, which are exactly the ones most likely to be the primary contributors to a new platform early on.
I don’t think this is particularly unusual, either. Plenty of people have absoutely no need for video streaming on their phone outside of maybe YouTube for example, which works well enough on the web.
Microsoft’s not the best example here, because they had momentum with both devs and users but shot themselves in the foot repeatedly on both sides of the fence: warring internal factions reset Windows Mobile development multiple times consecutively and burned through dev goodwill and poor strategy on the consumer side killed things there. Mozilla’s foray into phones failed because they insisted on sticking to entry level devices which were both not interesting to most of the market and not powerful enough to handle a new unoptimized OS.
For what it's worth, I don't have a single one of the apps GP mentions installed on my phone. No Netflix, no Facebook, no WhatsApp.
I am aware that I am an outlier, though. I need either Anki or AnkiDroid. I need a somewhat decent text reader, preferably one that properly highlights and folds Org mode files. I need a voice recorder that timestamps the file name. I don't think I know anybody else who needs any of those three, other than those I've introduced to Anki.
> The external monitor I think was capped to 1920x1080 (if connected to a 1440P display a huge chunk was just static)
That happened to me with the PP, but I can reliably use a 1440P monitor with the PPP. Not sure if it's the phone, or the fact that I added a power cord to the phone while it was connected. I can't remember if I did that with the PP.
EDIT: Scratch that. It's because I used the official dock with the PP, and for the PPP I used one I got on Amazon.
The official dock is docked (:P) to 1080P.[1]
I wonder how it happened that the de-facto standard here is for the protocol going over USB-C to be DisplayPort, but for the hardware connection to be HDMI, and so leading to docks needed to be spec'ed to the resolution you want instead of being passive.
The answer is boring and annoying, they almost certainly want it to work with TVs and cheap monitors both of which commonly only have HDMI inputs. It has been my experience that you typically have to pay more for a USB-C dock with displayport outputs, even though they don't have the chip just cause of economies of scale.
Really sad about this. I recently bought another Android and was checking out the PinePhone Pro, but only wanted something with a little better specs..
I think the PP still makes for a great educational device. I was following the Lupyuen tutorials for PinePhone nuttx for a while, and then got inspired to have a go at following his revese engineering journey using Zig. It has been slow going but great fun! Just started on volume keys.
They say they continue production on the PP for 2 more years, so hopefully I'll have a bit more than 'Hello, world' by then.
But buy a serial debug cable and SD card extension if you decide to have a play with one, huge time savers! I only just got mine and it has speeded up things no end.
When your fingers are too fat and/or your hand are too big for a Libretto, or you have pathological issues troubling the relevant appendages, then do yourself a favor and don't bother.
It's obvious: These keyboards are, or should be, primarily made for mobile people, so high quality and tray or coffee table compatibility are a must. The Psion 5-series keyboards are ideal for this as long as you don't fuck with the formula.
It's just big enough that it might be barely usable to touch type with sufficient practice, not comfortably though. Definitely seems smaller than the Libretto from glancing at pictures. If the idea is to have a portable keyboard to then sit down somewhere and work, there are pocket BT ones that fold in half and are comfortably big.
The only use-case I can think for the Pinephone keyboard is if for some reason you want a physical keyboard to use while walking.
Not surprising. These phones were out of date when they debuted and not updated, in like five years?
I played with one for a bit but then mobian trixie updates bricked it twice and I gave up. Only wanted it to be on par with my old iPhone 6s, but it never achieved that.
Star labs makes a great Linux tablet, the starlite, so it is near possible to make a decent floss phone these days.
For quite a while I used an iPad+NUC, which was perfect and I loved it, except it could only really run terminal programs (via ssh) or iOS programs nicely. VNC kinda works but not well.
Eventually I switched to a folding convertible laptop, but it is a significant downgrade in terms of form-factor. Nice to know that exists, hopefully they’ll stick around until I’m ready to turn this thing into e-waste…
Yes, though haven't used it as a convertible yet.
I usually use tablets as my home movie machine since we don't have a proper TV. At this, the Starlite with Phosh and recent Fedora/firmware updates is fantastic. Freetube, Netflix and Kanopy on Firefox via widevine, PBS, and homegrown .mkv's are more than I have time to watch.
On the go a Framework 13 is fantastic, tall screen, light and powerful. Only waiting on coreboot and ECC RAM.
They were all too slow and buggy in my experience to use; basic functionality like text or camera was consistently broken or buggy, and it took way too long to load.
The speed issue could in the short term be bruteforced with stronger hardware, but as far as I'm aware there’s no Linux phone out there with anything approaching what one might consider “strong” hardware.
It’s a bit puzzling because there’s Chinese companies like Retroid and AYN pumping out Snapdragon 8 Gen 2/3 handheld gaming devices that the community has ported Linux to, with working graphics acceleration and everything. I doubt these companies are using fully bespoke mainboards, because most of their components are borrowed from existing smartphones. Seems like some company could stick one of these Snapdragon boards into a phone chassis and have a reasonably compelling Linux phone.
I haven't tried Whatsapp or Signal. The problem I've had with Uber is feeding it GPS coordinates. Talking about Waydroid, for some reason, while I can get Google Maps to see my coordinates, Uber seems to try to get the coordinates some different way. IIRC, you can still use it, you just need to be more explicit about where you want it to pick you up.
what you're really paying for is a difference in manufacturing; the spec bump is just to make the very high price hurt less. $2k instead of $800.
they designed an elaborate process which theoretically guarantees that your phone was not tampered with at the factory or in transport. it was sort of a reaction to Bloomberg's "The Big Hack" article, which claimed Apple devices were compromised en masse at the factory in China by state actors (and the story was later retracted due to lack of evidence).
i do think it's a cool effort, even if the threat is only hypothetical. but it's a lot to pay unless you're operating under an extreme threat model.
The PinePhone Pro just wasn't a very good product. There was frankly unnecessary drama regarding the bootloader of all things, which was a bad start. The specs were obviously a bad value compared to any mass-produced phone, though it did bring the Linux phone down to a price point where an enthusiast could reasonably buy it, so I can't say it was priced that poorly. But, the big problem was software. Getting the damn device to work reliably was a true pain in the ass. If you could get "deep" sleep to work, then it would last longer than a couple hours on battery, which was nice... But sleep/resume on the device was buggy and slow. Getting a phone call can wake the device, but by the time it actually wakes up you might've already missed the call. And audio routing for calls was shockingly ugly... Most of the time it was routed directly by the hardware, bypassing the Linux audio stack entirely, but it was quite flexible and you could route it into Pipewire/etc. The microphone quality is "it works" tier, though the person on the other end may be occasionally alarmed by a flash bang of noise for unknown reasons. There are two piss-quality cameras that sometimes work for a little bit until they stop working.
I waited a long time and occasionally checked to see if anything had changed, but it was clear that Pine64 had again taken the approach of "build it and they will come" hoping for other people to clean up the mess and make the phone usable. And to be fair, they were up front about this, to some degree, but they built it and nobody really came. The truth is it's just too damn hard for random people to fix all of the software issues on a device like this, especially when it's basically not usable as a daily driver yet. Working on a device like this is a full-time job, and you can't really replace that full-time job with 20 hobbyist weekends stacked in a trenchcoat. I did realize this when I bought one, with full intent to be one of those hobbyists spending weekends on it, but at least to me, it was simply too broken.
So I think the PinePhone experiment is a failure. Then there's the Librem 5, which I presume is at least more stable and usable, but it's at a price that is less easy to stomach.
I think until the software is ready and a market is proven, the best route for Linux phones is going to be by taking Android phone parts and trying to make it run regular Linux, a la libhybris. It may not really work out either, but it does seem like it is a path of significantly less resistance, where the software can be worked on with solid hardware and hopefully solid enough drivers to build on.
There are some folks working on this angle, too. The latest I've seen is the Liberux NEXX, no idea how it's going, not affiliated in any way.
I don't blame them for the prices given how unique the product was, but the company was always kind of a mess. Lots of broken devices and they had/have an outrageously hostile return policy, forcing people to do charge backs. I agree on the build it and they will come philosophy, it felt like they were riding the popularity of linux phones while not contributing a lot to their future.
> it felt like they were riding the popularity of linux phones while not contributing a lot to their future
I think they're the ones that contributed the most. They've provided the most open-source phone out there at the lowest price out there. The only other equivalent option is the Librem 5 at $800, double the price.
They didn't contribute much/any software, but they contributed the most accessible, viable hardware to make an open source linux phone.
> the best route for Linux phones is going to be by taking Android phone parts and trying to make it run regular Linux
> and hopefully solid enough drivers to build on.
This is the crux of the problem with this approach. That the drivers would remain closed-source. AFAIK, the Pinephones and Librem are the only ones with open-source drivers.
Fully understand the issues with this approach: my skepticism has been expressed in former HN comments. However, the issue is that in practice it already seems like this approach has yielded something closer to daily-driver maturity, which would make it a suitable platform for experimenting with software. It may be necessary since it's hard to justify actually doing all of the effort to build the phones with not much impressive to run on them.
"No one was working on it for year" is both untrue and unfair. There have been continued improvements (both PinePhone and PinePhone Pro), and I know that there are people who have put in the midnight oil to make them happen.
What that work was not is 'paid for by PINE64'. It's also not been enough to raise the bar enough to make the phone work well enough; but if you consider what's involved there, it makes sense.
You don't just need to write/fix a driver, you need upstream (or at least a distribution) to accept it and include it for that work to make a meaningful difference for anyone else.
> It wasn't "discontinued," no one was working on it for years, and it was pointless to purchase.
If it was being made and sold and now it's not, then it was discontinued. You may point out reasons why it was discontinued, but that is in fact what happened.
The situation with phones is pretty bad now. The phones that have or support open-source ROM (Pinephones, Pixels etc), are usually expensive and cost like 2-3 normal phones. So it might be cheaper just to buy a non-free phone and keep it in airplane mode (and connect it only to a airgapped home WiFi network to transfer data), and a second dumb phone for calling. Or have one phone with your data, connecting to Internet via second $50 phone, which has connectivity, but no data, and DPIs all requests from first phone, basically serving as a portable router.
It's understandable that you earn more on expensive phones, and freedom is not free, but I don't want to buy a phone that costs like 2 cheaper phones + a guitar.
I bought one as soon as they were released, as well as the keyboard case. It never really worked correctly, but I loved the concept and wish they would have succeeded.
I know it's a niche product, but I'd love a pocket sized Debian device with cellular, decent standby time, and a physical keyboard. Anything out there I should look in to? I've tried to make various GPD devices work, but they are too big, and the standby time isn't great.
There's https://furilabs.com/shop/flx1/, but there don't seem to be many people playing with these. Perhaps someone on HN would be willing to share their experience.
Way back when I had a Nokia N900 [0].
I still miss it. Wonderful little phone, physical keyboard, Linux, perfect (almost).
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N900
One of my favorite phones. Despite a bizarre hiccup preventing sd cards from being recognized if the camera lens sensor broke.
I think that finding an aftermarket keyboard solution for a smartphone using the android virtualization framework to run a debian VM (i.e. the "Linux Terminal" on Android 16) is your best bet by far.
The economies of scale (and compactness!) in mainstream smartphones are very hard to match, and they tend to have superior power management.
Do heavy lifting by logging into a remote server for best battery life and compute power.
> I know it's a niche product, but I'd love a pocket sized Debian device with cellular, decent standby time, and a physical keyboard
yes they're called netbooks and x86 tablets but you may need a time machine back to 2015 to get one.
You don't have to go to 2015
GPD has a bunch, they are not exactly cheap though https://gpd.hk/product
Those aren’t netbooks. They’re another class of device which I’ve forgotten the name of. Something like umpc or something.
But the idea was netbooks were the bottom end of the market and this other class were the same form factor but at the top end of the market.
Some of them are UMPCs, some are sub-notebooks and some arguably are maybe netbooks. The GPD Micro PC 2 is not that fast and only has a 7" screen like the original Asus EEE PC. It's got less bezel, so perhaps it bleeds the line between netbook and UMPC but inflation adjusted it's pretty comparable in price.
GPDs used to be much cheaper[1], and IMO made much more sense that way. Unfortunately, GPD indeed seems to have caught the expensive bug.
[1] https://blog.danieljanus.pl/2022/08/18/i-love-my-gpd-micro-p...
The GPD Micro PC 2 is still pretty cheap. The other models are way way faster so it's not surprising they cost more.
Pretty cheap by some definitions, yes, but as best as I can tell (historical prices aren’t exactly readily available), the Micro PC 2 ($700 list price before tax) is still between 1.5× and 2× the price of the original (€300—presumably including about 20% tax—per the linked article, between $200 and $500 per the Wayback Machine, in nominal dollars before 10% inflation).
You can get it for $513.
https://gpdstore.net/laptops/gpd-micropc-2/
GPD makes decent small devices, that can be equipped with cellular, and work fine with Debian. So no need for a time-travel here. :)
Aliexpress still has those.
I'm fighting myself on the Jolla C2 at the moment. I'm kinda in the same category as you I guess :D
The FuriPhone looks pretty good: https://furilabs.com/ though I haven't seen many reviews yet. But am keeping my eyes peeled.
not sure about standby time, but MNT Pocket Reform is a neat and unusual device in that category.
This is a bummer. If there was ever a time this sort of device was needed, it's now / in the near future when Google (probably) starts requiring all Android apps to be signed by approved developers and further locks down the Android platform.
I kind of regret not buying one of these instead of a Pixel 7 but, unfortunately, I'm pretty tethered to the Android ecosystem at the moment.
I'm monitoring support for PostmarketOS on Fairphone models, with a mainline Linux kernel. They actually have someone working on upstreaming stuff to mainline, which is quite nice.
The FP6 doesn't seem there yet [1], but the FP5 is close! [2]
The FP5 is a comfortable device. With call support completely figured out, Mobile Linux would probably be enjoyable on it.
[1] https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Fairphone_(Gen._6)_(fairp...
[2] https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Fairphone_5_(fairphone-fp...
The situation with RCS means Google and Apple have a complete douopoly on the texting market.
SMS will outlive us all.
You say that, but they're discontinuing it because they didn't sell enough of them. It may be the device we need, but it's not the device we're buying.
I never had a PinePhone Pro but I did buy an earlier model and the user experience was very far off what we have come to expect from modern phones. I'm sure the Pro was better but still probably not that close to an Android or Apple phone. That's not a sleight on the company at all, they faced some very high barriers and I respect what they did. But I don't think this is entirely on consumers for not putting their money where their mouth is. It's just yet another example that it's really hard to create something (in the phone space, at least) that is affordable, open and highly functional.
It's that "we" are too small a market. And I'm not convinced that most of us actually buy these niche devices, even though we say we will.
nah it's that the work delta is too great.
So if you come out with a typical android phone, you have to do X amount of work yourself and some Y amount you can just buy.
If you are doing something like a PinePhone, there's a multiplier on the X of work you have to do yourself ... a significant multiplier and that's the problem.
That's why if you have a something like a Pine phone that has the sales of say something like this: https://www.bluproducts.com/android-phones/ you're going to bleed money - you won't survive - it's too much of a lift.
That's also why almost all phones (that are financially viable) look and feel almost the same.
The product was never really attractive by itself. You had to be extremely patient and willing to overlook the serious problems with their software to even try to use it.
I would like to see some other company take a real swing at this product space but with a less strict approach around the hardcore open-everything ideals. They’re good in theory, but in practice people want a phone that works and you have to get to that stage first.
I'll buy them once I can access all of my banks on it, that is literally the only thing holding me to IOS or Anroid at the minute
NB: Attestation has no security value here because if the phone isn't compromised then the owner having root isn't a security problem and if the phone is compromised then the user is entering their bank login into fake scam app that doesn't require attestation regardless of what the real one does.
But because the banks that require this are cargo culting some nonsense, they require iOS or Google Android but don't really care how old the phone is. Which means you can transfer your cellular plan to the phone you actually want to use and then just keep your existing phone indefinitely to run the bank app over WiFi or tethering.
What is protecting against another app on a PinePhone from stealing your bank's authentication token?
There are two possible scenarios here.
The first is that your phone is not compromised. In this case there is no other app trying to steal your bank's authentication token. This is true regardless of which OS you use or whether you have magisk installed or what other code you put on your phone that isn't trying to steal your bank's authentication token.
The second is that your phone is compromised. Then what prevents the device from capturing your bank credentials is the same as if you use a compromised phone running Google Android: Nothing. If you enter your bank credentials into a compromised phone, the attacker gets them. Attestation can't prevent this because the phone is compromised, so the login screen isn't from a bank app that requires attestation, it's from a scam app which is exfiltrating your credentials.
Then tell your banks they have to support the PinePhone or they'll lose you as a customer. The PinePhone folks don't have access to the source code of whatever interface your banks provide on Android/iOS, so they can't do anything about it.
Pine has an attention problem, they produce a lot of different things but the ones that people really wanted like the PinePhone Pro just were never there, with they'd have just doubled down on something and made that REALLY good first.
I preordered the Pinebook, it was never really awesome but it was neat, I accidentally broke the screen and was never able to get a replacement (at least from the store - they were always sold out.) Turned into ewaste.
PinePhone Pro wasn't too good either, I really tried but had lots of flaky issues with basic phone functionality, eventually gave it away to a friend. It's collecting dust for sure and will eventually be more ewaste.
Pine’s approach has always felt like they wanted to make the hardware and then hope that the community would sort out of the software for it.
There isn’t a lot of motivation for the community to sort out the software for them when the products aren’t attractive enough to build a community around.
I wish they would narrow their focus, shift some resources into software development, and produce at least one very good product. As it stands, the Pine brand has become associated with buyer beware.
To be fair to them, they at least tell you that software support is largely community provided. However, you probably won't know how that is in practice until you experience it once or twice.
As someone who doesn't run Linux on any of my Pine64 systems, that suits me fine.
I really like the phone/desktop convergence concept. Mostly I think because I want the freedom / open experience of my desktop on my phone though, I think.
But I think most folks interested enough in the concept are also rich enough to afford a phone and a laptop, and if you want a keyboard for your phone you might as well just use a laptop.
I still think conceptually it's the right direction for tech that our devices should be so flexible, but it's hard enough in practice that it's not generally done.
I feel the same way, but while there are definitely actual hardware limitations preventing phones from being identical to computers, the problem is mostly a choice. Why aren’t ipads with keyboard cases able to be used exactly like laptops, for example? I think companies seized on the combined accessibility and restrictiveness of smartphones to justify design choices which are more about profit. Restricting the app library makes apple a great amount of money. Ads are hard to block across a mobile device, why else if not for more money? I think the circumstances of smartphone development gave them the opportunity to make these choices and we’ve gotten locked in since.
I think the convergence concept still makes sense in big corporations where most of your work happens on a VM in the cloud, while you just use your device as a thin client. Especially in places they don't even let you use a thirdparty browser >.>.
Earlier this year, I was actually tried to replace my bulky 16" MBP with a Pixel 9 for work. Android's desktop mode just wasn't there.. Maybe I will try it again next year...
All I really need was a browser and a drop down terminal anyway.
Don't most Samsung phones and tablets already do this? Dex or something?
yeah, but Dex lets you use your android apps with desktop ergonomics. PinePhone and Librem let you use your desktop apps with mobile ergonomics.
Huawei as well. Used to have a P30 Pro. It felt like a true downgrade when I bought a Pixel 8 Pro two years ago and it had no desktop mode and a worse camera to boot.
Tbf huawei got heavy subsidies and just wanted marker share, google actually tried to make a profit.
Android 16 (coming to Pixel 8 series if it's not there already) supports this.
It's not most phones, just the high end ones, Galaxy S series, Galaxy Z Fold Series, Tab S series and the A90 phone.
if it is only the keyboard you want, A small foldable keyboard is less bulky than the laptop. I am talking about just a keyboard and a trackpad.
https://www.newegg.com/p/0GA-03F8-00011
the problem with keyboards like this and the ones on the surface is that they have no connective hinge and rigidity. with my UMPC at least, I like to hold it by the base while looking at the screen. I really wish there would be a clampable keyboard that used nice membranes like the GPD but had a phone clamp on top like a selfie stick and a single swivel-hinge like those fujitsu convertibles
It costs 600 euros in europe (plus shipping?) I don't know why they expected that it would have sold more. Even the "200 dollars" PinePhone is 350 in euros.
It was on my list of devices that would have been fun to hack on, but not at that price.
Those price are from the (non-official?) european reseller.
You can still get the pinephone at the original price from the original store
https://pine64.com/product-category/smartphones/
PinePhone Pro's main drawback was the low-res display for a price of a midrange Android with far superior specs. I was thinking about buying one but it was barely better than the regular PinePhone.
Good riddance.
That pile of garbage had crazy critical hardware faults they never fixed.
1. If the battery is discharged, then in order to recharge it, you have to take out the microsd and sim cards, press an SMT button, and plug in with battery.
2. If you bought the keyboard/battery, and you plug in USB on the phone, you fry the keyboard/battery. Shit burns up, haha screw you.
And if you say anything, you the user are at fault. You didn't read, or follow their discord, or whatever, because it is 'Your Fault' ™.
Pine's primary game here has been to paracitize off of FLOSS folks, pump out incompetent and/or broken hardware, and summarily blame FLOSS for their not-working. At minimum, they should be funding the projects they want to build on/paracitize. But they do none of the sort.
We would be better if Pine died as a company. Then they wouldn't be sucking the oxygen out of the FLOSS arena, and might get more respectable orgs here.
I do not understand why so many companies have that charging issue with Linux devices.
Anbernic has the same issue with the RG35XX series. If the battery reaches 0, you may need to pull it out just to get the charging to work. And if you accidentally connect the wrong kind of usb-c charger, it won't charge, so you may have it plugged into the wall for days and come back to it being dead and needing battery surgery.
Great devices for hacking because they are cheap though — cannot understand why an expensive phone would have that problem too.
Anbernic cheaped out when trying to support USB host mode, as a result the device will not work correctly with an electronically marked cable. You can fix this - but you lose host mode - https://www.wirehead.be/2024/10/21/anbernic-rg35xx-h-charge-... . The article is for the RG35XXH, but pretty much all the XX devices have the same flaw.
This is awesome info and I couldn't find it ANYWHERE I looked, thank you so much!
Some of pre-HSDPA Nokia phones had the same issue. You needed a clip-on raw cell charger to revive them. It's manufacturer skill as well as a bit of cost issue.
> Great devices for hacking because they are cheap though — cannot understand why an expensive phone would have that problem too.
Because the more I read about Pinephone, the more it seems like a grift.
I also had run ins with their Pine A64 LTS.
You can buy eMMC cards that fit on the board. Their documents say you can boot from them. Like 10x performance of a mSD card and less wear-out.
I use a USB device to make the drive mountable from a Linux box, and copy the firmware as prescribed. I then unmount and load in the A64, and.... NOTHING.
Supposedly there's a uboot command that maybe enables it. Or maybe its autodetect. Or maybe (5 other ideas, that all fail).
I returned that shit too because they make claims that it works these official ways, and it never does.
Pine is a parasite. Always has been, but they make-pretend that they're some great FLOSS company.
> Good riddance.
Yes, we should be happy to have less options.../s
some options act like decoys - they take the pressure off and a proper alternative cannot arise.
Thank you. That was exactly my point - they camped in a niche they had no intent to do properly.
Worse yet, they screamed at users to lean on the community (read: unpaid FLOSS as support). They refused to provide even baseband images to do the things they were selling, like Pinephone Pro as as, you know, a phone.
At one point, I thought they were just an upstart trying to get off the ground. But in reality, its a complete grift that ends up taking community resources and nothing to show for it.
With the Android becoming a privacy nightmare, Pine was like the only hope for some FOSS phones. Their main drawback was the software. Now given the coding LLMs available these days, would generating a set of useful apps for Pine be a major problem? They can be pretty minimalistic but must be 100% reliable for the platform to take off. Right now they are super buggy and basic features work randomly.
Pinephone pro... The phone was not specced well enough and had issue. Hoping the FLX1 isn't vaporware.
>> On the other hand, the PinePhone (A64) will continue to be sold for around two years. It is currently still selling well.
Interesting! Well, there's a hint at your market.
Enough stock on the shelves for an expected 2 years of slow sales.
Honestly the company is kind of a nightmare. When I ordered mine, they shipped it with no packaging from Hong Kong. Obviously it arrived broken, and when I told them they said I could pay to have someone fix it in CA. It ended up taking 2 months for my chargeback to go through, and they were threatening me the whole time. It was only after they lost (which of course they would, it's like they've never worked with a credit card processor before) they got really sweet and sent me a return label.
Just a terribly run company. I'm sure it's better if you're buying bulk boards from them but after my experience I wouldn't work with them again.
> When I ordered mine, they shipped it with no packaging from Hong Kong.
As I understand, customs (in your country) will typically check what's being imported, to verify the invoice is true for correct taxation, and also to check that it's something allowed. It might be that your customs authority didn't put it back in its package after inspecting it.
Kind of sad, I had both PP and PPP
When they were "new" the tech was old already and then the lack of drivers for the camera for example which I can't talk, I'm not a driver developer. I thought it would make me get into developing drivers but I never did.
Or writing Qt/C++ apps vs. cross platform/web that I was used to.
For some reason I was obsessed with the thought of Dex/your phone being a computer if connected to a big monitor, it was cool using VS Code on the PPP but there would be problems. The external monitor I think was capped to 1920x1080 (if connected to a 1440P display a huge chunk was just static)
I had my fun with it
I was interested in the Pine 64 eInk tablet but that seemed to not be in stock at the time. I had the Remarkable 2 at one point, I want to get it again.
edit: looks like the PineNote is in stock right now
my consumer brain is getting tickled, might get a PineNote, what I liked about the RM2 is I didn't have to charge it for like a month was crazy, unfortunately PineNote doesn't seem to have that, and no tilt support on pen but ehhh. I don't know if RM forces you to have a subscription now, I didn't have it on mine when I got it in like 2022.
Yeah for these kinds of things to work the hardware has to be at least somewhat competitive and the overall device reasonably usable. It doesn’t need to be a flagship or anything, just relatively recent, and the experience doesn’t have to be perfect, just actually suitable as a daily driver. That’s what gets people interested, inspires devs to contribute and fill app gaps. This kicks off a virtuous cycle where less technical family of those devs see the device and want to try it, which in turn creates more demand for apps pulling more dev interest and so on and so forth.
It’s critical to be good enough to clear that initial hurdle, though. Without that, the device is relegated to the most curious of tinkerers which just isn’t sustainable.
As far as dev experience goes, from my limited dabbling I think GTK+Adwaita might actually be overall nicer for mobile development than Qt, due to furnishment of a full set of widgets without having to pull in anything else, as well as bindings to way more languages. It’s considerably more comparable to UIKit and Android Framework at the very least.
>> That’s what gets people interested, inspires devs to contribute and fill app gaps.
Alas, no, sorry. It's really not the number of apps that matters. Any phone OS could have less than 500 apps and be wildly successful. On the other hand you can have a million devs cranking out apps and the device would still be useless.
Turns out the only apps that matters are the ones everyone actually use. Your banking app. Facebook. Whatsapp. Uber. Airbnb. Etc. All the product of big corporates.
And my bank (to pick just 1) is simply not interested in developing their app for yet another platform. The effort in building it, supporting it etc simply makes no sense.
Facebook, Netflix, Twitter, ESPN, and the next 40 "must haves" simply don't care. And independent devs simply cannot fill these holes. Without these the phone is simply useless as a daily driver for anything other than complete techno fanatics.
Crumbs Microsoft couldn't convince this cohort to get on board. Some random Linux phone certainly won't.
I don't say this with glee. They're nice toys. But Joe public doesn't reject them because of the hardware specs. He rejects them because they're functionally useless in the actual world.
I think this is wildly more individual-dependent than you may think. Speaking personally, while I do have a number of big commercial apps installed, the number that couldn’t be filled either with a web app or the Android version via a compatibility layer is tiny. The native apps I find most difficult to replace are those by small to midsize devs, which are exactly the ones most likely to be the primary contributors to a new platform early on.
I don’t think this is particularly unusual, either. Plenty of people have absoutely no need for video streaming on their phone outside of maybe YouTube for example, which works well enough on the web.
Microsoft’s not the best example here, because they had momentum with both devs and users but shot themselves in the foot repeatedly on both sides of the fence: warring internal factions reset Windows Mobile development multiple times consecutively and burned through dev goodwill and poor strategy on the consumer side killed things there. Mozilla’s foray into phones failed because they insisted on sticking to entry level devices which were both not interesting to most of the market and not powerful enough to handle a new unoptimized OS.
For what it's worth, I don't have a single one of the apps GP mentions installed on my phone. No Netflix, no Facebook, no WhatsApp.
I am aware that I am an outlier, though. I need either Anki or AnkiDroid. I need a somewhat decent text reader, preferably one that properly highlights and folds Org mode files. I need a voice recorder that timestamps the file name. I don't think I know anybody else who needs any of those three, other than those I've introduced to Anki.
That is true, you have to have two phones
> The external monitor I think was capped to 1920x1080 (if connected to a 1440P display a huge chunk was just static)
That happened to me with the PP, but I can reliably use a 1440P monitor with the PPP. Not sure if it's the phone, or the fact that I added a power cord to the phone while it was connected. I can't remember if I did that with the PP.
EDIT: Scratch that. It's because I used the official dock with the PP, and for the PPP I used one I got on Amazon.
The official dock is docked (:P) to 1080P.[1]
I wonder how it happened that the de-facto standard here is for the protocol going over USB-C to be DisplayPort, but for the hardware connection to be HDMI, and so leading to docks needed to be spec'ed to the resolution you want instead of being passive.
[1] https://pine64.com/product/pinephone-pro-usb-c-docking-bar/
The answer is boring and annoying, they almost certainly want it to work with TVs and cheap monitors both of which commonly only have HDMI inputs. It has been my experience that you typically have to pay more for a USB-C dock with displayport outputs, even though they don't have the chip just cause of economies of scale.
To be clear when I say 1440p I mean 3840x1440 which might be obvious
I was using random USB-C to HDMI/usb that I bought on Amazon, I primarily used Mobian
I meant 2560×1440. Checking online, I didn't realize there were so many different 1440p resolutions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1440p
Random adapters on Amazon specify 4K though, so I would've thought they'd work for you too.
Really sad about this. I recently bought another Android and was checking out the PinePhone Pro, but only wanted something with a little better specs..
I think the PP still makes for a great educational device. I was following the Lupyuen tutorials for PinePhone nuttx for a while, and then got inspired to have a go at following his revese engineering journey using Zig. It has been slow going but great fun! Just started on volume keys.
They say they continue production on the PP for 2 more years, so hopefully I'll have a bit more than 'Hello, world' by then.
But buy a serial debug cable and SD card extension if you decide to have a play with one, huge time savers! I only just got mine and it has speeded up things no end.
I'm so sad I couldn't get my hands on that Psion-like keyboard for it.
Oh they look really cool : https://pine64.org/documentation/Phone_Accessories/Keyboard/
This is one of those things seems cool but is it (usability)?
My own opinion, I bought a Toshiba Libretto CT50 and the keyboard is really cool but also so small/hard to use.
When your fingers are too fat and/or your hand are too big for a Libretto, or you have pathological issues troubling the relevant appendages, then do yourself a favor and don't bother.
It's obvious: These keyboards are, or should be, primarily made for mobile people, so high quality and tray or coffee table compatibility are a must. The Psion 5-series keyboards are ideal for this as long as you don't fuck with the formula.
It's just big enough that it might be barely usable to touch type with sufficient practice, not comfortably though. Definitely seems smaller than the Libretto from glancing at pictures. If the idea is to have a portable keyboard to then sit down somewhere and work, there are pocket BT ones that fold in half and are comfortably big.
The only use-case I can think for the Pinephone keyboard is if for some reason you want a physical keyboard to use while walking.
Not surprising. These phones were out of date when they debuted and not updated, in like five years?
I played with one for a bit but then mobian trixie updates bricked it twice and I gave up. Only wanted it to be on par with my old iPhone 6s, but it never achieved that.
Star labs makes a great Linux tablet, the starlite, so it is near possible to make a decent floss phone these days.
Oh wow, that Star lab tablet looks great.
For quite a while I used an iPad+NUC, which was perfect and I loved it, except it could only really run terminal programs (via ssh) or iOS programs nicely. VNC kinda works but not well.
Eventually I switched to a folding convertible laptop, but it is a significant downgrade in terms of form-factor. Nice to know that exists, hopefully they’ll stick around until I’m ready to turn this thing into e-waste…
Yes, though haven't used it as a convertible yet. I usually use tablets as my home movie machine since we don't have a proper TV. At this, the Starlite with Phosh and recent Fedora/firmware updates is fantastic. Freetube, Netflix and Kanopy on Firefox via widevine, PBS, and homegrown .mkv's are more than I have time to watch.
On the go a Framework 13 is fantastic, tall screen, light and powerful. Only waiting on coreboot and ECC RAM.
Are Linux phones viable? Eg even the librem 5 seems like not workable as a daily driver.
They were all too slow and buggy in my experience to use; basic functionality like text or camera was consistently broken or buggy, and it took way too long to load.
The speed issue could in the short term be bruteforced with stronger hardware, but as far as I'm aware there’s no Linux phone out there with anything approaching what one might consider “strong” hardware.
It’s a bit puzzling because there’s Chinese companies like Retroid and AYN pumping out Snapdragon 8 Gen 2/3 handheld gaming devices that the community has ported Linux to, with working graphics acceleration and everything. I doubt these companies are using fully bespoke mainboards, because most of their components are borrowed from existing smartphones. Seems like some company could stick one of these Snapdragon boards into a phone chassis and have a reasonably compelling Linux phone.
Yes, Android has billions of users and is wildly successful.
Librem 5 was good enough for a few years. Too old to buy now at the price they're still charging however.
Fortunately, Pinephone and Librem 5 still exist and work quite well, despite being relatively slow. Sent from my daily driver Librem 5.
I had the original Pine Phone and it never worked well and was too limited/slow five years ago.
Do you use WhatsApp, signal or Uber from your Librem 5? Is that possible?
I haven't tried Whatsapp or Signal. The problem I've had with Uber is feeding it GPS coordinates. Talking about Waydroid, for some reason, while I can get Google Maps to see my coordinates, Uber seems to try to get the coordinates some different way. IIRC, you can still use it, you just need to be more explicit about where you want it to pick you up.
Anyone have thoughts on Purism’s Liberty Phone? Looks like it’s an upgraded Librem 5 of sorts.
what you're really paying for is a difference in manufacturing; the spec bump is just to make the very high price hurt less. $2k instead of $800.
they designed an elaborate process which theoretically guarantees that your phone was not tampered with at the factory or in transport. it was sort of a reaction to Bloomberg's "The Big Hack" article, which claimed Apple devices were compromised en masse at the factory in China by state actors (and the story was later retracted due to lack of evidence).
i do think it's a cool effort, even if the threat is only hypothetical. but it's a lot to pay unless you're operating under an extreme threat model.
The PinePhone Pro just wasn't a very good product. There was frankly unnecessary drama regarding the bootloader of all things, which was a bad start. The specs were obviously a bad value compared to any mass-produced phone, though it did bring the Linux phone down to a price point where an enthusiast could reasonably buy it, so I can't say it was priced that poorly. But, the big problem was software. Getting the damn device to work reliably was a true pain in the ass. If you could get "deep" sleep to work, then it would last longer than a couple hours on battery, which was nice... But sleep/resume on the device was buggy and slow. Getting a phone call can wake the device, but by the time it actually wakes up you might've already missed the call. And audio routing for calls was shockingly ugly... Most of the time it was routed directly by the hardware, bypassing the Linux audio stack entirely, but it was quite flexible and you could route it into Pipewire/etc. The microphone quality is "it works" tier, though the person on the other end may be occasionally alarmed by a flash bang of noise for unknown reasons. There are two piss-quality cameras that sometimes work for a little bit until they stop working.
I waited a long time and occasionally checked to see if anything had changed, but it was clear that Pine64 had again taken the approach of "build it and they will come" hoping for other people to clean up the mess and make the phone usable. And to be fair, they were up front about this, to some degree, but they built it and nobody really came. The truth is it's just too damn hard for random people to fix all of the software issues on a device like this, especially when it's basically not usable as a daily driver yet. Working on a device like this is a full-time job, and you can't really replace that full-time job with 20 hobbyist weekends stacked in a trenchcoat. I did realize this when I bought one, with full intent to be one of those hobbyists spending weekends on it, but at least to me, it was simply too broken.
So I think the PinePhone experiment is a failure. Then there's the Librem 5, which I presume is at least more stable and usable, but it's at a price that is less easy to stomach.
I think until the software is ready and a market is proven, the best route for Linux phones is going to be by taking Android phone parts and trying to make it run regular Linux, a la libhybris. It may not really work out either, but it does seem like it is a path of significantly less resistance, where the software can be worked on with solid hardware and hopefully solid enough drivers to build on.
There are some folks working on this angle, too. The latest I've seen is the Liberux NEXX, no idea how it's going, not affiliated in any way.
https://liberux.net/
I don't blame them for the prices given how unique the product was, but the company was always kind of a mess. Lots of broken devices and they had/have an outrageously hostile return policy, forcing people to do charge backs. I agree on the build it and they will come philosophy, it felt like they were riding the popularity of linux phones while not contributing a lot to their future.
> it felt like they were riding the popularity of linux phones while not contributing a lot to their future
I think they're the ones that contributed the most. They've provided the most open-source phone out there at the lowest price out there. The only other equivalent option is the Librem 5 at $800, double the price.
They didn't contribute much/any software, but they contributed the most accessible, viable hardware to make an open source linux phone.
> the best route for Linux phones is going to be by taking Android phone parts and trying to make it run regular Linux
> and hopefully solid enough drivers to build on.
This is the crux of the problem with this approach. That the drivers would remain closed-source. AFAIK, the Pinephones and Librem are the only ones with open-source drivers.
Fully understand the issues with this approach: my skepticism has been expressed in former HN comments. However, the issue is that in practice it already seems like this approach has yielded something closer to daily-driver maturity, which would make it a suitable platform for experimenting with software. It may be necessary since it's hard to justify actually doing all of the effort to build the phones with not much impressive to run on them.
I looked into buying one a while back, and the spec sheet said it was using a 9 year old processor, and PinePhone uses a 13 year old processor.
It wasn't "discontinued," no one was working on it for years, and it was pointless to purchase.
The PinePhone is an outdated ripoff.
"No one was working on it for year" is both untrue and unfair. There have been continued improvements (both PinePhone and PinePhone Pro), and I know that there are people who have put in the midnight oil to make them happen.
What that work was not is 'paid for by PINE64'. It's also not been enough to raise the bar enough to make the phone work well enough; but if you consider what's involved there, it makes sense.
You don't just need to write/fix a driver, you need upstream (or at least a distribution) to accept it and include it for that work to make a meaningful difference for anyone else.
> It wasn't "discontinued," no one was working on it for years, and it was pointless to purchase.
If it was being made and sold and now it's not, then it was discontinued. You may point out reasons why it was discontinued, but that is in fact what happened.