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.
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.
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 These phones were out of date when they debuted and not updated, in like five years?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.
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.
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.
> 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.
Laptops are bulky; phone and keyboard can fit in one's pocket. I also dislike the idea of carrying around a device that's not under my control. It's not about wanting my phone to behave like a laptop because I can't afford a laptop. It's about getting to have control over my phone the same way I have control over the laptop.
For example, when I try to screenshot and the OS says I'm not allowed to by the app, on my own device, I die a little inside. The very idea that an OS would obey an app over the user is really messed up. It's really wrong. It's like a guest saying their guest sets the rules in your own house.
Also the weird, arbitrary limitations. On Android you can split screen and show 2 apps vertically at limited, specific heights. On the Pinephone with i3/sway, you can divide the screen with as many windows as you want, in whatever orientations you want, with as many workspaces as you want. You can set the scaling to whatever you want, have interfaces be as big or small as you want. Limits aren't arbitrary.
> 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.
The difficulty isn't in getting desktop stuff to work on the phone. The difficulty is getting phone stuff to work on the phone.
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.
As a mostly-Linux based coder, my current rig consists of an iPad with keyboard, iPhone for connectivity, and a small Debian box based on the pwnagotchi hardware (it sometimes runs pwnagotchi, but is mostly my development machine). This is plenty of power for my needs, and turns the iPad into a monitor, mostly.
I’d replace all of this in an instant if someone made a LinuxPad with keyboard.
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 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.
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.
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..
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.
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.
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.
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.
I follow the ecosystem for two projects [0], and the app ecosystem keeps getting better. Also, there's always Waydroid (LineageOS equivalent of Android 13 in a Container) and Android Translation Layer [1].
The best way to experience #LinuxMobile is IMHO on former Android Devices like the OnePlus 6 or Pixel 3a, as these are well designed devices with SoCs intended for phones. While having native hardware would be great, it's really hard to produce relatively bug-free hardware from scratch. With mainline, the SoC is always going to be older, and small-scale production leads to high prices. The economics just don't work out for non-enthusiasts who then ideally are also up for paying a software support subscription. Also, as a manufacturer you'll want to somewhat control the experience, leading to 'yet another small scale device-specific distribution, which has it's downsides.
Across devices audio issues are unfortunately still somewhat common, in part caused by the Pipewire transition (things that had been figured out for PulseAudio need to be figured out again). But it's on people's radar, and funds are invested to solve this [2].
VoLTE is another challenge, as it allows to carriers to become more gatekeepy with their stupid device support lists - of course there are workarounds like using a SIP account, but that's too inconvenient for many. Also, RCS support is not yet there, but as long as SMS/MMS fallbacks are still around, this not a dealbreaker.
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.
And proprietary phones are really bad, today I read the news that Samsung promised to comply with law and auto-install Russian software (like Vk, Kaspersky, Rustore) when the phone is connected to the Internet. And that's a Korean company. Consumers are treated like garbage today.
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 would prefer simply having something like GrapheneOS with root access.
Last time I bothered with news from Pine was with that Manjaro and bootloader drama. I am not even sure what came out of that...
But the other issue is I just found out from this post that PineBook Pro has been discontinued. But it is well listed in their devices, a shop exists just fine, with a price tag, it is just out of stock. Forever, apparently. I thought they were just being stingy with their production sizes, or they just didn't have enough traffic to make more.
Oh well, you can install postmarketOS on Chromebooks with ARM processors, and "normal" Linux is going well on other ARM devices, too. You can also find RISC-V laptops on Alibaba.
29 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 39.7 ms ] threadWhen 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.
But maybe motivates me
I'm already concerned since it runs a full OS, its battery will be shit compared to an RM2
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 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.
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.
Laptops are bulky; phone and keyboard can fit in one's pocket. I also dislike the idea of carrying around a device that's not under my control. It's not about wanting my phone to behave like a laptop because I can't afford a laptop. It's about getting to have control over my phone the same way I have control over the laptop.
For example, when I try to screenshot and the OS says I'm not allowed to by the app, on my own device, I die a little inside. The very idea that an OS would obey an app over the user is really messed up. It's really wrong. It's like a guest saying their guest sets the rules in your own house.
Also the weird, arbitrary limitations. On Android you can split screen and show 2 apps vertically at limited, specific heights. On the Pinephone with i3/sway, you can divide the screen with as many windows as you want, in whatever orientations you want, with as many workspaces as you want. You can set the scaling to whatever you want, have interfaces be as big or small as you want. Limits aren't arbitrary.
> 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.
The difficulty isn't in getting desktop stuff to work on the phone. The difficulty is getting phone stuff to work on the phone.
It wasn't "discontinued," no one was working on it for years, and it was pointless to purchase.
The PinePhone is an outdated ripoff.
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.
As a mostly-Linux based coder, my current rig consists of an iPad with keyboard, iPhone for connectivity, and a small Debian box based on the pwnagotchi hardware (it sometimes runs pwnagotchi, but is mostly my development machine). This is plenty of power for my needs, and turns the iPad into a monitor, mostly.
I’d replace all of this in an instant if someone made a LinuxPad with keyboard.
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/
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.
It was on my list of devices that would have been fun to hack on, but not at that price.
Interesting! Well, there's a hint at your market.
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 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.
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.
The best way to experience #LinuxMobile is IMHO on former Android Devices like the OnePlus 6 or Pixel 3a, as these are well designed devices with SoCs intended for phones. While having native hardware would be great, it's really hard to produce relatively bug-free hardware from scratch. With mainline, the SoC is always going to be older, and small-scale production leads to high prices. The economics just don't work out for non-enthusiasts who then ideally are also up for paying a software support subscription. Also, as a manufacturer you'll want to somewhat control the experience, leading to 'yet another small scale device-specific distribution, which has it's downsides.
Across devices audio issues are unfortunately still somewhat common, in part caused by the Pipewire transition (things that had been figured out for PulseAudio need to be figured out again). But it's on people's radar, and funds are invested to solve this [2].
VoLTE is another challenge, as it allows to carriers to become more gatekeepy with their stupid device support lists - of course there are workarounds like using a SIP account, but that's too inconvenient for many. Also, RCS support is not yet there, but as long as SMS/MMS fallbacks are still around, this not a dealbreaker.
[0]: https://linmob.net, https://linuxphoneapps.org
[1]: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Android_Translation_Layer
[2]: https://postmarketos.org/blog/2025/08/17/callaudiod-wireplum...
And proprietary phones are really bad, today I read the news that Samsung promised to comply with law and auto-install Russian software (like Vk, Kaspersky, Rustore) when the phone is connected to the Internet. And that's a Korean company. Consumers are treated like garbage today.
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 would prefer simply having something like GrapheneOS with root access.
But the other issue is I just found out from this post that PineBook Pro has been discontinued. But it is well listed in their devices, a shop exists just fine, with a price tag, it is just out of stock. Forever, apparently. I thought they were just being stingy with their production sizes, or they just didn't have enough traffic to make more.
Oh well, you can install postmarketOS on Chromebooks with ARM processors, and "normal" Linux is going well on other ARM devices, too. You can also find RISC-V laptops on Alibaba.