PinePhone Pro Announced

It is frustrating to me that despite the blunt verbiage about it being a beta device for software and hardware developers, people even here are griping about it being not ready for everyday use. If a free and open-source mobile operating system is missing software support for a feature you want, please contribute to its development.

It has a Quectel EG25-G modem.<p>I&#x27;ve not used this particular device, but I have used Quectel GNSS modules, and they&#x27;ve been a surprisingly helpful company to work with. I&#x27;m a nobody, and working with Sony, Trimble, or ublox has been an exercise in frustration; you have to convince a salesperson that you&#x27;re a big company and you can sell thousands of devices in order to just read the datasheet. This one does have some of the documents locked behind an access request, but in my experience, they&#x27;ve been very generous with those grants.<p>The modem supports the following bands:<p><pre><code> LTE-FDD: B1&#x2F;B2&#x2F;B3&#x2F;B4&#x2F;B5&#x2F;B7&#x2F;B8&#x2F;B12&#x2F;B13&#x2F;B18&#x2F;B19&#x2F;B20&#x2F;B25&#x2F;B26&#x2F;B28 LTE-TDD: B38&#x2F;B39&#x2F;B40&#x2F;B41 WCDMA: B1&#x2F;B2&#x2F;B4&#x2F;B5&#x2F;B6&#x2F;B8&#x2F;B19 GSM: B2&#x2F;B3&#x2F;B5&#x2F;B8 </code></pre> which is pretty good. Americans will want 4G bands B2, 4, 5, 12, 13, 14, 17, 20, 25, 26, 29, 30, 41, 66, and 71; this implements 9&#x2F;15, it&#x27;s missing bands 14, 17, 29, 30, 66, and 71. Those missing bands are either subsets or supersets of other bands (which could be interesting from a firmware perspective - will a tower with a band 66 antenna give this modem some of the central band 4 subset, or will it try to negotiate a channel that this can&#x27;t access?), little-used ATT bands, or the 600 MHz T-mobile band 71, which has a wide rollout but poor device support.

I received a Pinephone in the latest shipment, about three weeks ago. I also got the convergence dock to be able to attach a monitor, keyboard and mouse. I am extremely motivated to get off Android on my phone, and yet my Pinephone has already been discarded (and I never even put a SIM card in it).<p>There are far too many out-of-the-box bugs and glitches to consider this a usable product. For example, the convergence dock will not display on a monitor. Firefox browser displays too wide for the phone screen, so unusable. A dozen other issues on first day.<p>Even a development board should work better than this, have documentation of the known problems, and have some support mechanism that works.<p>I don&#x27;t think better&#x2F;more expensive hardware is the problem. It&#x27;s software, caused by lack of users, lack of investment, and too many &quot;competing&quot; distributions of Linux.

&quot;If you depend on proprietary mainstream mobile messenger applications, banking applications, use loyalty or travel apps, consume DRM media, or play mobile video games on your fruit or Android smartphone, then the PinePhone Pro is likely not for you.&quot;<p>Yikes. I appreciate they are up front about it, but that eliminates literally everyone I know.

I&#x27;ve recently ordered a PinePhone. At 200 bucks I consider it a donation. I encourage other people to also buy one, even if it is not what you expect. This along the Framework laptops is definitely the way to think about consumer products. I wish appliances were also manufactured open source. Imagine fridges, microwaves, toasters, etc. Things that you can open, understand and learn from and maybe eventually build your own thing if you have the will and time to do so.

If you want to read more about it, I would recommend reading Pine64&#x27;s Monthly update:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pine64.org&#x2F;2021&#x2F;10&#x2F;15&#x2F;october-update-introducing-the-pinephone-pro&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pine64.org&#x2F;2021&#x2F;10&#x2F;15&#x2F;october-update-introducing...</a>

For me the main pain point of the current PinePhone is not its performance, it&#x27;s the driver and firmware issues. Mainline Linux does not work well with the current PinePhone and various patches are not upstreamed or not even written yet to fix the remaining bugs. The cameras don&#x27;t work with most software, the out-of-tree WiFi driver has stability issues to the point where I rather use LTE or USB, the USB-C firmware is flunky, the modem firmware crashes and needs a lot of workarounds.<p>I hoped they chose components for the PinePhone Pro that work out of the box in terms of firmware and having no downstream Linux patches in the near future, but it seems quite similar to the current PinePhone, only slight improvements. The camera OV5640 is the same (hopefully someone came up with better v4l2 integration since the second camera is different?), the modem EG25-G is the same, no info on the used USB-C chip, but at least there is a better WiFi chip.

I curious about the opinion of HN on the absence of 1080p (it&#x27;s still 720p). Specially this part of the blog post:<p>&gt; The decision to maintain the original PinePhone’s screen resolution of 1440×720 was made early on; higher resolution panels consume more power and increase SoC’s load, resulting in shorter battery life and higher average thermals. A few extra pixels aren’t worth it.[1]<p>While I understand the point they are making, the PinePhone&#x27;s screen is almost 6&quot; and pixel density is probably the first thing that I notice on a new smartphone. It just seems very low?<p>For context I am fully aware of the project, its goals and that it&#x27;s not trying to take over the global smartphone market, but for some reason 1080p feels like the baseline in 2021.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pine64.org&#x2F;2021&#x2F;10&#x2F;15&#x2F;october-update-introducing-the-pinephone-pro&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pine64.org&#x2F;2021&#x2F;10&#x2F;15&#x2F;october-update-introducing-the...</a>

This isn’t for me and I don’t ever expect Linux phones to actually take off, but I’m heartened that Pine64 exists and that they are doing this stuff.<p>I have a Pinebook that I got as a toy machine and was very impressed with the execution. And unlike Purism, Pine64 has good customer&#x2F;developer communication and isn’t making impossible-to-keep promises about deliverability or even capabilities.<p>So not for me, but I’m glad this sort of project exists.

I appreciate the blurbs about who it is and isn&#x27;t for. I&#x27;m currently in the latter group, but I commend the project. Now that there&#x27;s a good hardware target, hopefully the software will catch up.

&gt; Thus, the device cannot considered a consumer-ready product.<p>Right off the store page. Why are people in the comments expecting to daily drive this? You buy this for the excitement and sense of accomplishment of actually managing to run things.

Mini Ask HN:<p>The comments here seem to say that PinePhone and friends are not ready to be daily drivers or even occasional drivers. I think that&#x27;s fine.<p>However, I do want to support these people and their work. I also need an ARM machine to do tests on (for portability of software and such), so I&#x27;m thinking of buying this Pro version. Yes, I&#x27;ll spend a lot more than I need to, but I <i>really</i> want to support them.<p>So question: are the PinePhone and friends good enough to do development on? And not even normal development; just downloading, building, and testing?

I can’t wait for pinephone to succeed- hopefully this more powerful hardware + faster ram will help to address latency issues in the UI. Right now it feels like your brain is literally slowing down when interacting with a normal pinephone compared to an iPhone. Not a fair comparison at all I know.

Nokia is re-releasing their 6310 phone this year and honestly I&#x27;m more tempted to go down that path at this point. Just a regular, reliable phone. The most painful thing for me at this point will probably be authenticator apps.<p>That said the pine phone looks really cool and I hope they succeed. Mobile Linux is going to be such a large uphill battle without huge investments. But with Google&#x2F;Apple having compensation packages amounting in the 300k-500k+ per year you&#x27;d think there would be room for a competitor in there <i>somewhere</i>.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nokia.com&#x2F;phones&#x2F;en_int&#x2F;nokia-6310" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nokia.com&#x2F;phones&#x2F;en_int&#x2F;nokia-6310</a>

One thing I will note is how absolutely essential smart phones have become to our daily existence. A colleague&#x27;s phone recently broke and her life shutdown because she could not 2fa anywhere, including for reporting her time card, etc. As a result, I cannot take any risks when purchasing a phone. I have to have the most reliable option possible.

Honest question: what is the path to something resembling wider-audience usability (i.e. not a toy project)? Or is that not really a plan?<p>I&#x27;d LOVE an open, Linux-based phone. But I also need a phone that does video calls, has a working browser, messenger etc. One that works with at least a good bunch of most common apps.<p>Is that likely to ever happen? Or is this a very interesting project, but really aimed at tinkerers, or people who don&#x27;t use WhatsApp etc.

Is there anyone here who has more than 3 months of using their [[Pinephone|<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;philosopher.life&#x2F;#Pinephone" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;philosopher.life&#x2F;#Pinephone</a>]] as a daily driver (a solid habit) or who knows someone who does? I&#x27;d like to speak with you (or them) because I&#x27;m in need of patient guidance. I&#x27;m willing to live off a commandline if I&#x27;m forced to do that.

Disappointed they didn&#x27;t take this opportunity to make hardware switches more conveniently accessible without removing the rear cover, like the Librem 5.<p>Maybe that&#x27;s not such a priority when you&#x27;re fully aware the thing isn&#x27;t actually usable as a daily driver one might be regularly toggling cell&#x2F;wifi&#x2F;camera on.

It was a joy to read their website, particularly where they describe &quot;who is it for&quot; and &quot;who is it not for&quot;. Clear and honest. No excuses, presumably no lies.<p>I wish all product websites were like this.

Is there any real technical reason that forbid a non Android underdog phone maker like Pine64 to be able to run banking apps as MFA devices? I mean, I don&#x27;t see any tech issue for this phone to provide a secure enclave chip (I mean, like one in a yubikey) and enroll in a standard WebAuthn workflow. I&#x27;m specifically looking at UE banks regulations that forces me to use my Android phone to permit&#x2F;deny any operation instead of letting me use if I want my yubikey to do the same in the browser

I don&#x27;t think I&#x27;m ordering this at $399. This is over twice the price of the previous PinePhone (admittedly it was borderline useless), and solidly out of &quot;novelty buy&quot; territory. If I wanted a tech toy, I&#x27;d order a handheld emulation device with (questionably comfortable) physical buttons and <i>working games&#x2F;emulators</i> for $50.

Got my Pinephone today. Currently the most usable modus operandi is to install openssh server and remote from desktop) Getting so much fun anyway, worth every buck.<p>I wonder. Firefox has Android version with mobile-optimized look and feel. I beleive it shares a lot of code with desktop version. How hard will it be to build that version for Linux graphics desktop?

I hope that someday a billionaire could donate a few hundred million to a product like this so we can finally have a true Linux phone that can compete with android and Linux.<p>What about finding 1 million nerds like me that would like to donate 100 to a crowdfunding campaign just to the software side of the phone?.

&gt; The result of this cooperation is the RK3399S – a RK3399 variant made specifically for the PinePhone Pro.<p>Looks like the RK3399 was used in some chromebooks so hopefully that means it has great upstream Linux support. We can hope it doesn&#x27;t require any device overlays or weird kernel patches.

I&#x27;d like this as a sort of <i>toy phone</i> to play and tinker with, but wouldn&#x27;t use it as my daily driver. Always nice to have spare phones hanging around when you&#x27;re bored to do casual surfing and maybe play a game or two.

The spec is so unimpressive. I don&#x27;t know about other people but I&#x27;m not getting a Linux phone for minimalism, I&#x27;m getting one that could host all my personal computing need and even replace a desktop.

I will ask this question again: why not use android instead, since android is open source? Building another mobile OS from scratch seems ill advised, or what am I missing?<p>If android is open source, it&#x27;s not google-dependent. I think there&#x27;s something that I don&#x27;t understand, but I bet that the core of android can still be used by any phone manufacturer, so I don&#x27;t really see why pinephone is making their own OS.<p>Does that mean that android, despite being open source, is hardly usable&#x2F;customizable by developers, or too complex&#x2F;bloated?

I&#x27;ve had the Braveheart and later Mobian releases of the Pinephone. Currently have a Pinebook Pro. I&#x27;m super excited for the Pinephone Pro to finally get moved to rockchip hardware even if it is just a downclocked 2016 SoC with a few more tweaks for Pine64.<p>The progress they are making is great but still far from daily driving for me personally. I&#x27;m just glad the community exists. Even with the bugs and flaws the products may have it is better than nothing.

This looks neat and I appreciate how clear they are about expectation setting. With that said it&#x27;s disappointing to see only Bluetooth 4.1. A lot of modern devices rely on features from 5.0 either for low power usage, or bi-directional high quality audio.<p>It seems fine for a general productivity device, but not for things like video conferencing, or media consumption, which I guess aligns with their inability to support DRM.

A display resolution of 1440x720 feels a bit limited, especially for something labeled &quot;Pro&quot;. Wonder why they didn&#x27;t go for 2160x1080...

I&#x27;d expect the battery performance to suffer. Android did a lot of things to optimize that vis a vis &#x27;normal&#x27; linux.

I love the desktop-ness of this. I wish Apple enabled this with iPhone. I&#x27;d finally be able to have one device.

As a concept this is fine, mainstream will never happen with the current set of societal priorities. It’s not flashy enough, it requires some tinkering, and my friends won’t think it’s cool enough. Unfortunate, because at least in my opinion this is the direction we should all be going.

Forget being able to use it for office. Is it able to take a decent picture or video yet?<p>The performance of those apps on the original pinephone is just hideous.<p>Also, is it just me, or was the original already pretty chunky, and now they’ve added 2mm making it 11mm thick.

If I buy this phone today, in {6 months, 1 year, 5 years} when Linux is ready for phones, will I be supported in that future still?<p>I&#x27;d hate to buy this phone to support a project and then never have access to what I wished the product was.

The improved hardware seems great!! Hope to see a PinePhone one day with the best mobile hardware available! Best processor, best GPU, best touch screen, best camera, best sensors... A flagship PinePhone.

I put my Pinephone back in its box about 6 months ago. Have they fixed the massive lag between touching the screen and it responding yet? That was the main reason it wasn’t usable for me.

4GB mem.....? Really 4GB? That&#x27;s it?<p>Would it really have been that bad to at least offer a 8GB, 16GB, or 32GB Memory upgrade.<p>Just feels like a huge let down. I get it the price of electronics(i.e. memory) is more expensive, but this makes it look like a joke in comparison with other &quot;phones&quot;.<p>And if it were marketed as a mini computer 4GB of ram isn&#x27;t saying much. Hexacore processor, 128GB Emmc storage awesome but then I read 4GB of ram and it&#x27;s like a smack in the face. If this is to be a &quot;flagship&quot; for years to come, I&#x27;m really disappointed they went with limited memory.<p>Would I pay $699 instead of $399 for more memory... yeah I would

I recall seeing pictures and notes about a PinePhone with a physical keyboard. Is that actually under development as well? Or is that just someone&#x27;s experiment?

Physically it just looks like every other android phone :( I really wish the Ubuntu phone got funded cos I liked the look of that.<p>Edit: meant ubuntu edge phone not Mozilla.

Damn, and I just put in an order for the PinePhone 1.5 days ago.<p>Just emailed them to see if they can make this work, and upgrade appropriate for the difference.

I want to see a radically different approach to Phone user interfaces. It&#x27;s just the same cookie cutter trends from Apple and Google.

You&#x27;ve got to be frigging kidding. Literally just received a PinePhone earlier this week.<p>And now it&#x27;s obsolete?<p>Not happy at all. :(

If anyone from India bought a PinePhone previously and is no longer using it, feel free to ship it to me :D

Question<p>Why are projects like this starting from scratch and not forking from the abandoned Ubuntu phone OS?

They seem to have fixed my personal gripe with the PinePhone: the camera was terrible.

Just give us accesible hardware kill switches on the side and I&#x27;m sold

&gt;ctrl+f battery &gt; 3000mAh<p>sigh

$400? Absolutely never.