I’m wondering which is more free (as in freedom) so I can make the right choice. I’ve also heard people say the regular PinePhone is better than the Pro version. I am planning on using it as a daily driver. I understand it’s not perfect yet, but I’m dedicated to make it work, I don’t do much with my phone. I also just want to help support Linux-based phones and would like to see it become more popular in the future! I’m planning on dropping my Google Pixel w/ GrapheneOS for this.
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As an owner of both a pinephone and a pinebook pro I would say don’t with the phone unless you’re really prepared to completely upturn everything you do with a phone. It’s really not at a place where it’s a simple consumer-grade device to be used in place of your current smartphone. My pine now gets used as a part of my home automation setup and it works well for that. The pinebook, however, is absolutely magnificent and I take it with me anytime I need a device I’m not so worried about losing and that crucially CAN CHARGE OFF A PORTABLE BATTERY OMG!
honestly unless you are planning to develop for them and can improve the jankiness, neither. base pinephone is too weak for literally anything, even running that super minimal os. pro I only had for a few days before selling due to having no time for it but it was only powerful enough for me to think specs wise that’s what the original should have been for the year it came out. I kept the basic one because I already did the open source modem firmware or whatever it was but its probably way out of date now.
If this is way out of date and things have improved much, someone tell me please.
I loved all by pinephones… the og is much more reliable but the pro is significantly faster and more ‘usable’ in terms of ‘let me open something and i expect it to open like fairly soon.’ I owned and daily’d both at some point so ama?
I work in IT and need to be reliable via phone calls / texting, what’s your experience? I use JMP.chat, so I would need to use some XMPP app that supports that. Texting / calling is all I do on my phone, I do everything else on my laptop. Also, how is the camera quality on the Pro? Is it good enough to send to a clear picture to my boss of something he wants to see? I ordered the PineTime watch too to go along with everything.
texts are reliable. calls can be wonky but i always used gvoice (i know satan) to manage my calls reliably. camera… i’m going to be biased … i love the aesthetic but i would be remiss to ignore they arent the standard experience. for work no… for art yes! i love my pinetime and it worked great with my pinephone and android phone.
edit - there are xmmp and voip clients. i prefer maftrix which works great
fuck double edit- i need to mention i was on community modem firmware and changed my aspd. which was some work to get to work but had volte working reliably
Thanks for your response! I have two more question. If I had a PinePhone connected to my GNU/Linux laptop via Bluetooth, could the PinePhone show calls I receive on my laptop without the phone needing WiFi? I would communicate by using my bluetooth headphones. I want to rely solely on Bluetooth for answering calls from my PinePhone, without needing Wi-Fi.
I’m basically asking if there’s a way to make my laptop forward notifications to my PinePhone via Bluetooth?
Also, is the camera quality on the regular PinePhone good enough to send to my boss without it looking too bad?
Kdeconnect might be what you’re looking for notifications but I do agree that this might not be for you… The pictures are very saturated and colors can be not true to life. Like your boss will probably think ‘what was this taken on and why did they edit them to look like this’. Bt works okay… But 2.4ghz wifi messes it up. And calls are like ‘works a lot of the time but sometimes it doesn’t and sounds like dookie.’ I’ve had a policemen curse me out over the call quality… Murica
My biggest issue with the pinephone is folks getting a pinephone expecting a smooth experience… It’s a dev phone and not for normal use. Does that mean it can be daily driven? Yes it can but you better be willing to put in work… Like I had an install over a year old, but I was messing around trying to get winedive to work and ended up borking the install.
If you want to daily drive a pinephone, expect carrying batteries and expect mucking about to get things to work most of the time …
I’m totally fine with tinkering. I honestly just want to use the phone for it’s camera and nothing else. Even the PinePhone Pro has bad camera quality? I can setup my PineTime smart watch to answer calls and communicate via my PineBuds.
I just don’t want to weird my boss out by pulling out an actual camera in order to take photos. Any pictures I take with the PinePhone Pro, I can just send to my laptop over Bluetooth and then text/email him the photos on there.
I have one and opted for a Oneplus 6 running postmarketOS because of the pinephone’s many shortcomings:
Some things I liked:
I might have stayed with the pinephone if it was more powerful like the pro, and might have brought a battery bank so I don’t have to worry about running out.
https://mastodon.social/@qkall/112952099104717664
I don’t own the pinebuds but the pinetime does have call answering. Now will it auto go to bt headphones… Phosh and plasma probably but not sure about sxmo
You’re not going to like the pinephone, it just isn’t ready for you if you’re asking for notifications on your PC.
The calls are okay AT BEST. SMS/MMS have come a long way and should be okay. Battery life is MAYBE a day, if you’re lucky. Anything beyond that is painful unless you want to spend hours getting it to work with your own code.
Linux phones aren’t ready yet as a daily driver and have a poor security. I think a Pixel phone with GrapheneOS is a better choice.
I honestly just love the killswitches. As for poor security, what do you mean by that? Would it not be safe for just texting / calling? I’m planning on using this phone for work.
Killswitches give a false sense of security because it is still possible to extract some form of audio through other sensors. Another problem is that the firmware of the Wi-Fi/4G modem does not receive periodic update to prevent attacks. Pinephone won’t be of any use, I’ve been in the same situation as you and preferred to opt for the Pixel with GrapheneOS.
I’m thinking about using the PineTime watch and connecting it to my GNU/Linux laptop via Bluetooth. I use Dino-IM for calls/texts on my laptop, wondering if there is a way to answer calls from my watch. I also bought the PineBuds to go along with it. If I can, great, I wouldn’t even need a cell phone.
I have a regular PinePhone… ask me how much I use it? Zilch. I wish I had time to tinker with it but even to the point of using it on wifi with any of the available OS’ … it wasn’t a positive experience. Your Pixel with Graphene OS may work way better than this. Some people may downvote me on this one but the PinePhone is still not functional for daily use.
Same.
I used the pine book pro for a bit, it was completely viable as a wifi terminal.
But the pinephone is still just more of a cute toy
💯