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If your needs are very simple, and you’re willing to go without a lot of luxuries, then yeah, it could work for you.
I don't know, but I was thinking PinePhone would be more useful when your needs rather aren't simple.
Yeah, I guess specific would be a better word. Like if having a good terminal emulator and SSH client is more important to you than having access to Android apps.
Thats pretty much my use case. I run a legacy iphone (i know) and terminal apps arent great so far. I often need to work on the go and carrying a laptop everywhere is tedious. Having a phone with a „simple“ linux OS and terminal emulator would be awesome.
You can run any GNU/Linux program on it as long as it has an ARM build (a lot of them do) or you compile it for ARM. There is also the keyboard addon (https://pine64.org/documentation/Phone_Accessories/Keyboard/), but it makes the phone bigger.
Thats very cool. I‘m still wondering it the pinephone would work for me. I use like 5 apps regularly (obviously would find others I dont recognize as using):
- Homeassistant (could use web interface)
- Easypark (probably the most problematic to find)
- Sonos (might be able to use an open source version such as on debian)
- Fluffychat
- Voyager for Lemmy
The rest is mostly functions I „need“ but dont need specific apps for.
- Pictures (taking and viewing, maybe nextcloud upload but that could be done by a script as well)
- Web browser
- Music
- Calls
I think thats about it… Do you think that could work?
Edit: I have a stupid idea! I fondly remember my blackberry from back in the day. Obviously its not for the mainstream but pinephone isnt either. Wouldnt a step back to a blackberry design be pretty awesome for us nerds? :)
It's hard to say if it will work for you. For some people it does and for others it doesn't. It's just something you would have to see for yourself and it might require some time to set everything up the way you want it. It's a device that requires tinkering. Voyager seems to have a web version and so does FluffyChat. I use Nheko Matrix client (available in Mobian/Debian repo) - it's a native app that works pretty well. I don't know about the other apps, but in general you can run Android apps through Waydroid. Maybe those would work too.
There are no push notifications, so if you want the phone to suspend and still receive Matrix notifications, you would have to setup a script that will wake the phone up periodically.
Pictures (taking and viewing, maybe nextcloud upload but that could be done by a script as well)
This works on the original PinePhone, but the camera itself is pretty bad. PinePhone Pro has a decent one, but I'm not sure what the current state of that is. My understanding is that it works, but the pictures might not look that great. I think it's only one guy working on the camera app and he is currently working on a new version: https://blog.brixit.nl/fixing-the-megapixels-sensor-linearization/. For syncing files with a desktop I use SyncThing, but Nextcloud should probably work too. For sending just a few specific files from time to time you could use KDE Connect or even just SSH.
Web browser
That works. I use Firefox. PinePhone doesn't have a lot of RAM, though, so you won't be able to have a lot of tabs open at once.
Music
Definitely works. I use Lollypop app (available in Mobian/Debian), which works well on a mobile screen. The phone has a headphone jack if you need it. The speaker isn't very good.
Calls
This works, but audio quality during phone calls isn't always good. There also seem to be some modem issues on PinePhone Pro: https://zerwuerfnis.org/daily-driving-the-pinephone-pro. I think it's currently recommended to install the free modem firmware and I'm not sure if the author was using that (the phone doesn't come with it installed).
I'm not sure if MMS works (SMS does), since I don't use that. Support for emergency broadcasts is now being added to Phosh: https://phosh.mobi/posts/cellbroadcast/
You should also know that the battery life isn't very good. So if you use the phone a lot, you might need either an extended battery case or spare batteries (the battery is replaceable) or the keyboard addon.
Edit: I have a stupid idea! I fondly remember my blackberry from back in the day. Obviously its not for the mainstream but pinephone isnt either. Wouldnt a step back to a blackberry design be pretty awesome for us nerds? :)
I don't know which one you mean, but I would love to have a slider keyboard! Technically you could make one and I've been wondering how hard that would be. PinePhone has some pins on the back that you could use - one of them is i2c. The keyboard addon from Pine64 uses them (they have other addons too). It's probably a lot of work to make something like that, though.
This is a lot more than I could have hoped for! Thank you so much! :) I‘m somewhat convinced that I need to try this now. :)
I'm glad I didn't scare you, haha! There is also another comment that I wrote, which contains a few more details: https://sh.itjust.works/comment/9202570
Very awesome! Thanks a lot. Well, it definitely gives me stuff to think about. Some of the bugs are a little harsh but since I‘m addicted to tinkering it might actually be for me.
Also, my wife just casually said: Well, go for it. It might keep you busy for a week at least.
Awesome! It will probably keep you busy for more than a week, unless you get bored with it :D. I don't tinker all the time with mine, but here is something I've been trying lately (the instructions/bugs shown in the video are outdated though and some steps are no longer necessary): https://youtu.be/ffEGdbXt2Qo
But you know what does scare me? The price of the pinephone more than doubling! I‘m somewhat sure I wont buy it for 350€ just to get something to tinker with. For 100 bucks more I get a fairphone which 100% more of a daily driver.
You are talking about the high prices of the EU store? Yeah, that pissed me off too. The only thing you are getting for paying this much is 2 years of warranty (the American store gives like 30 days or something), but that doesn't justify the price increase for me. You also get free shipping, but shipping doesn't cost this much. If you order from the American store, you will have to pay the VAT tax and possibly some other fee, so you will probably end up paying about the same. It sucks.
You might be able to get a used one, though. I've seem people sell them on Pine64's forum and on reddit.